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 The Evangelical succession 
 
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 EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION 
 
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THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION 
 
 Lectures delivered in St. George's Free Church, 
 Edinburgh, 1881-82. 
 
 FIRST SERIES, Grown 8vo, 5s. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 Paul the Apostle. By the Rev. Principal Rainy, D.D. 
 Augustine. By the Rev. Marcus Dods, D.D . 
 Columba. By the Rev. J. C. Macphail. 
 Anselm. By the Rev. Prof. T. Smith, D.D. 
 Bernard. By the Rev. Prof. T. M. Lindsay, D.D. 
 Wiclif. By the Rev. Principal Brown, D.D. 
 Luther. By the Rev. Prof. Salmond, D.D. 
 
 •' In every respect worthy contributions to a most valuable volume. 
 which shows ripe scholarship in every page, and breathes reverence in 
 every sentence. It is eminently a healthy book to read, for it stimulates 
 thought and it strengthens faith, exhibiting the heights of sublimity to 
 which human life, inspired and sanctified by gospel truth, can attain, 
 and setting before a generation which needs to be reminded of the 
 Christian heroism, many beautiful examples of unswerving devotion and 
 fearless courage."— Daily Revieiv. 
 
 "The subjects are manifestly full of interest, and the lecturers are 
 among the most competent men in the Free Church of Scotland. Dr. 
 Rainy opens the course with much vigour and eloquence. The book is a 
 worthy memorial of a fine course of lectures."— Literary World. 
 
 "We cannot but regard this volume as an exceedingly valuable con- 
 tribution to a class of literature which is daily becoming more popular, 
 and which is calculated not only to diffuse knowledge, but to foster 
 larger views and wider sympathies." — Scottish Review. 
 
 EDINBURGH : MACNIVEN & WALLACE. 
 
THE EVANGELICAL 
 
 SUCCESSION 
 
 3 Course of Hectttree> 
 
 DELIVERED IN ST. GEORGE'S FREE CHURCH 
 EDINBURGH 1882-83 
 
 Second Series 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 
 MACNIVEN & WALLACE 
 
 1883 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 The special object of these Lectures is, as 
 the title indicates, to exhibit the genius of the 
 Evangelical Principle, to trace its manifestation, 
 development, and vicissitudes in various ages of 
 the Church and human history ; and to illustrate 
 its ruling and moulding power over diverse types 
 of national, intellectual, and spiritual character. 
 A Third Series of the same Course will be 
 delivered next winter. 
 
 February 1S83. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 " PAGE 
 
 CALVIN, ......... 1 
 
 By the Rev. Professor Candlish, D.D. 
 
 "kNOX, ........ 37 
 
 By the Rev. R. W. Barbour, M.A. 
 
 HENDERSON, ... x ... 87 
 By the Rev. G. Webster Thomson, B.A. 
 
 RUTHERFURD, 125 
 
 By Alex. Taylor Innes, Esq. 
 
 y 
 
 LEIGHTON 173 
 
 By the Rev. Professor Blaikie, D.D. 
 
 ;axtei 
 
 By the Rev. James Stalker, M.A. 
 
 BAXTER, . y . .209 
 
 v/ 
 
 ZINZENDORF, ... ^ ... 247 
 
 By the Rev. Professor Binnie, D.D. 
 
JOHN CALVIN 
 
 By James S. Candlish, D.D. 
 
 
JOHN CALVIN. 
 
 THE name of John Calvin has become a house- 
 hold word in history, both in the mouths of 
 friends and foes ; not merely or even chiefly, like 
 those of Luther, Zwingli, Knox, and others of the 
 same illustrious band of Reformers, as representing 
 the principles of the Reformation, but in connection 
 with certain particular views of theology and church 
 polity, with which it has become inseparably 
 associated. The Genevan Reformer has come to be 
 generally contemplated simply as the theological 
 heir of Augustine and teacher of the divines of 
 Dort and Westminster, rather than as being also the 
 friend of Melanchthon, the peacemaker of the Swiss 
 churches, and the adviser of Edward VI. and the 
 English Reformers. Yet, while both aspects have 
 their warrant, the latter is perhaps the more 
 characteristic and truly historical. For it is re- 
 markable, that those ideas of doctrine and church 
 life that are most readily suggested to a modern 
 ear by the term Calvinistic, are those in which 
 Calvin did not differ from the other Reformers, and 
 so do not indicate the most distinctive features of 
 
4 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 the man and of his work. That his name has been 
 so largely associated with what was really common 
 to nearly all the Reformers, is an unconscious tribute 
 paid by after ages to the greatness of the man, even 
 among a group of such great men as the Reformers 
 of the sixteenth century must be acknowledged to 
 be ; and is due partly to the intellectual ability with 
 which he acted as the expounder and defender of 
 these common principles, and partly to the thorough- 
 going consistency with which he carried them out in 
 a positive and practical form. Calvin was indeej^a 
 plentiful contributor to the theological thought of 
 the Church. His writings abound in original ideas 
 that have proved suggestive and fruitful in subsequent 
 developments of doctrine. Thus, for example, his 
 doctrine of the testimony of the Holy Spirit gave 
 form and coherence to a view of the evidences of 
 Christianity, that has been felt by many to be the 
 most profound and satisfactory. His view of the 
 atonement forms an important link in the working 
 out of a comprehensive exhibition of that doctrine : 
 his doctrine of the Lord's Supper is as original as it 
 is profound ; and the use that he makes in his 
 theology of the notions of the adoption of believers, 
 and the kingdom of God, affords hints and anticipa- 
 tions of recent investigations ; while his exegesis of 
 Scripture was greatly in advance of anything that 
 had been done before, and led the way on the true 
 path of grammatical and historical interpretation. 
 But great as these achievements are, if asked to say 
 in brief what was the peculiar service that Calvin 
 did for evangelical religion, I would not mention any 
 of these, but rather say that it consisted in this, that 
 
JOHN CALVIN. 5 
 
 he gave a positive form in doctrine and in practical 
 Church life to that vivid sense of the grace of God 
 in Christ that is the evangelical element in Chris- 
 tianity. The special work of the first Eeformers, 
 Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli, and the others, was to 
 free the doctrines of grace from the corruptions and 
 misconceptions with which they had been wellnigh 
 choked in the middle ages, and so to bring them out 
 in a purity in which they had not been seen since 
 the days of Paul. This was a service to the cause 
 of true religion, the importance and benefit of which 
 can hardly be exaggerated ; and it required a force of 
 mind, and conscience, and resolution, such as few 
 have ever possessed. But this work from its nature 
 was mainly negative, consisting in the rejection of 
 long prevailing errors, and the protest against the 
 superstition, sacerdotalism, and legalism that had come 
 to reign in the Church, and choke its spiritual life. 
 To the first line of Eeformers, who did that mighty 
 AYork, Calvin did not belong : he was but a boy when 
 Luther nailed his Theses to the church-door at 
 Wittenberg, and Zwingli in Zurich denounced the 
 paganising corruptions of the popular religion. But 
 he was near enough in time to the first Eeformers, 
 to follow up their special work by a service almost 
 as important to the common cause. When in the 
 prime of his youth he was led to embrace the purer 
 evangelical faith, it might still be regarded as an 
 open question, whether the Eeformation was to be 
 a merely negative movement, a protest against 
 ecclesiastical traditionalism and tyranny, or the 
 positive beginning of a new and purer doctrine 
 and life for the Church. On the former view, the 
 
G THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 rationalism of the Socini, and the licence of the 
 Anabaptists and Libertines, might be regarded as 
 having an equally legitimate place in the Protestant 
 camp with the reverent and conservative faith of 
 Luther : and this view of the matter, though the 
 healthy instincts of the German Keformers recoiled 
 from it with almost too great energy, was still that 
 of the Roman Church, and one against which there 
 was no permanent and practical security. Such a 
 security the life-work of Calvin provided. On the 
 one hand, by his theological labours, he gave not 
 merely an exposition and defence of the special 
 doctrines of Protestantism, but a complete and all- 
 round exhibition of the organic system of Christian 
 doctrine, such as Protestant principles made possible ; 
 and on the other hand, by his practical organisation 
 and guidance of the Church of Geneva, and his firm 
 maintenance of its independent discipline against all 
 opposition, he gave to the Protestantism of Western 
 Europe an ecclesiastical constitution that enabled it 
 to survive the shocks of the Catholic reaction in the 
 generation that followed. In a word, he organised 
 in a positive form the doctrine and discipline of the 
 Reformed Church. What was peculiar to him was, 
 not the substance of that doctrine and discipline, 
 — they were anticipated or approved by all the 
 Reformers ; but that he put that doctrine in a 
 complete organic system, and made that discipline 
 not a mere paper theory, but a practical reality. 
 This comprehensive grasp of truth and strict moral 
 discipline have given to the Reformed Churches much 
 of their power and durability ; and these things they 
 
JOHN CALVIN. 7 
 
 owe under God, as far as we can see, to the spiritual 
 wisdom, moral courage, and indomitable perseverance 
 of John Calvin. 
 
 Let us see in what way he was prepared and led 
 ou to this great work. Born at Noyon in Picardy, 
 10th July 1509, John Calvin was trained by a 
 somewhat severe father to habits of strict morality ; 
 and from a mother remarkable for her piety he 
 imbibed a strong attachment to religion in the only 
 form in which he then knew it. His father, though 
 of humble origin and moderate means, held offices 
 in the ecclesiastical courts, which brought him into 
 connection with men of higher position, and enabled 
 him to procure for his son an education equal to the 
 best then possible. He destined him at first for the 
 clerical profession, and secured for him, and for his 
 other two sons, of whom John was the second, 
 benefices even in their minority. John Calvin 
 entered the University of Paris at the age of fourteen, 
 just when the new learning was beginning to be 
 cultivated there under the patronage of Francis I., 
 and into this he threw himself with hearty enthusiasm, 
 much regretting to be drawn away in the course of 
 his study from the Latin classics to scholastic 
 philosophy. In 1527, at his father's direction, he 
 exchanged the study of theology for that of law, and 
 proceeded to Orleans to hear Pierre l'Etoile, the 
 most distinguished professor of that faculty. In this 
 study too he made great proficiency. He pursued it 
 further at Bourges, and here he also acquired the 
 Greek language. After his father's death in 1531, 
 young Calvin returned to Paris, and here, in the 
 
8 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 following year, he made his first literary venture by 
 the publication of a commentary on Seneca's treatise 
 de Glementia, apparently with no other design than 
 simply to gain a name and position in the literary 
 world. Soon after this probably came the decisive 
 change in his religious views which led him to 
 resign his brilliant prospects, and cast in his lot 
 with the persecuted Huguenots. 
 
 Up to this time, his main interest seems to have 
 been in study and literature. His letters in that 
 period are those of an intelligent and active-minded 
 student to his fellows, and he pursued with enthusiasm 
 those new and liberal studies that were regarded 
 with suspicion and dislike by the rigid Eoman 
 Catholics. But though the teaching of Luther had 
 by this time made its way into France, and there 
 had been some memorable trials and executions for 
 so-called heresy during Calvin's student days, we 
 find no reference to these matters in his letters. 
 Though the old form of religion had a strong hold on 
 him, it does not seem to have given any real 
 satisfaction to his soul, and he himself ascribes the 
 change in his course of life to a sudden conversion 
 by divine grace, through which he came to feel in 
 the truths of religion the same keen interest that 
 hitherto only his literary studies had excited in his 
 mind. His cousin, Robert Olivetan, the earliest 
 translator of the Bible into French, had recommended 
 to him the study of Scripture, and it seems to have 
 been when this touched his conscience, and brought 
 him to a sense of sin, that he saw the truth and 
 preciousness of the evangelical teaching of a free 
 
JOHN CALVIN. 9 
 
 forgiveness to be received by faith alone. Thus he 
 was not like Luther, who for long after he was 
 awakened to spiritual life had to struggle and grope 
 his way through darkness and confusion to light and 
 peace. To Calvin the Reformation doctrine probably 
 was or might have been known before he was pre- 
 pared to accept it ; but it seemed foolishness to him, 
 until he was aroused to more serious thought and 
 interest in personal religion. 
 
 After his conversion he continued as before to be 
 a diligent and enthusiastic student, and did not 
 entirely give up his classical studies, though he now 
 gave himself most earnestly to the work of making 
 progress in the knowledge of religion and Scripture. 
 He very soon became known to the adherents of the 
 Reformed religion in Paris, and was sought after for 
 instruction and exhortation in private and in their 
 assemblies for worship. But he was in no haste to 
 come forward in public, or take up the function of 
 a teacher. He sought retirement to prosecute his 
 studies; as he felt both that he himself needed a 
 fuller acquaintance with the truths of the gospel, 
 and that solid Scripture teaching was most urgently 
 wanted by the rising Protestant congregations in 
 France. He was not selfishly indulging the bent of 
 his own mind, but cultivating the talents God had 
 given him, so as to make them most useful for the 
 common spiritual good of the people of God ; and 
 the result proved that he was able to render far 
 more important service to the cause of the Reformed 
 Church, by his quiet prosecution of his biblical and 
 theological studies, than he could have done had he 
 A2 
 
10 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 hastily come forward to a public position. What- 
 ever may have been his aim in life before his con- 
 version, from that time onwards he was devoted 
 heart and soul to the service of religion, as he had 
 now come to understand and feel its power. But 
 the service that he desired to render was in the first 
 place that of a student ; and accordingly we find him 
 for some time seeking nothing so much as peace and 
 quiet to pursue his studies. Obliged to leave Paris 
 in 1533 for his share in the bold evangelical dis- 
 course delivered by his friend Cop as rector of the 
 University, he found shelter at Angouleme, and in 
 various other places, for short periods, until he found 
 it necessary to forsake his native land entirely, and 
 take refuge in Germany. All the while he was 
 meditating and preparing a sketch of the doctrines 
 of Christianity, for the use of his countrymen, of 
 whom he saw that many hungered and thirsted for 
 Christ, though few had any true knowledge of Him. 
 This was the germ of his great doctrinal work, the 
 Institution (i.e. Instruction) of the Christian religion. 
 It had however another and still more practical 
 purpose. The severities that Francis I. and the 
 Papal party in France were exercising against the 
 Huguenots naturally called forth remonstrances from 
 the Protestant princes of Germany ; and as the 
 king desired to be on good terms with them, he 
 sought to silence these remonstrances, by represent- 
 ing that the objects of the persecution were not mere 
 dissenters from the Church of Eome, but fanatics 
 like the Anabaptists, whose views were subversive 
 of all social order and morality. Indignant at such 
 
JOHN CALVIN. 11 
 
 calumnies, and fearing that they would turn aside 
 all sympathy and help from his persecuted brethren, 
 Calvin combined with his design of instructing them 
 in Christian truth that of vindicating them, by giving 
 to the world a true account of what they believed. 
 Accordingly he prefixed to the Institution a noble 
 Dedication to the King of France, in which in a 
 strain of the utmost respect, but of manly Christian 
 independence, he entreats him not to believe the 
 calumnies of their enemies, but to inquire impartially 
 into the matter for himself, and replies to the chief 
 objections made by the Papists against the Keformed 
 religion. Thus this great theological treatise had 
 in two ways a very practical motive and purpose. 
 
 If in his first publication Calvin had aimed at 
 literary distinction, it was not so now : his great 
 desire was to have peaceful opportunity of pro- 
 secuting his studies in private, feeling himself still 
 inadequately prepared for the work of a public teacher 
 of religion. Accordingly he left Basel immediately 
 after the publication of the Institution, and betook 
 himself to the life of a wandering scholar, visiting 
 the court of the French princess Ken6e of Ferrara, 
 which, however, he was very soon obliged to leave. 
 In the course of his journeys he was led in the 
 autumn of 1536 to Geneva, intending only to stay 
 a night there on his way to Strasburg. It was a 
 critical period in the history of that city. A few 
 years before, it had, after long struggles, gained its 
 independence of the Duke of Savoy; and the last 
 bishop, a creature of the Duke's, had ignominiously 
 taken his departure. Previously the city had been 
 
1 2 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 sunk in gross ignorance and superstition ; the clergy 
 possessed neither enlightenment nor earnestness, and 
 the morality of the people was low. But through 
 their alliance with the Protestant canton of Berne 
 in their political struggles, the Eeformed religion 
 had come to their knowledge. Shortly afterwards 
 "William Farel, a French exile like Calvin, who had 
 evangelised nearly all French Switzerland, came to 
 Geneva full of fiery zeal for religion, and after much 
 opposition and suffering had so far succeeded in 
 gaining over the citizens, that in May 1536, the 
 great council, composed of all the burgesses, had 
 solemnly resolved to live according to the evangelical 
 doctrine preached by Farel and his associates, who 
 were now declared ministers of Geneva. But the 
 new church was barely organised, and was still 
 exposed to many dangers, when Farel, hearing of 
 the presence of Calvin, came to his lodging, and 
 solemnly called him in the name of God to remain 
 and take part with him in the work of the ministry. 
 This summons to a work entirely different from all 
 his wishes and plans Calvin at first tried to put 
 away ; and his unwillingness was only overcome by 
 the awful voice of Farel, like one of the old prophets, 
 denouncing God's curse on his beloved studies, if he 
 made these a pretext for refusing to join him in the 
 work of the Lord. Thus unexpectedly and unwill- 
 ingly Calvin was drawn from the quiet life of a 
 student to a career of great public activity and many 
 bitter conflicts. 
 
 Once settled at Geneva Calvin's great aim was that 
 it should be a Christian city, not in name only, but 
 
JOHN CALVIN. 13 
 
 in reality ; and with all his natural inclination to 
 quiet and study, he gave himself most energetically 
 to the rough practical work required for this. He was 
 not one who cared only for sound doctrine ; his zeal 
 was at least equally if not more intense for holy 
 living. The kingdom of God was a phrase often on 
 his lips, as expressing the object he worked for ; and 
 by it he understood the observance of the law of God 
 and the doing of His will in the practical conduct of 
 life. To this end he held that both Church and 
 State ought to co-operate, each acting independently, 
 and using its own powers, the Church employing 
 instruction in God's word, admonition, and discipline 
 to the extent of excommunication ; and the State 
 seconding those efforts, and dealing by pains and 
 penalties with those who proved incorrigible by 
 ecclesiastical censures. His system differed from 
 that of Kome, in allowing independent power and 
 judgment to the State, and not requiring it simply 
 to execute the behests of the Church : but it assumed 
 that the State was authorised to use its power to 
 promote religion, and to suppress vice and irre- 
 ligion as well as crime. This was the fatal error of 
 the scheme ; but it was the error of the age : it was 
 embodied in the laws of Geneva before Calvin came 
 there ; and the attacks of his opponents, in the long 
 and bitter conflict that ensued, were directed not 
 against this, the really vulnerable point of the ad- 
 ministration, but against a part of it that is thoroughly 
 scriptural, and essential to the liberty of the Church, 
 the right of admitting or excluding applicants from 
 the Lord's table. 
 
14 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 The conflict was inevitable by reason of the tur- 
 bulent and licentious character of the Genevese, 
 and the absence of all moral restraint under the 
 Papal rule. Before ever Calvin's coming was thought 
 of, Bonnivard, the prior of St. Victor, had warned 
 them when they were accepting the Reformed religion 
 that they would not be able to endure its moral 
 strictness ; and his words were justified by the event. 
 This local cause of opposition was combined with 
 another, which was more widely spread in its 
 operation. There were in that age of great religious 
 and intellectual awakening many who pushed the 
 principle of freedom asserted in the Reformation to 
 an extreme. They called themselves Spiritual, but 
 held views of doctrine and practice widely varying 
 from those of the Reformers, by whom they were 
 designated Libertines. Their philosophy was of a 
 pantheistic kind, holding one divine spirit to exist 
 in all things : they made light of the historical facts 
 of Christianity; and they asserted an unbridled 
 liberty for Christians to follow their own impulses. 
 This form of opinion seems to have originated in the 
 Netherlands, and thence it spread into France and 
 other lands. It naturally proved attractive to those 
 who found the moral strictness of the discipline that 
 Calvin established at Geneva a galling yoke ; and 
 on the other hand, a republic jealous of its newly 
 gained liberty seemed a favourable place for it to 
 take root. Servetus was one of the exponents of 
 this system, and among Calvin's opponents at 
 Geneva there were some who adopted it ; though 
 many just strove for freedom from what they thought 
 
JOHN CALVIN. 15 
 
 too rigid a constraint. In 1538 the opposition to 
 the discipline of the Church drove Calvin and his 
 colleagues into exile : and on his recall in 1541, which 
 was made necessary by the disastrous consequences 
 of the rule of his opponents, though the ordinances 
 that he proposed were accepted, and for a time 
 observed, fresh and more violent resistance ere long 
 broke out, which led to the most tragical events, and 
 was only overcome by the indomitable firmness, per- 
 severance, and courage of Calvin. No doubt these 
 ordinances would now be thought, even by religious 
 people, intolerably strict, and their penalties rigorous 
 and cruel : but they must be judged by the time. 
 Sumptuary laws were then universally approved, and 
 were as strict in England and France as in Geneva ; 
 and the British penal code, little more than sixty years 
 ago, was even more sanguinary than that of Geneva. 
 In such matters Calvin was not in advance of his age ; 
 and did certainly try to constrain men by force to be 
 moral and religious. Under this head comes the 
 tragedy of Servetus, which it is not necessary either 
 to narrate or to discuss. Though it was approved by 
 all the Churches then, all are now agreed that it was 
 a grievous crime ; not the less deplorable because it 
 was done and approved by men who thought they 
 were doing God service. Neither in this nor in his 
 general conflict with the Libertines, with which it 
 was closely connected, does Calvin appear to have 
 been animated by personal feeling : he strove for 
 the maintenance of a discipline that he held to be 
 essential to the preservation of religion; and he 
 succeeded in transforming a frivolous, factious, and 
 
16 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 reckless people, whose internal disorders and feuds 
 exposed them to continual danger of foreign aggres- 
 sion, into an orderly, sober, and peaceful community, 
 able to maintain its independence for centuries. And 
 though in many respects he was not before his age, 
 in some things, that one would hardly expect, he was 
 more enlightened. Not only did he strenuously pro- 
 mote education, secular and religious, and revive the 
 University of Geneva, as a nursery of learning and 
 science ; but in order to check the evils of pauperism 
 he took steps to introduce the silk manufacture in 
 the city, and thus laid the foundation of its industrial 
 prosperity ; and after the visitation of the plague, he 
 instituted a sanitary system, that greatly promoted 
 the health of the inhabitants. But none of these 
 things was Calvin's main object : that was the moral 
 and religious reformation of the people ; and in that, 
 after many struggles, on the whole he succeeded. 
 He succeeded not because he had force on his side, 
 but because he was willing to bear anything, a second 
 banishment or death itself, rather than be false to 
 his convictions. The turning-point of the long con- 
 flict was the moral victory of Calvin, September 3d, 
 1553, when, though the Libertines had all the power 
 of the State on their side, he calmly and solemnly 
 refused to give the sacrament to those who had 
 been excluded by the Church. For this he fully ex- 
 pected to be again exiled ; but experience had shown 
 how dangerous to the State it was to cast off entirely 
 the discipline of the Reformed religion : and since 
 Calvin would not yield or compromise, he succeeded 
 at length in carrying out his principles. It was a 
 
JOHN CALVIN. 17 
 
 victory not of physical force but of moral courage, 
 by which Calvin ultimately established his in- 
 fluence in Geneva; and it is a mistake to regard 
 him as a sort of despot ruling a theocratic State 
 with absolute sway. He never had any control 
 of the civil power, except what was wielded by 
 advice, and by the influence of his character and 
 life. While therefore he exercised a most remarkable 
 power in forming the character and guiding the 
 course of the Church and city of Geneva, so that it 
 may be said that it is Calvin's spirit that is seen in 
 the subsequent history of the commonwealth, it 
 should not be forgotten, that this power was ob- 
 tained and exercised entirely by moral and spiritual 
 means, by reasoning, conviction, eloquence, and 
 fervour and firmness of character. This shows in its 
 true light the wonderful greatness of his power, and 
 its pure and salutary character. No doubt it was 
 wrong in some things, and committed blunders and 
 crimes, but it was not a despotism either temporal or 
 spiritual, but the guidance of a free people by wisdom 
 and persuasion. Even in his own lifetime there 
 were circulated what he calls ridiculous reports of 
 his extravagant authority and enormous influence, of 
 which he said himself : " As to the power and in- 
 fluence for which they envy me, I wish I could dis- 
 charge this burden upon them; for they estimate 
 my power by the multitude of affairs, and the vast 
 weight of labours with which I am overwhelmed" 
 (Pmf. in Psalmos). 
 
 His labours were indeed enormous. He discharged 
 the duties of professor of theology, on which ho 
 A3 
 
1 8 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 lectured three times a week, of one of the city minis- 
 ters, preaching continually, and exercising the care 
 of souls and oversight of the congregation. His 
 correspondence was most voluminous, as his advice 
 was sought on subjects of all kinds by all the friends 
 of Protestantism throughout Europe : he wrote and 
 published works of the most learned and laborious 
 character, exegetical, didactic, and controversial, which 
 fill ten large folio volumes : and in the midst of all 
 this he was engaged in ecclesiastical conflicts of a 
 most harassing and bitter kind. 
 
 On a general view of Calvin, from a distance as 
 it were, sternness and determination are the most 
 striking features of his character. Even such a view, 
 if at all fair, shows that he was as severe to himself 
 as to others, and that his career was animated by a 
 most disinterested devotion to what he considered, 
 and what on the whole really was, the cause of 
 Christ. But when Ave come to know him nearer 
 from his writings, especially his private letters, and 
 the detailed incidents of his life, we see that he was 
 a man of deep feeling and warm affections, a most 
 faithful and unselfish friend, and sympathising com- 
 forter in sorrow. He lacked indeed the geniality 
 of Luther, or even of Knox, and being destitute of 
 humour, deficient in imagination, and inferior in 
 passion to those other Reformers, he seems cold and 
 hard in comparison with them; but he was less 
 arrogant and overbearing than they sometimes were, 
 and had a genuine humility and large-hearted con- 
 sideration for others, unless when they were enemies 
 to the cause for which he lived. With his colleagues 
 
JOHN CALVIN. 19 
 
 he lived and laboured without a jar or discord ; and 
 he gained not only the veneration, but the warm 
 affection of all who came within his personal influ- 
 ence. This shows that with all his defects and faults, 
 Calvin could not have been that stern and cold- 
 hearted tyrant he is often thought to have been, but 
 one who, on those who knew him best, made the 
 impression of a good and loveable, as well as a great 
 and noble soul. 
 
 In his later years he had more peace at Geneva ; 
 the claims of the consistory in regard to church 
 discipline being finally allowed in 1555; but even 
 after that there were some attempts at reaction, and 
 though less harassed by the attacks of open enemies 
 of the Reformation, he was deeply wounded and 
 grieved by the suspicions and assaults directed 
 against him by the more extreme of the Lutherans for 
 his divergence from their doctrine of the Eucharist. 
 His health too was undermined by a life of such in- 
 cessant study and labour ; and after a painful illness, 
 borne with Christian patience and fortitude, and a 
 touching farewell to the magistrates of the city and 
 his colleagues in the ministry, John Calvin, as the 
 Geneva register expresses it, " went to God on the 
 27th of May 1564." He was buried amid universal 
 lamentation, but without ostentation ; and his grave 
 is unmarked and unknown. 
 
 In estimating his work, we have to consider not 
 only his services to Geneva, but also what he did 
 for France and the Reformed Church in general. 
 
 Though exiled from his native land, Calvin con- 
 tinued strongly attached to it, and laboured indefatig- 
 
20 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 ably for its spiritual interests ; and in his position 
 in Geneva he was able to render manifold and 
 important services to the poor and persecuted pro- 
 fessors of the Reformed religion in France. Besides 
 the great indirect advantage of affording to those 
 driven by persecution into exile a safe place of 
 refuge, by maintaining Geneva as an independent 
 Protestant city, Calvin, as a teacher of theology 
 there, trained up a succession of well-educated 
 ministers to supply the congregations, which during 
 his life at Geneva were rapidly being formed in the 
 towns and country districts of France. In the better 
 times that followed, the Reformed Church of France 
 had colleges of her own of no mean fame ; but in 
 these early days she could not have had an educated 
 ministry, but for the literary and theological teaching 
 afforded to her sons at Geneva. Besides this, many 
 of Calvin's publications were designed for the in- 
 struction and guidance of the French Protestants. 
 Such was the aim of his great work, the Institution ; 
 and besides the several editions of it, he also issued 
 other treatises intended to guard them against the 
 errors of the Libertines, and against the timidity of 
 the so-called Nicodemites, who would outwardly 
 conform to the Roman Catholic religion, thinking it 
 enough to be disciples secretly. He was also their 
 constant counsellor in private by his letters, stimu- 
 lating them to boldness in confessing their faith, 
 encouraging them to patience in affliction, advising 
 them in difficulties, and dissuading them from violent 
 and dangerous courses. Further, he was ever ready 
 to plead for them with others, and to use all his 
 
JOHN CALVIN. 21 
 
 influence to get the Republic of Geneva and the 
 Protestant princes and states of Germany and 
 Switzerland to make representations to the kings 
 of France, on behalf of those who were imprisoned 
 or oppressed for conscience sake. In all these ways, 
 though out of his country, he still laboured heart and 
 soul for it, and did it service of the highest and 
 most valuable kind. He worked at Geneva most 
 immediately for the people of that city, in which he 
 was a pastor and teacher ; and he also embraced in 
 his interest and efforts the Protestant cause through- 
 out Europe ; but he was a true patriot, and always 
 had a special regard for his own countrymen. 
 
 His labours for the common cause of Protestantism 
 are worthy of special notice. It was during his exile 
 from Geneva, most of which time he spent at Stras- 
 burg, ministering to a French congregation there, 
 that he first came into close connection with the 
 German Reformers, and he co-operated with them 
 in the consultations and negotiations then going on 
 with the Emperor and States of Germany. He 
 formed a most close and lasting friendship with 
 many of them, especially Melanchthon, that gentle, 
 loving, though sometimes too timid spirit, delight- 
 ing to lean when wearied with labour and con- 
 flicts on the firmer, but not less loving breast of 
 the Genevan Reformer. Calvin also took a deep 
 interest in the Church of England. He corresponded 
 with Edward VI., the Protector Somerset, and 
 others in this country, and his counsel was ever 
 remarkable for wisdom and moderation. While he 
 urged a strict moral discipline, and the abolition of 
 
22 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 prayers for the dead and other abuses, he raised 
 no question about Episcopacy, and disapproved of 
 Hooper's scruples about the vestments. Indeed in 
 all the general concerns of the Protestant Churches, 
 Calvin's great aim was to secure their unity and 
 peace, letting all minor differences in doctrine and 
 practice be matters of toleration. The differences 
 between the followers of Luther and Zwingli at this 
 period chiefly concerned the doctrine of the sacra- 
 ments. On this subject Calvin, along with the 
 German Eeformed theologians, took up a somewhat 
 intermediate position, and after much labour, he 
 succeeded in coming to a mutual understanding with 
 the Zurich divines, who were followers of Zwingli. 
 He strove also to effect a similar union with the 
 Lutherans, but in vain j the separation widened and 
 became permanent, and thus Protestantism received 
 its most deadly wound. 
 
 Calvin's literary labours would alone have given 
 him a great name. His French writings did for that 
 language what Luther did for German ; and many 
 of his treatises are masterpieces both in substance 
 and in style. But perhaps his greatest and most 
 valuable work of that kind consists of his Commen- 
 taries on Scripture, in which he may be said to have 
 originated the sound method of grammatical and 
 historical exposition. Having been, unlike Luther, 
 from his student years, a disciple of the new learning, 
 he applied its principles to the sacred writings with 
 a perspicuity and skill which have seldom been sur- 
 passed. The following words of Dean Perowne are 
 only one of the latest of a great number of similar 
 
JOHN CALVIN. 23 
 
 testimonies from the most competent and various 
 authorities : — " Calvin may justly be styled the great 
 master of exegesis. He is always careful to ascertain 
 as exactly as possible the whole meaning and scope 
 of the writer on whom he comments. In this 
 respect his critical sagacity is marvellous, and quite 
 unrivalled. He keeps close moreover to the sure 
 ground of historical interpretation, and even in 
 the Messianic Psalms, always sees a first reference 
 to the actual circumstances of the writer. Indeed 
 the view which he constantly takes of such Psalms 
 would undoubtedly expose him to the charge of 
 
 Rationalism, were he now alive He is the 
 
 prince of commentators. He stands foremost among 
 those who, with that true courage which fears God 
 rather than man, has dared to leave the narrow 
 grooves and worn ruts of a conventional theology, 
 and to seek truth only for itself. It is well to study 
 the writings of this great man, if only that we may 
 learn how possible it is to combine soundness in the 
 faith with a method of interpretation, varying even 
 in important particulars from that commonly re- 
 ceived." 1 
 
 The consideration of Calvin's exegetical works leads 
 naturally on to some remarks on his theology ; for 
 that was essentially connected with and grew out 
 of his study of the Word of God. 
 
 As it seems to have been by the reading of Scrip- 
 ture that Calvin was led to Christ, so his theology 
 was very eminently founded on Scripture ; and by far 
 the larger part of his works consists of expositions of 
 1 The Book of Psalms, etc. Preface to 1st Editiou. 
 
24 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 Scripture. He did not receive a theological system 
 by tradition, and then seek to support it by proof 
 from Scripture : nor did he think out a chain of 
 logical deductions, and then seek to verify them by 
 Scripture texts : he sought to let the Bible speak 
 for itself, and he brought to it the sound method of 
 interpretation of the new learning. What he and 
 his associates pleaded for was in the first place that 
 the study of the Bible should be freely allowed to 
 all, and that they should be permitted to speak and 
 act out the convictions they learned from it, even 
 though these should be at variance with the tradi- 
 tional and established religion ; and then, in a com- 
 munity that acknowledged the gospel, he sought 
 that everything should be arranged in accordance 
 with Scripture. To it as the "Word of God he made 
 continual appeal, whether in pleading for toleration 
 for the adherents of the religion in France, or for 
 the establishment and maintenance of its ordinances 
 at Geneva. He never appeals to any other authority, 
 or bases his teaching on any other ground. Yet he 
 was fully conscious of being in the line of the 
 primitive historical faith of the Church, and of the 
 advantage this gave him. He planned the first 
 edition of his Institution on the arrangement of the 
 Apostolic Creed, to which he was inclined to attach 
 perhaps too much importance ; and he gladly 
 welcomed testimonies from the Fathers, especially 
 Augustine, in support of his beliefs. Sometimes 
 indeed he strains the meaning of Augustine to 
 harmonise with his own ; but in general he frankly 
 acknowledges where the Fathers seem to him to have 
 
JOHN CALVIN. 25 
 
 erred, and his agreement with them is not dne to 
 slavish deference, but to the fact that he is explain- 
 ing and defending the same Christian religion that 
 they too had. 
 
 For what gave his doctrinal system its value and 
 success is the fact, that to him theology does not 
 consist, as it did to the Schoolmen, in the rationalis- 
 ing of certain sentences revealed as abstract truths 
 through an infallible Church ; but in the description 
 of Christian religion, as experienced in the heart of 
 a believer. Theology, he says, consists in the know- 
 ledge of God and of ourselves, which are intimately 
 and indissolubly connected. God is to be known as 
 He is adored and trusted by Christians, and therefore 
 both as Creator and as Eedeemer in Christ. Man 
 is to be known as he is in sin and misery through 
 departure from God, and as he receives and enjoys 
 the salvation of Christ. Such is the practical and 
 experimental basis on which Calvin's whole Institu- 
 tion of Christian religion is built up ; and it was 
 because he found an expression of the same religious 
 experience in the Creed, that he could take it as the 
 ground-plan of his work. This gave his whole ex- 
 position of Christian doctrine a more vital and 
 organic unity than any preceding one had been 
 able to show, and this formed a new epoch in the 
 history of theology. Formerly certain great doc- 
 trines had stood forth in isolation, such as Athanasius' 
 doctrine of the Incarnation, Augustine's of original 
 sin and efficacious grace, Anselm's of satisfaction; 
 but their mutual relations were little understood ; 
 and often the edge of each was blunted by association 
 
26 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 with incongruous ideas. Calvin was the first who 
 clearly brought out the living organic connection of 
 each with each, and of all with Christian experience. 
 This was a most important and precious gain for the 
 Church of Christ ; and was both a fruit and vindi- 
 cation of the Reformation. It was Luther's doctrine 
 of justification by free grace through faith alone 
 that made such a construction of theology possible 
 for Calvin ; and on the other hand his Institution 
 showed that that doctrine, so far from being alien 
 to the general principles of Christianity, fitted 
 naturally into an exposition of these principles, and 
 gave a new point and intelligibleness to many other 
 doctrines. The theology of Augustine appeared, freed 
 from those ecclesiastical and sacramental theories 
 that had impaired its consistency, and in the middle 
 ages led to great abuses ; and supported by a method 
 of Scripture interpretation sound and historical 
 widely different from the arbitrary allegorising of 
 Augustine. It has been sometimes thought that 
 Calvin was unduly influenced by Augustine, and 
 studied Scripture through Augustinian spectacles; 
 but his exegesis was entirely different and indepen- 
 dent ; and on many points of doctrine his divergence 
 is decided. That he owed much to Augustine, and 
 esteemed him highly, is true ; but there is no reason 
 to doubt that he was led to adopt Augustine's 
 doctrines of grace by an honest study of Scripture ; 
 and, we may add, by the experience of that grace 
 itself in what he calls his sudden conversion. For 
 as Pascal 1 beautifully says : " The grace of God shall 
 1 Provinciales, Lettre n. 
 
JOHN CALVIN. 27 
 
 never want champions, for by her own almighty 
 energy she makes them for herself. She requires 
 hearts pure and disengaged ; and she herself purifies 
 and disengages them from worldly interests incom- 
 patible with the truths of the gospel." Among those 
 " intrepid disciples of the Doctor of Grace, who, 
 strangers to the entanglements of the world, served 
 God for His own sake," God has raised up none 
 more disinterested than John Calvin. 
 
 The doctrines of the sovereignty of God, and the 
 absolute predestination of all events, in particular 
 of the final destinies of men, which are generally 
 suggested by the term Calvinism, may be and have 
 been reached by different ways, and maintained for 
 different reasons, and by dissimilar arguments. They 
 are on the one hand a logical consequence of certain 
 facts of religious experience and feeling, which lead 
 many minds, though not all who have felt them, to 
 these doctrinal views ; but on the other hand they 
 are connected with certain philosophic theories of 
 the universe, that though debatable have much show 
 of reason, and have been advocated by some of the 
 profoundest thinkers, apart altogether from any 
 religious motives or considerations. The character 
 of any predestinarian system of theology is deter- 
 mined by which of the two different lines of thought 
 leading to the same result predominates in it. 
 
 Nothing is more essential to practical religion 
 than the feeling of entire dependence on God, as our 
 Maker and Preserver, leading as it does to the grate- 
 ful recognition of His goodness in all that we enjoy, 
 to humble submission to His will, and to firm con- 
 
28 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 fidence in His wise and watchful care. But these 
 emotions seem necessarily to imply a conviction, 
 that God is absolutely supreme, that His will has 
 sway over all things, and that nothing can thwart 
 His purpose. If we recognise God's hand in every- 
 thing, thanking Him for all that we enjoy, and 
 bowing to His will in all that we suffer, must we 
 not believe that He appoints and brings about all 
 these things'? if we can trust Him with absolute 
 confidence, must we not be assured that nothing 
 whatever can resist His will? and is not this just 
 the Calvinistic doctrine of the eternal providence of 
 God, by which He orders all things that come to 
 pass 1 Again, what is more essential to Christianity 
 than the conviction that when we have destroyed 
 ourselves by sin, in God is our help found, and that 
 His Holy Spirit moves and enables us to turn from 
 sin to Him, who in Christ is reconciling the world 
 to Himself ? and what feeling is more necessary than 
 that the salvation thus received is not of ourselves, 
 but entirely of the free grace and mercy of God? 
 But if God thus by the inward work of His Spirit 
 calls men out of a world lying in wickedness, not 
 for any goodness or merit in them, but of His own 
 free grace, does not this imply that He has chosen 
 them to salvation by His sovereign good pleasure, 
 out of a mass all alike sinful ? Now this is just the 
 Calvinistic doctrine of election realising itself in 
 effectual calling. These doctrines are dear to the 
 hearts of Christians of the Reformed Church, because 
 they are the natural outcome and expression of the 
 sense of moral depravity and helplessness, and of the 
 
JOHN CALVIN. 29 
 
 renewing and healing power of Christ the Saviour, 
 that find a place in every deep Christian experience. 
 Calvinists have yielded more readily to these infer- 
 ences, because this connection of thought is expressed 
 distinctly enough in many passages of Scripture, such 
 as Eph. i. and Eom. viii., where the gratitude of 
 believers for blessings received, and their confidence 
 for the future, alike lead up to the eternal purpose 
 of God. When they are held on such grounds of 
 Christian experience, the principles of Calvinism 
 have a right to be called doctrines of grace : they 
 give intellectual expression to the soul's conviction 
 of the need and power of the gracious influences of 
 God's Spirit. 
 
 But the same intellectual conclusions have often 
 been reached in another way, by processes of philo- 
 sophical reasoning from facts or principles of nature 
 apart from religion entirely ; and so they form part 
 of a theory of the world that has been maintained 
 in all ages by some of the greatest philosophers. 
 The principle of causality has seemed to many to 
 lead up to the belief of a great First Cause of all 
 things, and from that it has appeared to follow, that 
 every event is necessarily determined by the Deity 
 as the cause of all. By others, again, the absolute 
 perfection of the Being who sustains all things has 
 been thought to imply, that He is the author of all 
 that is or happens. Then, from another point of 
 view, it has been argued, that the observed uniformity 
 of the laws and processes of nature, and the way in 
 which the actions and choices of man can be 
 calculated and reduced to motives, prove that there 
 
30 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 is no freedom in the human will. This sort of 
 system of universal necessity or determination is 
 quite independent of religion, and has been held by 
 many who have been ignorant or opponents of 
 Christianity : but it has also been adopted by many 
 Christian thinkers ; and sometimes such have held 
 the doctrines of predestination and providence, not 
 so much for the sake of their practical religious 
 value, as on account of the philosophical arguments 
 for such a conception of the universe as they imply. 
 This was the way in which they were generally held 
 by the Schoolmen in the middle ages ; when theology 
 was treated as a speculative science, and divorced 
 from its connection with living Christianity ; and a 
 similar scholastic spirit has been shown by some 
 Calvinists since the Reformation. Indeed few have 
 been able to resist the temptation to defend their 
 theology by philosophic arguments, without always 
 considering whether the philosophy from which these 
 were borrowed was religious in its principles. Such 
 arguments have generally, in the long-run, done as 
 much harm as good ; and when it is not only 
 incidental confirmation, but the main basis of the 
 doctrine that has been taken from philosophy, the 
 result is, that for a reflection of religious experience 
 and feeling, there has been substituted a speculative 
 system, that is at bottom fatalistic or pantheistic in 
 its character. 
 
 With Calvin it was pre-eminently a religious 
 interest that made him so strenuous a defender 
 of predestination and its cognate doctrines. He 
 maintained them, because to his logical and system- 
 
JOHN CALVIN. 31 
 
 atic mind they appeared the necessary consequences 
 of the fact of God's gracious work in the conversion 
 of the soul, without which there would be no hope for 
 sinners. In a later age, most of the Lutherans, and 
 in England Wesley and his followers, held most 
 earnestly the agency of the Spirit in conversion, 
 without feeling obliged to trace this up to an 
 absolute predestination of God. But that form of 
 doctrine had not appeared in the sixteenth century, 
 and Calvin was not the man to originate it. Those 
 who ascribed conversion to a divine agency had 
 never scrupled to recognise divine sovereignty as 
 the source of it ; while many of the Schoolmen had 
 maintained predestination, even though they but 
 imperfectly admitted the grace of God in the actual 
 salvation of men. But with Calvin the doctrine of 
 the divine purposes rests on properly religious, as 
 distinct from metaphysical, grounds. This appears 
 from the place it occupies in his Institution. It is 
 not put at the outset, as a general abstract principle 
 from which other doctrines are to be deduced, or by 
 which they are to be restricted and limited ; it does 
 not come into consideration till after the exposition 
 of the redemption of Christ and the way of receiving 
 the benefits of that redemption, at the very end of 
 the third of the four books into which the work, in 
 its completed form, is divided. It is not a thought 
 that rules and governs the whole system ; but rather 
 a final result, to which we are led, after contemplating 
 the redemption that God has wrought for us by His 
 Son, and applies to us by His Spirit. The same 
 thing appears from the way in which it is treated in 
 
32 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 the Geneva Catechism. It was to him, as he says 
 in one of his controversial tracts, " the doctrine which 
 shows the fountain of our salvation, and is the 
 only foundation of pious and holy humility ;" and on 
 these grounds it was dear to him. 
 
 Calvin's special characteristic as a theologian did 
 not lie in his holding the doctrines of absolute pre- 
 destination and efficacious grace, for these he had in 
 common with all the Beformers, except Melanchthon 
 in his later years ; nor in the energy and vehemence 
 with which he asserted them, for in these he was 
 surpassed by Luther and Zwingli ; but in the logical 
 consistency with which he carried them out to 
 their issues. These doctrines do undoubtedly, when 
 pursued to their consequences, lead to conclusions 
 that seem very hard and mysterious, and that have 
 caused many minds to recoil from what has such 
 results. If conversion is entirely the work of God, 
 and effected by a power that is supernatural and 
 divine, then it should seem that God can produce it 
 in any case ; and as experience and Scripture alike 
 testify that all men are not converted, it follows that 
 in the case of those who are not saved, the reason of 
 this is that God has not seen fit to put forth that 
 gracious power that could have saved them as well 
 as others. 
 
 There is indeed no real ground for the charge 
 brought against Calvinism in Calvin's own daj^, that 
 it makes God the author of sin, and the way in 
 which he treats that charge as a baseless and foolish 
 calumny shows that he saw clearly in his own mind 
 how to avoid any such inference. His doctrine of 
 
JOHN CALVIN. 33 
 
 predestination did not rest on any general theory of 
 the absolute causality of God in all things, but on 
 the religious experience of the conversion of men 
 from sin to God. The agency of the Spirit of God 
 in this great moral change, and the exclusion of all 
 merit or boasting on the part of man, is what Calvin 
 is anxious to maintain. And in so far as the general 
 providence of God is concerned, the permission and 
 overruling of sin to good ends is all that is required 
 in the interest of that absolute reliance on God which 
 is the practical use of the doctrine of providence. 
 But Calvin's system is undoubtedly exposed to 
 difficulties on another side. It exalts the free grace 
 and infinite love of God more than any other theology; 
 but it views these as having for their objects only 
 those who are actually saved, being chosen and fore- 
 ordained by God for that blessed end. It represents 
 Him as withholding from others those secret influences 
 of His grace without which they cannot be converted 
 and saved ; and though it does not deny the general 
 love of God to all men, regards it as very inferior to the 
 special love that He has for His own chosen people. 
 The charges commonly made against Calvinism of 
 representing God as unjust or cruel can be shown 
 to be quite unfounded; since the salvation of any 
 sinner at all is of God's free grace, and Calvinists do 
 not regard God as doing less for all men than their 
 opponents, but as doing infinitely more for the elect 
 than any other system can allow. But while the 
 objections to this theology on the ground of the 
 justice of God are based on misapprehensions, it 
 must be admitted that it is not so easy for Calvinism 
 
34 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 to do justice to those large revelations of the love of 
 God to the whole world that are given in Scripture. 
 This difficulty does not seem to have been much 
 felt in Calvin's day, perhaps because in that com- 
 paratively hard and stern age the idea of love to the 
 guilty and impenitent had not taken possession of 
 men's minds. But this truly Christian feeling came 
 afterwards into action, and led in the next century 
 to modifications of Calvinism in the direction 
 of universal redemption, and to the evangelical 
 Arminian theology of the later Lutherans and 
 Wesleyans. These forms of doctrine were unknown 
 to Calvin, who was only confronted with an assertion 
 of free-will in a Pelagian and legalistic spirit ; but 
 it is worthy of observation that he practically met 
 the difficulty by his broad general statements of 
 the gospel offer, and an exceedingly free and un- 
 hampered exposition of those passages of Scripture 
 where the universal love of God is declared. He 
 did not, like some of his followers, try to narrow 
 or explain them away, but gave them their natural 
 meaning in spite of the difficulty of fitting them into 
 his system. He always acknowledges that there are 
 profound mysteries in God's ways, which we cannot 
 fathom ; and so far from being a daring speculator, 
 prying into the secrets of the divine government, he 
 frequently inculcates the duty of being content to 
 be ignorant of what God has not been pleased to 
 reveal. 
 
 Whether something more than this should not be 
 done, and whether any of the later systems of 
 theology affords a fuller exhibition of Christian truth, 
 
JOHN CALVIN. 35 
 
 especially of the love of God, than that of Calvin, is 
 too great a question to be discussed here. Many, 
 perhaps most modern evangelical theologians, think 
 that a better theology is attainable, by giving up the 
 doctrine of invincible grace ; but it may be doubted 
 whether this does really remove the difficulty, and 
 whether it is not better to rest content with the 
 recognition of a mystery which we cannot fathom. 
 The theology of Calvin is encompassed with many 
 and great difficulties : we do not deny that ; but we 
 believe that they are difficulties that press against 
 the Bible and Christianity itself, nay, against the 
 facts of the world's history; and that no theology 
 that is at all biblical and true to experience can 
 entirely escape them. We believe however also, 
 that notwithstanding these difficulties, we can retain 
 our faith in God as love, believing where we cannot 
 prove. So much was Calvin of this spirit, that he 
 regards the absence of it as something strange. In 
 one of his letters he says of Bolsec : " Yet such is this 
 Jerome, that he will not admit that God does any- 
 thing justly, unless he has palpable evidence of it." 
 With such a frame of mind, no man can be a 
 Calvinist : but it was alien from Calvin's childlike 
 trust in God's justice and love amid all the mysteries 
 of His providence. Calvinism does not evade the 
 dark and dreadful problem of the existence of sin 
 and misery in the creation of Almighty God, but 
 frankly recognises it as insoluble. It has indeed 
 often been held by men of cold and narrow hearts, 
 who have suffered the doctrines of their system to 
 limit and lower their thoughts of God; but in its 
 
36 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 genuine spirit, and as taught by Calvin himself, it is 
 the theology of men who have such a firm faith in 
 the love of God that they believe it, notwithstanding 
 all appearances to the contrary ■ and are assured that 
 though " clouds and darkness are round about him, 
 justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne, 
 mercy and truth go before his face." 
 
JOHN KNOX. 
 
 By the Rev. Robert W. Barbour, M.A. 
 
 MINISTER OF THE FREE CHURCH, CULTS, ABERDEENSHIRE. 
 
JOHN KNOX. 
 
 JOHN KNOX was born at the village of Gifford, 
 or at Giffordgate in the town of Haddington, 
 East Lothian, in the year 1505. He was in the 
 cradle when Luther, at the age of twenty-one, 
 abandoned his career as a bachelor of laws, and 
 hid himself and his agony of heart within the walls 
 of the Augustinian Monastery at Erfurt. He was 
 two years old when Melanchthon, a boy of ten, 
 heard his dying father's prophecy of the great storms 
 which were to shake the world, and his prayer that 
 the thought of God might guide Philip through them. 
 He was in his fifth, year when Calvin was born. 
 
 Like many of his country's noblest sons he came 
 of simple, though honourable, parentage. True 
 natives of Scotland that they were, his father and 
 mother cherished 
 
 " The noble wish . . . 
 To give their child a better bringing up 
 Than his had been, or hers. " 
 
 The grammar-school, the college, the church — these 
 were their plans for their child, as they have so often 
 been of other Scottish parents since. Haddington, 
 
40 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 famous then for the study, gave the boy Latin — an 
 indispensable acquirement for the priest's office. He 
 knew enough of it in later years to take a learned 
 delight in the twenty-nine metres of Buchanan's 
 psalms, to return the correspondence of that flower of 
 latinity, John Calvin, to expose a sophist's argument, 
 or to parry, rapier-fashion, a courtier's sneer. Glas- 
 gow enrolled him as a student in his eighteenth year 
 (1522). The arts in those days were Aristotle ; whose 
 Bhetoric Knox knew, though he had little time to 
 use it, but whose Logic he never forgot to the end. 
 Divinity was Aquinas and the Canon Law. John 
 Major, principal Eegent of the university, the one 
 living teacher who left an indelible mark on Knox's 
 mind, taught all three : on the last of them he had 
 light beyond his age. Those principles of popular 
 sovereignty in Church and State which he had learned 
 and professed at Paris passed from him to Knox 
 and Buchanan, and through them have become the 
 common heritage of Scotsmen. The languages of 
 the Eenaissance were as yet unknown in Scotland ; 
 for with us the Revival of Letters was the daughter 
 of the Reformation. Knox, with his great gift ol 
 speech, had a natural love of languages. Greek came 
 to him, twenty years later, with the acquaintance ol 
 Wishart, a man of as exquisite learning as character ; 
 Hebrew with Calvin's, ten years later still ; both of 
 them in time for Knox to take his seat at the table 
 of the Genevan revisers. French he learned first 
 when France was his prison ; he preached in it 
 afterwards, when France became his place of exile. 
 Italian he also knew. But, true to his age and 
 
JOHN KNOX. 41 
 
 vocation, he trusted most in his mother-tongue, 
 finding room in it for subtle argument, grim humour, 
 and weighty eloquence. His writing of it is like 
 speaking, for clearness and force. He had his share 
 in rendering the Scriptures into it, and took pleasure 
 in hearing it well handled. Along with his hearer, 
 Lyndsay, and the other Reformers, he helped to make 
 it the language of our literature as well as of our 
 religion. 
 
 He left college, for reasons unknown to us, with- 
 out taking his degree. Though he completed his 
 course for the priesthood, he never exercised it, unless 
 in the half-lay, half-clerical capacity of notary, or 
 ecclesiastical law-clerk. By this and by private 
 teaching he probably supported himself for twenty 
 years (c. 1524-1544). He is a man in his full prime 
 before any one hears of him, before ever he utters a 
 word or writes a line. Such a silence preceded such 
 speech. It is the silence of the mountain-tarn, where 
 the mist-fed waters are gathering and mantling, 
 till they break a new mouth. It is the stillness of 
 spring-fields, where the sap-nursed seeds grow to 
 bursting, and burst into multiplied growth. Two 
 things fill this silent time. 
 
 These were days, first of all, of severe study. To 
 them we must look for that sustained volume of 
 solid mental strength which bore him on through a 
 life of unexampled activity ; to them, for that high 
 pressure of intellectual power which supplied here- 
 after such a " copious flow of speech/' How he 
 gained access to books we cannot tell. Major may 
 have pointed him to the Latins; the Greeks he 
 
42 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 must have known at first through translations. His 
 works on the Resjiment of Women and on Pre- 
 destination, with other references elsewhere, bear 
 witness to a wide and well-mastered reading. He has 
 a student's hunger after originals. Mary thought 
 more might have been made of him had he not been 
 so " always at his book." What habits of diligent, 
 thorough, and intelligent work he had formed, may 
 be learned from his after-life. Careful and orderly 
 reading and re-reading j painstaking research ; pro- 
 secution of study in the midst of strenuous labours : 
 these are marks of the true student. Quiet time to 
 feed the mind was a constant craving with him. 
 His French prison, like Bunyan's, became a study; 
 and during the busiest years of his ministry, part of 
 each day was devoted to the desk, although he never 
 wrote a sermon beforehand. 
 
 Perhaps it was in the library of the abbey at 
 Haddington that he laid his hands on the works of 
 one of the Latin fathers. The times did not smile 
 upon private research. About the time when Knox 
 was leaving college (1525) Acts were passed against 
 the bringing in or harbouring of foreign books. 
 But a young Scots nobleman, Patrick Hamilton, 
 Knox's senior by about a year, had been smitten 
 with them abroad, in 1526, and brought the infection 
 home with him. In two short years Knox heard 
 that he had gone into the flames at St. Andrews. 
 By the lurid glow that shot over broad Scotland from 
 the stake there, and at Stirling, and here at Green- 
 side and on the Castle-hill, the student read his 
 Ausrusline with a new interest. The best converts 
 
JOHN KNOX. 43 
 
 to the reformed cause were made in those ten years 
 of killing-time. The forbidden writings of Luther 
 never reached Knox that we know of. In common 
 with Luther, he learned directly of Augustine and 
 Paul. 
 
 But amid all this painstaking investigation and 
 intellectual stir, came a still small voice, and with it a 
 great and creative spiritual change. Out of a copy of 
 Tyndale's New Testament perhaps, brought over the 
 border under a merchant's cloak or bound up in the 
 heart of bales of foreign merchandise, or out of the 
 Vulgate, Knox read for himself the seventeenth 
 chapter of John, and " cast " thereon " his first 
 anchor." For him the one Priest's intercession 
 availed; he accepted for himself the one Priest's 
 sacrifice. With that there was an end to all belief 
 in other sacrifices, whether of one's own merit or of 
 the mass ; in other intercessions, whether of virgin, 
 saint, or angel. 
 
 It was Augustine, I think there can be no doubt, 
 who first led Knox to the seventeenth of John. 
 His observations on John xvii. 23, are just 
 Augustine's. Through that passage, and the first two 
 chapters of the Ephesians, he found rest in the 
 doctrine of Divine electing love. For Knox predes- 
 tination was no cold, cut-and-dry dogma. It came 
 to him all full of life and meaning from the Person 
 of Christ. " God hath predestinated me " meant 
 "He hath made me dear by that Beloved;" "as 
 God hath loved Him," thus he argues, " so hath He 
 loved me, for I am one with Him." This truth 
 laid hold of him by a threefold cord. He felt it to 
 
44 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 be the one immovable ground for faith, the most 
 powerful motive to a new and humble life, the 
 greatest incentive to gratitude and love. From what 
 source, he asked himself, did this proceed, this light 
 he had received in the midst of such darkness, this 
 sanctification in the midst of so much wickedness 1 
 Not from nature, conscience answered. Nature had 
 made him a child of wrath, even as others. Not 
 from education, reason, or his own study, experience 
 replied. For many had been nursed in virtue, and 
 yet become most filthy in life ; and many had long 
 remained without all virtuous education, and yet in 
 the end attained to God's favour. The only source 
 which remained was "that infinite benefit which ex- 
 ceedeth all measure," of "free grace and mere mercy." 
 What " singular comfort " came with " that solemn 
 prayer" Knox can scarcely tell. Its "virtue," he 
 feels, "is perpetual," and at that time and at all 
 times " it obtains mercy for him in the presence of 
 the Father's throne." He can but break out at the re- 
 membrance of it in this fashion : "Oh that our hearts 
 could without contradiction embrace these words : 
 for then with humility should we prostrate ourselves 
 before our God, and with unfeigned tears give 
 thanks for his mercy !" Those who have imagination 
 may seek access to the student's closet or the tutor's 
 room, which first witnessed these words embraced, 
 that worshipper prostrate, those tears falling, those 
 thanks outpoured. There he will see more than 
 the conversion of an individual. He will witness the 
 fresh communication of a truth which was to revolu- 
 tionise, and still vivifies, the religion of our land. 
 
JOHN KNOX. 45 
 
 This conversion of Knox is well worthy of 
 attention. What led a man of his years and in his 
 situation to profess thereformed faith and embrace 
 the reformed cause 1 ^Not youth with its fondness for 
 new things ; he is past middle life, when the final 
 step is taken. Not impatience of so-called priestly 
 vows; for ten years at least hereafter he is still 
 an unmarried man. Not ambition; a career lay 
 open to him as a man of learning ; the prizes 
 which Protestantism offered were — fagots and a 
 stake. Not foreign influence or upbringing ; he is 
 home-bred and educated at home. 
 
 When, towards the close of these twenty years 
 of silence, Knox again becomes distinctly visible, 
 he is still a teacher, tutor, in the Scottish sense of 
 the word, which is student and teacher in one. His 
 pupils are two young Douglases of Longniddry, and 
 young Cockburn of Ormiston. The death of James V. 
 (1542) has arrested the persecutions; and under the 
 regency of Arran the Estates have lately met in 
 Parliament and resolved that every one who will 
 may read his Bible. So the lads' exercises include a 
 public Bible-reading, in which household and villagers 
 begin to join. The boys share what the master 
 is learning. Knox takes them where he himself 
 has been, to the Gospel of John. These were the 
 days when the whole Scripture became his very life- 
 blood. Is there not an echo of them in Knox's 
 " Prayer to be said of the Child before he study his 
 lesson 1" 
 
 It was the appearance of Wishart in the county 
 (1546) which brought Knox to decision. The gentle 
 
46 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 preacher was a guest at Longniddry and Ormiston. 
 His sermons told on the tutor as well as on the 
 lairds. Knox was wonderfully drawn toward him, 
 and was debtor to him for more than Greek. He 
 " awaited upon him carefully" at all his services, 
 and saw in him what a power this public preaching 
 of the Word was to be. The priest and notary 
 became henceforth the "professor of the true 
 evangel," " the simple (i.e. common) soldier " of Jesus 
 Christ. When dangers thicken, all the old martial 
 spirit of his yeomen ancestors is up in him, and he 
 bears a sword before his threatened friend. On the 
 night of betrayal Wishart, like Another, bade his 
 attendant put up his weapon into its place. Let 
 Knox go back " to his bairns." His time is not yet 
 come. The man will be more than a tutor, thinks 
 Wishart, before he dies. 
 
 Knox obeyed. He did not lift the sword against 
 Wishart's murderer, though he thought it well it 
 was lifted. But Beatoun's successor at once marked 
 out Wishart's friend. From this hour to the end 
 Knox was in deaths oft. The siege, the galleys, 
 the French prisons, English Mary's spies, the plots 
 and capital sentence of the Scottish bishops, and 
 again of the Regent, Mary of Guise, the "twelve 
 loaded haquebuts " of the Archbishop, the price set 
 on his head, the threats of Queen Mary before her 
 coming, his defencelessness in her presence, the 
 charge of treason, Kircaldy's vow to have his life, 
 the assassin's bullet : all these and other terrors were 
 in store, but " none of these things moved him." 
 
 Knox's conspicuous connection with the martyr 
 
JOHN KNOX. 47 
 
 unexpectedly led to his call to be Wishart's successor. 
 He was forced to take refuge in the castle of St. 
 Andrews (April 10, 1547), where the call came. 
 The earliest reformed congregation — priests, states- 
 men, courtiers, common people, refugees from the 
 persecuting clergy, — are met as brethren in Christ's 
 name. John Knox sits with the rest among his pupils. 
 From the public exercises of the lads, the worshippers 
 think they have discerned no common gift in the 
 tutor. Already Rough, a man of moderate learning, 
 whom they have made minister, has enough to do to 
 fill the pulpit, not to speak of meeting the Romanists 
 of the College in debate. He too has recognised 
 Knox's singular ability, and would it were put forth 
 " to profit withal." In his sermon to-day he takes 
 up the Reformed, the New Testament ground on this 
 subject. In the body of believers, holding priesthood 
 directly of the Head, resides the sole fountain of 
 church power. This body corporate has a right 
 over the gifts of its members. "In the name of 
 God, and of His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the name 
 of all who presently call him," Rough offers John 
 Knox " the public office and charge of preaching," 
 and enjoins on him that he "refuse not this holy 
 vocation, even as he looks to avoid God's heavy 
 displeasure, and desires that He shall multiply His 
 graces unto him." Turning to the congregation, he 
 says, " Was not this your charge unto me, and do ye 
 not approve this vocation]" They all answered, 
 " It was ; and we approve it." " Whereat the said 
 John, abashed, burst forth in most abundant tears, and 
 withdrew him to his chamber, . . . neither had 
 
48 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 the pleasure to accompany any man, many days 
 together." 
 
 This fineness of feeling is part of him, as of every 
 chivalrous nature. It comes out strongly in his 
 courtship, in his bearing towards his bride and her 
 mother, towards his boys, and, in spite of all that 
 has been said, towards his queen. It helps, too, to 
 explain the close attachment men formed for him, 
 and the warm language they held of him ; why 
 Bishop Bale, his opponent at Frankfort, addresses 
 him as "brother best-beloved;" why Calvin's calm 
 style cannot withhold the expression "heartily- 
 cherished ;" why Beza speaks of "that most perfect 
 sympathy between us;" why strong men in the 
 church at Geneva weep when he is taken from them ; 
 why the gentlemen of the West protest " his death 
 and life are as dear to them as their own;" and 
 citizens of sober Edinburgh will not sit still in their 
 houses, while the house in High Street stands 
 empty. 
 
 Feeling thus keenly, with fear and trembling, 
 Knox yet accepted the call. It was a call, not to 
 that charge only, but to be " the restorer of the Gospel 
 of God in Scotland." He presented himself in the 
 pulpit upon an early Sabbath to " prove the Roman 
 Church this day degenerate in life, doctrine, and 
 laws." His hearer, Lyndsay, whose works are a 
 mirror of Scottish morals before the Reformation, 
 has versed the sermon for us in his " fifth " or 
 "papal monarchy." Among the first positive truths 
 Knox proclaimed were, the sole Headship of Christ 
 over His Church, the oneness of the office of the 
 
JOHN KNOX. 49. 
 
 bishop with that of the preacher, and the supreme 
 authority of Scripture as the rule of worship 
 
 Knox always looked back to this event as to his 
 chief title to the ministry. Once and again he 
 obeyed a similar call, at Frankfort, at Geneva, at 
 Dieppe, and in Scotland. Of an ordination without 
 jurisdiction he knew nothing; one's call to work 
 could only come when there was a field before one. 
 But once called by the church, he was henceforth 
 the church's servant, her minister. He could find 
 no place for the office of diocesan bishop in 
 Scripture, and no place for it therefore in the church. 
 The office of superintendent, wise as he thought it, 
 and needful, in the circumstances of the country, 
 he never filled. Your Town Council's name for 
 him : " John Knox, minister," was enough. After 
 having been settled in five kingdoms, he could say : 
 "I never left any, except at their own command- 
 ment." 
 
 Like that of every true workman, the life of Knox 
 went upon a well-considered plan. The Gospel had 
 been intrusted to him : God had put him into the 
 ministry. "Considering myself," he says of this 
 time, " called of my God to instruct the ignorant, 
 comfort the sorrowful, confirm the weak, and rebuke 
 the proud, by tongue and lively voice, I decreed to 
 contain myself within the bounds of that vocation." 
 It became his ruling passion to propagate the 
 reformed doctrine. He " desired none other armour 
 but God's holy Word, and the liberty of his tongue." 
 Henceforward his pulpit was his world : he lived 
 for his pulpit. Even the galley was a place to preach 
 
50 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 from. When his lips were sealed he spoke, like 
 Paul, by letter. Otherwise, he never wrote. We 
 have but one sermon from his hand, and that was 
 recalled perforce from memory. He preached in 
 England for five years, Sabbath and week day, 
 frequently every day, and for days after it was penal 
 to do so. In exile he thirsts for this : " For a few 
 sermons . . . to be made in England, my heart 
 could be content to suffer more than nature were 
 able to sustain." At Frankfort, let who will give 
 the sacraments, he wishes to preach. Day and night 
 at Edinburgh the diets succeed each other; in 
 Angus they are held daily. Heretofore there had 
 been a famine of the Word of God in these islands, 
 as elsewhere; the Eeformation was the return of 
 plenty. Abroad, too, Knox preached : in France, at 
 Kochelle and Dieppe; in Switzerland, at Geneva. 
 He re-entered the pulpit of St. Andrews, according 
 to his sure hope, and in two months evangelised 
 Scotland south of the Grampians. Five sermons a 
 week was his rule for the first two years of his 
 ministry in St. Giles. 
 
 The Scriptures were his authorities : his com- 
 mentaries were the times. On the one hand, the 
 times "ratified and confirmed the truth of God's 
 Word." " If there had never been testimonial of the 
 undoubted truth thereof before these our ages," he 
 asks, "may not such things as we see daily come to 
 pass, prove the verity thereof?" On the other hand, 
 Scripture interpreted the times. Hence Knox is 
 never at a loss for a text. He must have preached 
 and lectured through the better part of both Testa- 
 
JOHN KNOX. 51 
 
 merits in the course of his ministry. At St. 
 Andrews, in 1547, before the friends and foes of 
 the Reformation, he is in Daniel and John ; at 
 London in 1553, before the proud and crafty coun- 
 sellors of Edward VI., in John ; at Frankfort, in 
 1555, before the disturbers of religious peace, in 
 Genesis ; at St. Andrews again, in June 1559, before 
 the reforming lords, in John ; at Stirling, in 
 November, before the discouraged congregation, in 
 the Psalms; at Edinburgh, in 1560, before the 
 Parliament met to ratify the Reformed faith, in 
 Haggai; at Edinburgh, in 1555, before the king, 
 in Isaiah; at St. Andre ws again, in 1571, before his 
 enemies, in Daniel. He closes his ministry at 
 Edinburgh — an old purpose — by lecturing through 
 the Passion. His last sermon was to have been on 
 the Resurrection. 
 
 In private, too, the Scriptures fill the largest place. 
 Each day he reads some part of the Old and New 
 Testament. The Psalter is overtaken every month. 
 His letters are redolent of biblical reference : often 
 they have a text for heading, or a prayer. In 
 debate, his power of quotation is as swift as it is 
 sure. To the latest hour he grew in understanding 
 and enjoyment of the Word. His last anchor was 
 cast, like his first, on the high-priestly prayer. 
 
 This it was which made him so staunch a champion 
 of civil liberty. He "only craves audience," but 
 audience he must have. " Take from us the liberty 
 of Assemblies, and take from us the Gospel." Hence 
 the jealousy with which he guarded the independence 
 of the pulpit from the encroachment as well of the 
 
52 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 university, as of the state. At the same time he 
 had no greater joy than to hear of able and faithful 
 preaching, in which lay his hope for church and 
 land after him. 
 
 His ministry of five-and-twenty years was now 
 begun ; but after some twelve weeks of preaching, 
 on July 31, 1547, he and his friends had to 
 surrender to the French fleet, and were carried to 
 France, where, instead of the freedom promised 
 them, they found the dungeons and the galleys. 
 Scotland had not yet had enough of the priests and 
 Guises. Twelve years of journeymanship thus 
 intervened for Knox, followed by about as many 
 of full work. 
 
 The first two years he is chained at the oar. On 
 the Loire that winter, thanks to his courage, " the 
 whole Scottishmen " sit with their caps on, while 
 mass is said and Salve Regina sung. The "glorious 
 painted lady" troubles them but once. She is 
 " thrust to his face " and " put betwixt his hands." 
 "Advisedly" he looks about, then "casts the idol 
 in the river," saying, " Let our Lady save herself, she 
 is light enough ; let her learn to swim." Next 
 summer they are lying idle off Broughty. The 
 French fleet can make nothing of the Castle. 
 Knox's oar is still ; the hands of the rower are hot 
 with lever; his friends have given up hope. One 
 of them points to St. Andrews, to see if the dying 
 man knows where he is. In an instant the old fire 
 rekindles. "Yes, I know it well; for I see the 
 steeple of that place where God first in public 
 opened my mouth to His glory, and I am fully 
 
JOHN KNOX. 53 
 
 persuaded, how weak that ever I now appear, that 
 I shall not depart this life, till that my tongue shall 
 glorify His godly name in that same place." His 
 fevered hand writes that his prayer will be heard ; 
 and he recovers. The rough galley-captain is struck ; 
 and when he too is at his wits' end, comes to entreat 
 the prisoner's prayers for his ship. All round Scot- 
 land he tugs at hid stubborn task, a poor galley- 
 slave, going who knows and who cares where. In 
 another galley sports a little maid, born to beauty, 
 wealth, and royalty, the eyes of three kingdoms on 
 her. Which of the two beat out the longer and the 
 better measure for the land 1 
 
 Here began Knox's life-long thorn in the flesh. 
 With Paul he felt that " the messenger of Satan " 
 could but "buffet" him, "sting him" but "upon 
 the heel." But it was a sharp sting. He had the 
 sentence of death in himself, that he should not 
 trust in himself, but in God, which raiseth the dead. 
 He " drank, before the maturity of age, the bitter 
 cup of corporal death, that thereby he might receive 
 medicine and cure from all infirmity." " Trouble 
 and fear " were " very spurs to prayer." They drew 
 forth that Treatise on Prayer, or " earnest and 
 familiar talking with God," which breathes the 
 "glory-in-suffering" of the Second Corinthians. 
 He acted it out to the end ; though he can 
 never quite forgive the " wicked carcass," as he 
 grimly calls it. In England these are his constant 
 experiences: "daily I find my body decay;" "a 
 most dolorous night ;" "I am ... of mind . . . 
 that my pain shall have no end in this life." At 
 c 
 
54 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 Geneva he is so ill that his wife must write for him. 
 In Scotland again : " the fevers have vexed me ;" 
 and again, "torturing fever." He is taken "from 
 bed" in the day-time to appear before the Privy 
 Council. Daring his last seven years, his desires 
 for release are as pathetic as his labours for the 
 church are heroic. The light burned ever in an 
 earthen vessel. " A frail and feeble bit of a body," 
 a friend calls it ; though when it spoke the words 
 were weighty and powerful. "A poor dried-np 
 little man," you would say of him, as Luther said 
 of Melanchthon, when he was not speaking; or 
 as Antenor of Ulysses, "You might think little 
 enough of him when he was silent ; but when he 
 spoke, it was a perfect snowstorm." Though the 
 knife and the bullet missed him, Knox did not want 
 for martyrdoms. 
 
 On his release, ten years of wandering-time still 
 lay before him. England and Switzerland divided 
 them. The Reformation had taken its full form in 
 both countries, ere ours was fully begun. Knox 
 knew and learned much of both ; but of both he was 
 independent. Many of the Reformers came to the 
 light, and had their religious views formed, abroad. 
 Knox received his great impulse, and had his first 
 call to work, before ever he left home. 
 
 At first he laboured within sight of his own land. 
 So powerful was the rumour of those few weeks' 
 preaching at St. Andrews, that Edward's English 
 Council at once welcomed him, and sent him to 
 preach in the least reformed and least loyal part ot 
 the kingdom. Two years (1549-51) Berwick hoard 
 
JOHN KNOX. 55 
 
 him, and the northern border. Among his hearers 
 was his future wife. At Newcastle he defended his 
 thesis that the mass is idolatry, before the clergy and 
 council of the North. In England, too, he might 
 have remained. The see of Rochester was offered 
 him. But more than preacher in the present state 
 of the English Church Knox could not be. King's 
 preacher, however, they made him. As royal chap- 
 lain he preached over England, North and South, 
 for two years. The evangelist had more influence 
 than the prelate. Cranmer consulted him on the 
 Prayer-book and the Articles. He pleaded and 
 preached as boldly before the English King and 
 Council as ever he did in Scotland. To him are due 
 those words in the English communion-service which 
 guard the spiritual nature of the ordinance. In 
 these days, too, he was the first to restore the supper- 
 table to the place in the church which it retains 
 among us to this day. 
 
 His English residence taught Knox the need for 
 thoroughness in reforming the church. He saw at 
 once the danger which lay in leaving anything, 
 either of its government or worship, which encouraged 
 or shielded radical misconceptions as to the doctrines 
 of grace. Above all, in the English Reformers he 
 beheld men, his equals in earnestness and his allies 
 in doctrine, constantly counterworked in their efforts 
 by the fact that the Crown had been allowed to 
 become the pivot upon which the religious future 
 of the country was to turn. The interests of 
 religion must walk at the wheels of the state. 
 
 He foresaw the cloud which hung over England 
 
56 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 on Edward's death. He read the English Mary's 
 character from the first, as truly as that of the other 
 two ; but while he warned London from the pulpit 
 of the coming storm, he did not instantly run for 
 shelter. He continued throughout the year to stir up 
 the people all over the land to prayer and loyalty. 
 Attempts were made to entrap him. Only his 
 friends' compulsion led him to quit the country. To 
 his other sorrows at the time was added this, that 
 Marjory Bowes, his betrothed, must remain behind. 
 
 Then follow days of wandering in France and 
 Switzerland, days of severe self-scrutiny as to his past 
 ministry, of eager observation of affairs in England 
 and Scotland, of busy correspondence with friends and 
 hearers in both countries. His affection for his con- 
 verts is wonderful. Like the apostle, he declares they 
 are his glorying, his longing, his joy and crown. He 
 lives if they stand fast; he has sorrow upon sorrow if 
 they fall away. " Their spiritual life," he says, " is to 
 my heart more dear than all the glory, riches, and 
 honour in earth." His interest in these English 
 hearers, both at home and abroad, never ceased. He 
 "must needs visit that little flock" of them in 
 Switzerland. He would fain return from thence by 
 Newcastle and Berwick. But here, as everywhere, 
 Scotland has the first place in his heart. " My own 
 motion and daily prayer is, not only that I may visit 
 you, but also that with joy I may end my battle 
 among you." 
 
 Writing, we have observed, was " contrarious " to 
 him, from habit of mind as well as body. But when 
 ''• tongue and lively voice " were silenced, he took up 
 
JOHN KNOX. 57 
 
 his pen to "instruct, comfort, confirm, rebuke," those 
 among whom he had ministered. The years of exile 
 may be called the epistolary period of his life. He 
 makes stated pilgrimages from Geneva to Dieppe, in 
 order to despatch and receive letters. Omitting his 
 " History of the Reformation," we know Knox better 
 from these than from any other source. " Infinite 
 letters," one calls them. Among them we meet 
 pieces of suggestive exposition, drawn from the life ; 
 heart-stirring battle-calls to steadfastness under trial ; 
 outspoken denunciation of the persecutor ; persuasive 
 advocacy of the reformed cause; wise practical 
 advice upon worship and on difficult passages of 
 Scripture; sharp and searching condemnation of 
 cowardice ; inspiring appeals to the various ranks of 
 the community ; sober warnings against fanaticism 
 and rebellion. From his gift in this department, 
 the Assembly once and again employed him upon its 
 pastoral letters. He wrote for it on the sustentation 
 of ministers ; on discipline ; on fasting, and so forth. 
 More than once his bold and trenchant pen aroused 
 and saved the church. 
 
 During these days of wandering he was gather- 
 ing knowledge against the day of his work. He 
 " travelled through all the congregations of Switzer- 
 land," reasoning with their ministers and men of 
 learning on the more difficult points raised in the 
 Reformation. Geneva offered him a retreat for study, 
 and the friendship of the theologian of the Reforma- 
 tion. He must have put his Hebrew to its first use 
 in hearing his friend's lectures on the Old Testament. 
 His brief ministry over the English exiles at Frank- 
 
58 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 fort (Nov. 1554 — March 1555) repeated the lessons 
 of England. His Genevan ministry over those who 
 followed him there, was about the happiest time in 
 his life. Now he saw a church "sincerely reformed." 
 Meantime (August 1555 — July 1556) Knox paid 
 a preparatory visit to Scotland. A pause had come 
 in the Scottish persecutions. After five years of 
 beheading, burning, outlawing, and book-prohibiting, 
 Protestantism was breathing again. Mary of Guise, 
 as a candidate for the regency of Scotland, had to 
 pay court to the Protestants, while, as a princess of 
 France, she was at issue with their sworn enemy, 
 Mary of England, the ally of Spain. Hence exiled 
 preachers had begun to recross the border. Willock, 
 the chief of them, arrived on a mission from abroad. 
 Knox learned this from his Berwick friends, who 
 entreated him to return. He came, intending a 
 quiet survey. But at Edinburgh it was noised 
 abroad that he was in the house of one of the 
 citizens, Mr. James Syme, and hither the friends of 
 truth and liberty came, and heard, and said to each 
 other that their leader had come. They gathered 
 from north and west, from Ayr and from Angus, 
 one bringing another. When one congregation left 
 the room, another stood at the door. There were 
 also that came by night. They are a quiet people 
 the Scotch, nevertheless they can be moved; and 
 not once or twice has religion moved them, as it 
 never moves light minds. Even Knox, with all his 
 fervour, is surprised on emerging from the study 
 and the translator's table at Geneva into this society 
 of strong men — Erskine, Sandilands, and the rest — 
 
JOHN KNOX. 59 
 
 " night and day sobbing and groaning for the bread 
 of life." " If I had not seen it with my own eyes," 
 he says, ''in my own country, I could not have 
 believed it." His English hearers had not been 
 wanting in earnestness. "But the fervency here 
 doth far exceed all others that I have seen. . . . 
 Depart I cannot until such time as God quench their 
 thirst a little. . . . Their fervency doth so ravish 
 me, that I cannot but accuse and condemn my 
 slothful coldness. God grant them their heart's 
 desire." [" The trumpet blew the old sound for days 
 together." "The Bugle," as one calls him, had 
 begun to blow.] 
 
 There were few days that winter and the summer 
 following, which did not witness similar scenes in 
 the houses of the gentlemen of Angus and Mid- 
 lothian, of Ayr and Argyll. There, too, after Knox 
 was gone, weekly " assemblies " of brethren still 
 went on for confession of sins, "conference of 
 Scriptures," and " common prayers for such things 
 as the Spirit of the Lord Jesus shall teach ... to 
 be profitable." Other teacher than that Spirit they 
 had none. And there, and in many a simple home 
 beside, began, at Knox's instance also, the practice 
 of family worship, which has ever since been a note 
 of Scottish piety. " Within their own homes . . . 
 they were bishops and kings, and their wives, chil- 
 dren, and families were their bishopric and charge." 
 Already the Psalms were beginning to be sung. 
 The 100th and 124th, words and tune, have come 
 down to us almost unchanged through three centuries. 
 Already, by daily reading, Scottish households were 
 
60 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 beginning to hear " that harmony and well-tuned 
 song of the Holy Spirit speaking in our fathers from 
 the beginning." 
 
 What, then, was this message which so moved 
 Scotland to the core? The "evangel," as John 
 Knox loves to call it, keeping near the nervous 
 original. " There is none other name under heaven, 
 given among men, whereby we must be saved." 
 " There is one . . . mediator between God and men, 
 the man Christ Jesus." " We are sanctified through 
 the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." 
 " God was in Christ reconciling the world unto him- 
 self, not imputing their trespasses unto them." " He 
 died for all, that they which live should not live 
 unto themselves, but unto him which died for 
 them." " He that denieth me before men, shall be 
 denied before the angels of God." Such were 
 Knox's texts ; such his themes. 
 
 On the last of them he dwelt with peculiar force 
 and effect. It was his great work on this preparatory 
 visit to impress on his countrymen the duty of 
 publicly professing the reformed faith. To him 
 Protestantism was nothing if not a national cause. 
 This one hope upheld him on the galley, that 
 " that same word should openly be proclaimed in that 
 same country;" this one desire, "that the confession 
 of our faith should come plainly to light;" this one 
 prayer, " Grant that we may confess with voice and 
 tongue the same before thy congregation." This is 
 his challenge to England, " Let it be known to your 
 posterity that ye were Christians;" and to Scotland, 
 " Neither yet may ye do this so quietly, that ye will 
 
JOHN KNOX. 61 
 
 admit no witnesses." He asked this of his first 
 hearers when the Lord's Supper was celebrated 
 among them. This is his name for the congregation 
 in the castle, " The professors of Christ's true 
 evangel." His words took practical shape when 
 the gentlemen of Mearns, after sitting down together 
 at the communion-table, entered into a solemn 
 league to promote the preaching of the Gospel as 
 opportunity offered. It was among the first applica- 
 tions of a principle which Knox asserted from the 
 beginning, and for which he contended throughout — 
 the right of subjects to convene, and to combine, 
 for purposes within the law. On the same principle 
 the Lords acted in openly furthering the Eeforma- 
 tion, each within his own jurisdiction, when the 
 Regent refused to act as her people's representative. 
 This was the first Covenant in Scotland : it was 
 not the last. 
 
 At the bidding of his English congregation, Knox 
 returned for a time to Geneva. He always obeyed 
 the larger call. But he only waited till the hour 
 should strike, and a public summons reach him 
 from his native land. What pen could do in the 
 meantime, he did, to prepare the way, striving 
 to arouse and excite each separate class and every 
 individual of the community, by the noblest motives 
 and to the noblest ends. He placed before each in 
 turn the ideal of his station. To the monarch, while 
 he frankly owned her clemency, he earnestly appealed 
 for moderation, and fearlessly asserted her responsi- 
 bility. To the nobles, he magnified their office, 
 owning them the hereditary guardians of the 
 
62 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 national liberties, warning them against unjustifiable 
 resistance, yet proclaiming the obligation which 
 attached to their influence " to vindicate and deliver 
 their subjects and brethren." To the commons, he 
 held up their individual birthright and bounden 
 duty. Each had reason given him to resolve the 
 question at issue; each had conscience to account 
 for his answer. 
 
 Inspired by these addresses, the Scottish nobles 
 and commons carried on in his absence the work of 
 reformation. Quietly the people gathered in con- 
 gregations, and appointed them elders and deacons. 
 The nobility privately offered the asylum and 
 audience of their houses to those priests who 
 embraced the reformed faith : publicly they peti- 
 tioned for liberty of worship in the vulgar tongue. 
 The Regent, however, having secured her ends by 
 their means, now withdrew her protection, and 
 openly re-espoused the cause of Eome. The over- 
 throw of Scottish Protestantism was but one step 
 in the grand French project which was to place 
 Mary of Scots, heiress-apparent of France, upon the 
 throne of Britain. Once more the fires were lit at 
 St. Andrews. But the burning of old Walter Mill 
 kindled once and for all the beacon of the Reforma- 
 tion. It drew the people from their homes, the 
 preachers from their hiding, the lords from their 
 half-measures, to stand out together in broad day- 
 light, in the presence of the Regent, the hierarchy, 
 the whole nation. It was seen to be all one battle 
 now, for the life of the body and of the soul. The 
 right of every Christian man to stand free for him- 
 
JOHN KNOX. 63 
 
 self before his God had become the right of each 
 to stand free for himself before his fellows and his 
 king. The Lords had already made a fresh covenant 
 among themselves ; they invited Knox to be their 
 covenanted leader. "If the civil power will not 
 favour the Church," he writes to them, " it is their 
 duty themselves to provide . . . that Christ's evangel 
 may be truly preached, and his holy sacraments 
 rightly ministered." On this ground they stood, and 
 on it they summoned him to help them. 
 
 On his landing at Leith (May 2, 1559), Provi- 
 dence had prepared another summons, and placed it 
 in his hands. Four ministers stood cited to appear 
 at Stirling in a day or two, and answer for their 
 preaching and administration of the supper. A 
 fifth, unlooked for, came. Hearing of his arrival in 
 Edinburgh, the last provincial council of clergy, met 
 afresh to ratify the Romish faith and excommunicate 
 the Reformed, instantly broke up in confusion. 
 Proclaimed, at their instance, an outlaw and a rebel, 
 Knox still pressed on, and, joining at Dundee the 
 assembled Congregation, preached before them and 
 proceeded with them on their way to the place of 
 trial. The Regent's engagement to stay proceedings 
 arrested their progress at Perth. Her perfidy in 
 resuming them and in condemning the accused 
 unheard brought matters to a crisis. The regularly 
 constituted authority had proved utterly unreliable. 
 The Perth riot, an accidental result of Knox's preach- 
 ing, seemed for a moment to replace the Regent 
 in the right. But her renewed breach of faith in 
 quartering troops in the town and molesting the 
 
64 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 friends of the Reformation, whom she had amnestied 
 until a meeting of Parliament, forced the Reformers 
 to act for and defend themselves. The Regent had 
 not only failed, she had deliberately assailed, the 
 reformed cause : themselves must reform or none. 
 
 But what call for reformation ? A hierarchy, 
 subjects of a foreign power, possessed of half the 
 national wealth and of the highest places in the state, 
 living in acknowledged ignorance of the revelation 
 they safeguarded, and in open violation of the vows 
 they had taken; religious foundations, raised to 
 piety and learning, grown as guiltless of letters as of 
 godliness, mothers of indolence and of evil lives; 
 a priesthood, unable to preach, reciters of an un- 
 intelligible service, and celebrators of an incredible 
 sacrifice, selling the blessings and the maledictions 
 of heaven to the rich, and tearing the last garment 
 from the poor ; houses of God, devoid of the Divine 
 message, echoing only to ribaldry, to traffic, or to 
 crime; a society, the language and manners of 
 whose leading spirits as well as its common mem- 
 bers, had become careless of the ordinary rules of 
 morals — such is the burden of Scotland before the 
 Reformation. 
 
 Knox had seen to the bitter heart of the evil long 
 since. On the human side the chief factor in the 
 Reformation was the sense of the intolerable burden, 
 the curse, of unremoved sin. The hour for pro- 
 claiming its removal had come. God's house must 
 first be cleansed. Clothed with his Master's indig- 
 nation and burning with his Master's grief, Knox 
 stood up, bare of other assistance, in the Cathedral 
 
JOHN KNOX. 65 
 
 of St. Andrews, on Sabbath, June 11, 1559, to 
 speak the first word and do the great deed of his 
 ministry as a Reformer. " Take these things hence " 
 was his text, altars, images, vestments, missals, 
 attitudes, — all that impairs or imperils the birth- 
 right of every believing man to approach for himself, 
 through Christ, the Father in heaven. Let this 
 house of merchandise be, what it is, the house of 
 free grace. His words met with an immediate 
 response. Magistrates and people united to restore 
 the church primitive within their bounds. In a 
 week or two a similar answer was returned by the 
 principal towns in Scotland. 
 
 Religion and politics were then so closely con- 
 nected that the religious feeling of the country must 
 needs give itself a direct political expression. Much 
 against his will, Knox had to take his share in State 
 work, since there was no one else to do it. The 
 notary's hand was needed to draw documents. To 
 only one equivocal counsel can the unsparing 
 finger of history point. When others were raised 
 up, he gladly left diplomacy to them. He had no 
 "mind to meddle with policy, further than it had 
 religion mixed with it." "We desire no other 
 thing," said he and his fellows to the Regent, . . . 
 " but the liberty of our conscience, to serve our Lord 
 God as we shall answer to Him." French troops 
 and repeated perfidy were her only reply. Hence 
 upon Cupar Muir, at the siege of Perth, at the 
 armed entry to Edinburgh, Knox was forced to 
 appear as one of the champions of popular liberty 
 against a foreign tyranny. From the iirst he had 
 
66 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 seen that in an alliance with England lay the only- 
 road to a true and lasting Scottish independence, 
 civil as well as spiritual. He had worked for this 
 end during his English ministry. On Elizabeth's 
 accession, he had pressed the matter upon her 
 advisers. As virtual ambassador of the Congregation 
 he continued to urge it by letter and interview, and 
 at length his counsels prevailed. But long ere this, 
 he boldly advocated the suspension of the Regent 
 by the nobles and representatives of the people, upon 
 the ground of her despotic acts. Her death and 
 the intervention of Elizabeth set Scotland free, for 
 a moment, to order her own affairs. So our Magna 
 Charta and our Praemunire came to us almost in 
 one day. Papal supremacy and absolute monarchy 
 went to the ground together. The parliament which 
 ratified the reformed faith simply sanctioned what 
 the majority of the nation had already done. It 
 was itself, in consequence, national and representa- 
 tive as no Scottish parliament had been. It was 
 the people themselves who petitioned for the repu- 
 diation of unscriptural doctrine, the restoration of 
 pure worship and discipline, and the application of 
 church-funds to the maintenance of the ministry, 
 learning, and the poor. It was a layman who gave 
 voice to the loud outcry of the land, heart-sick of its 
 priests' and of its people's sin. It was another layman 
 who wrote the first reformed text-book, on Justifica- 
 tion, or, as he calls it, "the refuge of a troubled man at 
 his God," meaning that blessed sense of relief which 
 comes with the received righteousness of Christ. 
 Laymen and ministers together drew up the First 
 
JOHN KNOX. G7 
 
 Confession of Faith, and challenged their countrymen 
 in parliament to judge of it, each for himself, by the 
 light of God's Word. 
 
 To that Word, interpreted by the same Spirit 
 which spake it, lay their last appeal. It carried its 
 divine authority in its own bosom. " They heard and 
 obeyed in it the voice of their Shepherd." By it, by 
 the preaching of it, by the administration of the 
 sacraments and the exercise of discipline in accord- 
 ance with it, could the true church alone be discerned. 
 " And such kirks," in particular, say they, " we, the 
 inhabitants of the realm of Scotland, professors of 
 Christ Jesus, confess us to have in our cities, towns, 
 and places reformed ; for the doctrine taught in our 
 kirks is contained in the written Word of God, to 
 wit, in the books of the Old and New Testament." 
 
 Therefore these confessors breathe the doctrines 
 of grace like native air. " By . . . original sin," they 
 begin, "was the image of God utterly defaced in 
 man; and he and his posterity of nature became 
 enemies to God, slaves to Satan, and servants to 
 sin." " All our salvation springs from and depends " 
 on "the eternal and immutable decree of God, . . . 
 who of mere mercy elected us in Christ Jesus, His 
 Son, before the foundation of the world." "Our 
 nature is so corrupt, so weak, and so imperfect, that 
 we are never able to fulfil the works of the law in 
 perfection. . . . Therefore it behoves us to apprehend 
 Christ Jesus, with his justice and satisfaction, who 
 is the end and accomplishment of the law." " The 
 Holy Spirit doth sanctify and regenerate us without 
 all respect of any merit proceeding from us." " The 
 
68 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 cause of good works we confess to be, not our free 
 will, but the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, who, 
 dwelling in our hearts by true faith, brings forth 
 such good works as God has prepared for us to walk 
 in." Such was the Evangel received by the people, 
 and ratified, with but three dissentient voices, by 
 the Estates of Scotland on August 17, 1560. 
 
 But while Knox laboured for, and rejoiced in 
 this decision of Parliament as the expressed mind 
 of the Scottish nation, he never regarded this as 
 the heart of the matter in hand. " We beg not of 
 them," he writes of the presentation of this settle- 
 ment before Francis and Mary, " we beg not of 
 them strength to our religion, which from God hath 
 •full power, and needeth not the suffrage of man." 
 Throughout the entire year during which the con- 
 gregation was in arms his most strenuous labours 
 were still devoted to preaching. In his prayers the 
 first place is given to "the furtherance of the 
 evangel," the next to the weal of the realm. " At 
 midnight " is the date of his state correspondence ; 
 the date of his sermons might be " all and every 
 day." " The thirst of the poor people, as well as of 
 the nobility," was indeed "wondrous great." How 
 was it to be permanently satisfied 1 
 
 All the time he was acting as a politician, this was 
 the chief problem before him. The great task was 
 the internal organisation of the church. He left his 
 lasting impress on it in the First Book of Discipline. 
 In it he asked that Christ's " Evangel be truly and 
 openly preached in every kirk of this realm," and 
 thereto "his holy sacraments be annexed and truly 
 
JOHN KNOX. 69 
 
 ministered, as seals and visible confirmations of the 
 spiritual promises contained in the Word." For 
 purposes of public worship, his " Order of Geneva " 
 was recommended as a guide, but never imposed as 
 a rule. As the prospects of civil liberty improved, 
 numbers of the leading men in the religious houses, 
 churches, and schools came over to the reformed 
 cause. How should they be admitted 1 None ought 
 to preach, was the reply, or administer the sacraments, 
 till he was " orderly called." Admission must consist 
 "in consent of the people, and in approbation of the 
 learned ministers appointed for their examination." 
 Knox had seen in England the evil of continuing 
 ignorant and unexamined men in a reformed church. 
 Rather than this, the most part of our churches were 
 content to wait for a time without ministers. To 
 them meantime were appointed " the most apt men 
 that could distinctly read the common prayers and the 
 Scriptures." These were encouraged, however, to 
 go on to " persuade by wholesome doctrine," and to 
 extemporise. Certain ministers and elders, "en- 
 dowed with singular graces," were freed from par- 
 ticular charges and set apart by their brethren, to 
 travel from place to place in a given district, and, 
 subject to their correction, to plant churches, see 
 ministers chosen, as they themselves had been, elders 
 and deacons elected, the poor provided for, the 
 youth instructed, and discipline exercised. Each con- 
 gregation so planted was self-governing. Each was 
 equally represented in the provincial synod, and all 
 in the general assembly. Three centuries have not 
 exhausted the fertility of that organism. These 
 
 D 
 
70 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 three hundred years has the Christianity of the land 
 come up hither in its tribes : the tribes of the Lord 
 have come hither. The first meeting of assembly 
 reflected both the temporary state of the church 
 and its permanent constitution. Six-sevenths of its 
 members were elders. Knox and the superintend- 
 ent ministers sat with them side by side. Seven 
 times they sat and did the church's work, without 
 the semblance even of a president. So really did 
 they feel themselves to be the body of Christ ; so 
 truly did they hold the Head. Knox was a member 
 of assembly throughout almost all the next twelve 
 years. Henceforth he never acted apart from it. 
 For more than half of this period the Church was 
 unrecognised by the State. Yet all the while she 
 was being organised on her own ground. " They had 
 neither law nor parliament for their religion," said 
 some. " We have the authority of God for it," was 
 Knox's answer. So congregations, sessions, synods 
 were all set in harmonious motion upwards toward 
 the Supreme Court. When, in 1567, the mutual 
 alliance between Church and State took place, Knox 
 was one of those appointed to define the powers and 
 privileges which the church held in her own right. 
 Among other things he and his brethren named 
 these : " judgment of doctrine, administration of 
 divine ordinances, election, admission, suspension, 
 etc., of ministers, and all cases of discipline." The last 
 time he rose in the House was to defend its constitu- 
 tion against the encroachment of State-made bishops. 
 Scarcely however had this goodly house of our 
 civil and spiritual liberties begun to rise when it was 
 
JOHN KNOX. 71 
 
 threatened with complete overthrow. Knox was 
 suddenly called to stand for it, and for us, in the 
 presence of his Queen. 
 
 The little girl in the galley of thirteen years ago 
 was now the accomplished woman of the gayest and 
 most corrupt court in Europe, the widow of the 
 king of France, the one priceless piece to be played 
 in the great Guise game for Pope and empire. 
 
 She arrived, invited by Knox with the rest of the 
 subjects in the realm, in August 1561. It was her 
 mission to " restore the ancient religion." With youth- 
 ful daring she at once singled out the protagonist of 
 the reformed cause, and with veteran skill engaged 
 him in debate. The Queen of Scots sat throned in 
 a glory of youth, brilliance, and beauty. The 
 minister of St. Giles' stood with his feet on the 
 bare ground. At first she encountered him upon 
 political lines. He had raised his countrymen, her 
 subjects, he had led the Congregation, against the 
 Regent and herself. He had written a book in pre- 
 judice of her authority. He had fomented rebellion 
 in England. Knox could answer her charge of 
 Scottish sedition by appealing to the conspicuous 
 loyalty which had welcomed her : his conduct in 
 England was open to the world; at Berwick the 
 fierce fighting-men had been hushed by his ministry. 
 To his work against the rule of women he stood fast ; 
 only observing that it had not been aimed at her 
 Majesty ; nor had he ever mooted the point upon 
 Scottish soil. Repelled upon this side, the Queen 
 raised the directly religious issue. He taught her 
 subjects a religion different from that allowed by 
 
72 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 their prince. The reply was ready : that true reli- 
 gion did not derive its authority from princes, but 
 from God. Nay, if rulers exceeded their bounds 
 and sought to murder the children of God, resist- 
 ance might be the truest obedience. Mary rejoined : 
 that this made her subjects her superiors. Nay, 
 was the response ; but both are equally subject unto 
 God. As a minister of the church, Knox urged, he 
 had this duty to the state, to see that rulers and 
 ruled should obey Him. But the Head of the State 
 had also a duty to the Church. Not to his church, 
 however, the Queen at once returned ; she would 
 defend the church of Rome ; it was, she thought, the 
 true church of God. Her will and thought, was 
 Knox's answer, did not decide the question. He 
 was prepared to prove that church more degenerate 
 now from apostolic purity, than the Jewish Church 
 from the purity of Moses, when it crucified the Son 
 of God. " My conscience is not so," said the Queen. 
 "Conscience requires knowledge." "But I have 
 heard and read." So had the Jews their Scriptures, 
 and heard them interpreted too in their own way. 
 Had the Queen heard any teach but they who were 
 bound to support their own side 1 " You interpret 
 in one way, they in another : whom shall I believe 1 
 who shall be judge %" " You shall believe God, who 
 plainly speaketh in His word ; and further than the 
 word teacheth, you shall believe neither of us. The 
 word of God is plain in itself; if there be any ob- 
 scurity in one place, the Holy Ghost, who is never 
 contrary to Himself, explains the same more clearly 
 in other places." Knox was proceeding to take up 
 
JOHN KNOX. 73 
 
 one of the points in question, the doctrine that the 
 mass is a propitiatory sacrifice, when the Queen 
 interposed. She could not contend with him in 
 argument; but had she those present whom she had 
 heard, they would answer him. " Would to God," 
 Knox broke in, like Paul before Agrippa, clothing a 
 cold admission with all the warmth of his own enthu- 
 siasm, "would to God her Grace had the most learned 
 and trusty of her teachers by, and would hear them 
 argue the matter to the end." For then, he doubted 
 not, she would learn how little ground had her religion 
 in His Word. Like Paul, too, Knox's last word was a 
 kindly wish : " I pray God, madam, that you may be 
 as blessed within the commonwealth of Scotland, as 
 ever Deborah was in the commonwealth of Israel." 
 
 What were the preacher's words when he " knocked 
 so hastily upon the Queen's heart" that she was 
 moved to tears, we do not know. He gave her his 
 Evangel doubtless, as he gave it to others. As he 
 had given it to William Knox, the sea-captain, and 
 to Edward the young king ; to the rough Berwick 
 soldier, and the gentle Berwick bride ; so he gave it 
 to Mary his Queen. But he left the royal presence 
 convinced that this was stony ground. The Protes- 
 tant hopes, the Catholic fears, for her conversion, he 
 never shared. From that day " the court was dead 
 to him and he to it." He spoke of it, indeed, sharply 
 enough at times, from the pulpit. But when her 
 Majesty gave a ball because her uncles had shot 
 down a congregation of French worshippers; and 
 when again she proceeded to initiate their policy in 
 Scotland by setting aside the Parliament of 1560, 
 
74 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 and entering upon a Roman Catholic marriage, was it 
 not high time to speak 1 Did not both " his voca- 
 tion and his conscience require plainness of him " 1 
 He revisited Holyrood once and again, at command, 
 to answer for himself and for the liberties of the 
 church and the nation. But he had no place there, 
 and henceforward sought none. His place was in 
 St. Giles'. There he preached to the courtiers when 
 they came, to the parliament so often as it assembled, 
 but week in, week out, for two years without inter- 
 ruption, to the people of Edinburgh. The heart of 
 Midlothian was his congregation. In them he found 
 his Philippians, the church which never failed him. 
 The magistrates call him " their minister." In the 
 liberality of the burgesses he trusted more safely 
 than in the subsidies of the State. Every day he 
 works for them in that "warm study of dailies, 
 within his house, above the hall of the same, 
 with light and windows thereunto, and all other 
 necessaries," which they have provided him. Every 
 week he sits in session with the leading citizens. 
 They grieve together over the city's sins and sor- 
 rows; they work together for its good. Weekly, 
 too, he meets with the neighbouring ministers and 
 elders for the Bible -reading, which is to become the 
 presbytery; sometimes he leads, sometimes listens. 
 He is never absent from the city, save by the com- 
 mand of the Assembly, or the inhibition of the 
 Council. They would serve themselves his true 
 successors who should help to make religion and 
 morality in High Street and Canongate more what 
 they were in the days of their first minister. 
 
JOHN KNOX. 75 
 
 Throughout the entire course of the Queen's 
 efforts for the next five years to undermine our 
 civil and religious liberties, one man, and one only, 
 remained unshaken, incorrupt, impregnable : 
 
 " Unus homo nobis perstando restituit rem." 
 
 The glamour of the Guise and Stuart in Mary's eyes 
 fascinated all but one. Maitland at once fulfilled 
 his own prophecy of " the danger of temporising." 
 Murray and his brother-lords were blinded ere long. 
 Knox's best friends, Spens and Maxwell, thought 
 him needlessly alarmed and outspoken. The " multi- 
 tude cried treason;" but he paid no heed. He was 
 accused of vehemence and imperiousness ; still he 
 held on. The ministers shifted ground ; this man 
 never. Every one of the superintendents in turn 
 gave way. Erskine could be disarmed, Winram 
 yield, Spotswood, Willock, and Carswell in turn 
 conform. St. Giles' spoke but one language, and 
 spoke on. Knox proclaimed the Queen's fixed 
 purpose from the first. He foretold the nobles of 
 their threatening defection. He gave warning of 
 the brewing storms in France. When Huntly rose, 
 he roused the country. When the Estates were hood- 
 winked, he sounded the alarm. Once and again he 
 pointed out whither the royal marriage must tend. 
 When the right of public meeting was threatened, 
 he blew abroad a solitary blast, but one which has 
 been "prodigal of echoes." He sent news across 
 Scotland of the Decree of Trent and the Catholic 
 League for the extirpatiou of the Protestant name, 
 a month before Mary set her seal to it. When the 
 
76 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 hierarchy was restored by Act of Parliament, he 
 again sent word over the land. Amid the blank 
 horror that followed the crime of the Kirk of Field, 
 he called unhesitatingly for a personal indictment, 
 and a public trial. If Knox at each or any of these 
 crises had yielded, where would the Scottish history 
 of the last three hundred years have been? If 
 Mary had listened, where might she not have been 
 in it, ay, where might it not by this time have been 1 
 
 On the other hand, every shaft in the Queen's full 
 quiver was let fly at him. By threat of punishment, 
 by persuasion of argument, by force of concession, 
 by mingled earnestness and banter, by gravity and 
 familiarity, by indignation and grief, by derisive 
 laughter and hysterical tears, she assailed him ; but 
 in vain. Once after her marriage, and once only, 
 was he sent for, when she wrung fiom him the pro- 
 phecy of her wedded sorrows. Thereafter Mary saw 
 him no more. He was forbidden to preach so long 
 as she was in the city. Not many days after the 
 minister's lips were sealed, came the murder of 
 Rizzio. But it was not until Knox was got out of 
 Edinburgh, ay, out of Scotland, that there fell the 
 fatal night of Darnley's murder. In these long 
 fifteen years that she outlived him, had the captive 
 Queen of Scots no memories of the one man on earth 
 who had never misread her, never spoken her but true? 
 
 The year 1567-8 was Knox's best year, for it was 
 Scotland's happiest. Returning from a six months' 
 visit to England, he preached at the coronation of 
 the baby-king. He sat on the " committee of over- 
 tures " for the coming parliament, and delivered the 
 
JOHN KNOX. 77 
 
 opening sermon. Some of the measures which were 
 proposed anticipated history by centuries ; some 
 which were carried created history for an even 
 longer period, and are still creating it. As one 
 opens our Scottish Statute-book, there is a strange 
 break just at this point, where, in among all the 
 chequered Acts which mark our upward progress as 
 a people, come twenty pages of strong, simple biblical 
 statement, never perhaps better stated before or 
 since • where, bound in with the law, one meets " the 
 Evangel ; " and under the large letters of King 
 James the Sixth, this name of Another King, one 
 "Christ Jesus," who is called "the only Head 
 of his Kirk." There too for the first time there is a 
 description, surely from Knox's hand, of something 
 not altogether antiquated yet ; " the only true and 
 holy Kirk of Jesus Christ within this realm," 
 being " the ministers of the blessed Evangel, whom 
 God of his mercy has now raised up among us, or 
 hereafter shall raise, agreeing with then that now live 
 in doctrine and administration of sacraments, and 
 the people of this realm, that profess Christ, as He 
 now is offered in His Evangel, and do communicate 
 with the holy sacraments." There too, by Knox's 
 diligence, the marches are ridden between the two 
 jurisdictions once for all, when it is asserted " that 
 the examination and admission of ministers within 
 this realm be only in the power of the Kirk ; " and 
 " that in case the (laic) patron (left by the act in his 
 old position) present . , . and the Superintendent 
 refuse to admit, it be lawful to the patron to appeal 
 to the Synod, and if they refuse, to the General 
 
78 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 Assembly, by whom the cause being decided, shall 
 take end." 
 
 The master's hand also is in the Act for the re- 
 form of schools, universities, and colleges, which 
 intrusts the trial of all who " have charge and cure 
 thereof," to the superintendents or visitors of the kirk; 
 and in that for the maintenance of the higher learning, 
 which directs that Patrons of Provostries, or Prebend- 
 aries of Colleges, may present the same to Bursars to 
 study virtue and letters at any of the universities. 
 
 Verily this was freedom's seed-time in the land. 
 Tear these early pages out of the story of our nation, 
 and how many of the last leaves will remain ] Ke- 
 move the " liberty of the evangel," and where will 
 you look for those later achievements of liberty 1 — 
 the efforts and the prize of each of the thousand 
 simple Scotsmen who has since pressed upward 
 through the open gates of our graded school-system 
 — the battles and the triumph of British civil liberty 
 a century later — the conflicts and the victories of 
 spiritual freedom in two centuries later still — ay, 
 even the struggles for freedom to win this world's 
 wealth, now near a century old, and the best fruit of 
 these the liberality, the liberty we are only learning, 
 of giving wealth away 1 Take them together, these 
 grand deeds of gift granted in our own day, the 
 grander deeds of Demission done in our fathers' and 
 forefathers' day, the Wealth of Nations, Lex Eex, 
 the Book of Discipline in all its editions down to 
 that which is in the making to-day, will they not 
 all bind well into one volume with that first Con- 
 fession of our Scottish faith % 
 
JOHN KNOX. 79 
 
 If one must describe, then, the head and front of 
 all Knox's contendings from first to last in one 
 single word, it would be the word Independence. 
 Independence of the individual before his fellows, 
 born of a common responsibility to God ; indepen- 
 dence of the subject before his king, born of a 
 divine duty laid alike upon subject and king; in- 
 dependence of the church before the state, born of a 
 distinct obligation imposed on church and state : in- 
 dependence of the worshipper before sacred places, 
 service-books, and so forth, born of the imperative 
 command to worship in spirit and in truth ; indepen- 
 dence of the searcher of Scripture before all authori- 
 ties and interpreters, born of the summons to every 
 soul to hear God's voice for himself. 
 
 The parliament of 1567, with its accomplishments 
 and its forecasts, was Knox's Pisgah. He never 
 possessed the land ; twelve generations since have 
 not possessed it. The Book of Discipline was his 
 Deuteronomy, destined, by the law of degeneracy, to 
 a but partial observance and a long neglect. The 
 ears he harvested were, many of them, mummy-corn, 
 not to fertilise for years. They slept in his dead 
 hand. 
 
 The rising of Mary's friends, Murray's assassina- 
 tion, the open defection of Maitland and Kircaldy, 
 once more made the pulpit of St. Giles' the post of 
 duty, for it was the place of danger. The foul 
 breath of slander blew up the old flame. The 
 preacher was charged in turn with treason to King 
 James, insolence to Mary, and disloyalty to his 
 own land. His life was threatened by Kircaldy and 
 
80 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 others of the Queen's party. Weakened by a stroke 
 of apoplexy, he still spoke out and on, in pulpit and 
 assembly, on behalf of liberty, the law, and the 
 land. Only the citizens' urgent representation that 
 blood would shortly be spilt in his defence, persuaded 
 him to quit the city. One of the last sentences he ever 
 uttered in St. Giles' was this : " One thing in the 
 end I may not pretermit, that is, to give him a lie 
 in his throat that either dare or will say that ever I 
 sought support against my native country. What I 
 have been to my country, albeit this unthankful age 
 will not know, yet the ages to come will be com- 
 pelled to bear witness to the truth. And thus I 
 cease, requiring of every man that has to oppose 
 anything against me, that he will do it so plainly as I 
 make myself and all my doings manifest to the world." 
 At St. Andrews he continued his testimony on 
 behalf of church and country. He writes to the 
 A ssembly warning it against the intrusion of tulchan 
 bishops. Just two years before he had received 
 Beza's congratulations upon the banishment of the 
 episcopal order from the Scottish Church. He pro- 
 tests in the cathedral against its re-introduction, as 
 contrary to the distinct statements of the Book of 
 Discipline. He "opposed himself directly to the 
 making of bishops." At the same time he publicly 
 inveighs against the murderers of Darnley and 
 Murray. Weak as he is in these days, " weary of 
 the world " and " thirsting to depart," his is still 
 the desire of Idomeneus, " to be with all speed in the 
 thick of the battle." James Melville can witness 
 that he has more than Nestor's strength ; for his old 
 
JOHN KNOX. 81 
 
 " limbs still keep pace with the ardour of his mind." 
 He will not return hither to die among us, if his lips 
 are to be sealed. Before long he has a loud call to 
 open them. The day he recrossed the Forth was 
 the eve of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. 
 
 For two months you may still see him, going up 
 and down the High Street there, from " the warm 
 study of dailies " to the Tolbooth, the smaller church 
 which, with his accustomed sense, he has asked the 
 session to have fitted up for him. There it is, the 
 " frail bit of a body," below middle height ; the oval 
 face, surmounted by a skull-cap, from which the 
 white hair escapes in a lock on either side, and set 
 in a " furring of martriks " round about, with which 
 the grey beard mingles below j a staff in the one hand, 
 and in the other, " holden up by good, godly Richard 
 Ballanden," his own Genevan Bible. The face is sadly 
 thin with toil, fever, and sorrow. But when the eye 
 looks up, there are such strange struggling lights in 
 it. So penetrating, piercing it is, before all, seeing 
 straight to the bottom of things at first sight, not to 
 be escaped, got quit of, or deceived. It has looked 
 through many, through three Marys among others, 
 that eye. And yet so pathetic, liquid, mute ; charged 
 with an infinite tenderness, that eye. It has yearned 
 over many too, over Wishart, over his brother 
 William, over Marjory Bowes and her mother, over 
 young king Edward, over poor Kircaldy, that eye. 
 The mouth too has this double expression about it, 
 so full of sympathy the lower lip, the upper so filled 
 with grim humour, humour not the sort that simpers, 
 but the kind that can cut like a surgical instrument. 
 
82 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 There is the same contrast in his preaching : simple, 
 direct, " moderate " statement, convincing, commend- 
 ing itself; yet withal outbursts of fervid, impassioned, 
 unconfined emotion, catching you, carrying you 
 away. 
 
 You can visit him for a fortnight longer (from 
 the 9 th of this month onward) at the house in High 
 Street. " John Knox," he tells you, " is the same 
 man now when he is about to die, that ever one 
 knew him when able in body." He has calmly 
 " taken his good-night of all causes worldly," and 
 " of all the faithful in both realms," seen his flock 
 comfortably settled under Mr. James Lawson (who 
 gathered the first stones for our reformed College 
 of Edinburgh), and now goes up into his chamber to 
 die. They can call the physicians, he says ; he does 
 not despise the ordinary means ; but he knows this 
 is the end. It is a touching little circle which 
 surrounds the bed. Young Margaret Stewart 
 watches over him as tenderly as ever Marjory 
 Bowes did at Geneva, reading aloud constantly " in 
 a distinct voice" to him (unless when Eichard 
 Ballanden has the book) from his favourite Ephesians, 
 and those words where lie first found rest in the 
 seventeenth chapter of John. So peaceful he looks, 
 and lies so still, once and again they think him 
 sleeping; but when they inquire, there is ever one 
 answer : " Thank God, I hear, and understand far 
 better." His ejaculations are a witness to this : 
 echoes of the highest and most intimate Scriptures ; 
 outbursts of personal prayer to Christ ; strong, but 
 at times triumphant, cryings for church and common- 
 
JOHN KNOX. 83 
 
 wealth. It almost seems something new, this death- 
 bed of a saint, not in his cell, or church, or at the 
 stake, but here in the midst of his friends, in his 
 family, with little children about him in the room — 
 it takes one back fifteen centuries at a bound to the 
 death of another, his namesake, his own Evangelist, 
 to John's. One cannot but think of another death- 
 bed, about a century later, at St. Andrews, and of 
 others since. 
 
 But the servants must come in and have their 
 wages, and a word from the master himself to each. 
 All the debts must be paid ; wife and children given 
 in charge to Campbell of Kinzeancleuch. There 
 are three little girls, Martha, Margaret, Elizabeth, 
 of seven and five and two, somewhere about. 
 Friends are always coming into the room. One of 
 them, Fairley of Braid, has dinner on the 16th by 
 his bed, and persuades the sick man to join him. 
 Knox hesitates at first ; he is thinking of the fast 
 for St. Bartholomew. Little Martha will be 
 Fairley's daughter one day. Knox can never reward 
 his friend enough, he says, for all he has done : One 
 who can, will. The baby is to be Mrs. John Welsh, 
 and will yet share a life and death worthy of Knox's 
 daughter. He rises the last time to entertain two 
 friends in his room, and has his dry joke over the 
 fresh pipe of wine which has to be pierced for them : 
 Will they be sure and see it finished after he is 
 away 1 he will not wait till it is all drunk. 
 
 Another day he has the session of St. Giles' by 
 his bedside, and delivers them a brief apology for 
 his ministry. Two motives have moved him as a 
 
84 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 minister, "fear of God and of his tribunal," and 
 " desire to win men to the Lord." 
 
 Poor Kircaldy in the Castle has a last appeal 
 from him ; he goes back to their days in the galley 
 together ; " the man's soul is dear to him ; he would 
 not have it perish if he could save it." Regent 
 Morton, too, has his word, courteous but plain. 
 Both men, dying different deaths from this, re- 
 member these words. 
 
 The staircase is crowded in these days ; there are 
 many knocks at the door. He will see every one, 
 and knows just what to say to each. Among them 
 one pious woman begins to speak of praising God 
 for the good he has done ; but Knox stops her : 
 " Tongue, tongue, lady ; flesh of itself is over proud, 
 and needs no means to esteem itself." He has no 
 trust save in God's free mercy. One more conflict 
 comes. Down through the valley he goes, sword in 
 hand, as he has lived. There are heavy moans 
 to-night; the watchers think it is the last agony. 
 But he wakes very peaceful, as one who has van- 
 quished, to tell them it is over now — a fierce 
 onset of temptation. Thoughts would force them- 
 selves on his mind, that he had , merited heaven by 
 the faithfulness of his ministry. But he has fought 
 them off, as Paul before him, with " What hast thou 
 that thou hast not received ] By the grace of God 
 I am what I am. Not I, but the grace of God in 
 me;" and now he knows the tempter will not 
 return. So his last anchor is dropt, and plunges, 
 where his first did, into the depths of grace, free, 
 sovereign, divine. 
 
JOHN KNOX. 85 
 
 Another sigh, and the words, " It is come." They 
 whisper him the promises he has so often given them 
 himself, and ask him for a token if it is peace. One 
 hand goes up ; he sighs twice ; he is gone. 
 
 This very day three hundred and ten years ago, 
 all Edinburgh gathered at St. Giles' to see her 
 minister laid in his grave. They preached no 
 funeral sermon over him, they raised no monument. 
 His work is his monument. John Knox — that is 
 the new Scotland, the reformed Scottish church. 
 Our church history is a long gallery of splendid 
 lives. In her many and various ages, our house has 
 never yet wanted for a man. But they were all 
 given when Knox came. In each of the after lives 
 he lives again. In Melville we had his courage, 
 grasp of character, and transparent candour; in 
 Henderson, his indomitable perseverance and heroic 
 endurance of suffering ; in Kutherford, his clear 
 logic and fervent love ; in Leighton, his faculty in 
 Scripture and teacher's art ; in Chalmers, his grand 
 conception of the nation's needs and the church's 
 mission, and his grander gift of sacrifice. 
 
 If a larger place has been assigned and preserved 
 among us to the " preaching of the Evangel " than 
 among other reformed peoples ; if religion has been 
 "more earnestly received ;" if the standard of morals 
 has been raised ; if education has looked larger to 
 the popular eye and lain nearer to the popular hand, 
 with us than with others ; if the ministry and the 
 community have moved more in step here than 
 elsewhere ; if our land, less able to earn one part 
 of the Vergilian greeting, " great mother of harvests," 
 
 E 
 
86 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 has fairly deserved the other, " great mother of men ;" 
 if advance in thought and speech, in action and in 
 government, has been less bitterly anathematised 
 and less blindly adored in our land than in other 
 lands ; if our most heart-stirring memories, our tradi- 
 tions and stories, be those of the heroes of our faith ; 
 if countrymen of our own have repeatedly proved that 
 worldly objects are not the last weight in the balance, 
 nor the last word in the debate ; if they have " held 
 fast the profession of their faith without wavering " 
 before kings and armies, before inquisitors and 
 dragonnades, before statesmen and houses of parlia- 
 ment, on the Bass Rock and in the Grassmarket, amid 
 Marnoch snows and in Tanfield Hall ; if, in a word, 
 religion be allowed to have been hitherto the largest 
 factor in our national life, and this little country, in 
 virtue of it, be admitted to have given lessons to the 
 great world ; then we owe this, under God, first of 
 all to one man, and that man was John Knox, 
 
ALEXANDER HENDERSON. 
 By the Rev. G. Webstek Thomson, B.A. 
 
ALEXANDER HENDERSON. 
 
 THE information we have as to the private life 
 of Alexander Henderson is very scanty : what 
 we know of him belongs in great part to the history 
 of his time. He was born in 1583, and, as is 
 generally believed, in the parish of Creich in Fife- 
 shire. He seems to have been connected with the 
 Hendersons of Fordel, a family of some local im- 
 portance in another part of the same county, but of 
 his immediate parentage nothing whatever is known. 
 The records of the University of St. Andrews show 
 that in 1599, when he was sixteen, he went to 
 college there, and that in 1603 he took the degree 
 of Master of Arts. He was a distinguished student, 
 and a short time after his graduation he was chosen 
 regent or professor of philosophy in his university, 
 and according to Wodrow he taught there " about 
 eight years with no little applause." The university 
 records of the period are very imperfectly kept, and 
 there is no trace in them of Henderson as a student 
 of theology, but in all likelihood^ while teaching 
 philosophy, he was engaged at the same time with 
 his professional studies. The celebrated Andrew 
 
90 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 Melville taught theology in St. Andrews till 1606, 
 and it is scarcely possible to avoid the belief that 
 Henderson must have heard his lectures ; but in 
 that year he was summoned to London by King 
 James, and was never again allowed to return to 
 Scotland, so that Henderson lost the benefit of his 
 very powerful influence. In 1612, when he was 
 twenty-nine years of age, Henderson left St. 
 Andrews, and accepted a presentation to the 
 neighbouring parish of Leuchars. 
 
 Henderson at this time had connected himself 
 with that party in the Church of Scotland which 
 favoured prelacy and those tendencies in discipline 
 and worship that have usually accompanied prelacy. 
 That party was numerically small as compared 
 with the other, but it was exceedingly powerful, 
 because supported by the whole influence of the 
 king and the court. Opposed to it was the great 
 mass of the ministers and people of Scotland, who 
 adhered to the presbyterian polity that had been 
 adopted at the Reformation and had been embodied 
 in the successive " Books of Discipline." The 
 prelatical party was not only encouraged by the 
 court, it had been created by it. No desire for 
 prelacy ever grew up within the Church of Scotland, 
 and yet almost from the Reformation on to the 
 Revolution the church had to maintain a constant 
 struggle against the attempts of the civil power to 
 thrust a prelatic constitution and prelatic observances 
 upon her. The main reason for this line of action 
 on the part of the civil rulers was that the presby- 
 terianism of the Scottish church was clearly seen 
 
ALEXANDER HENDERSON. 91 
 
 to be in its very nature hostile to the claims of 
 civil despotism and in necessary alliance with free- 
 dom. Various other motives were at work, especi- 
 ally in the times of the Kegents, although even 
 then this was prominent, but with the accession 
 of James VI. there began to be distinctly asserted 
 that claim to absolute authority on the part of the 
 monarch which gives its character to the history 
 of Scotland and England for almost a century ; 
 and it was in the prosecution of that claim that the 
 monarchy found itself in fixed and necessary anta- 
 gonism to a presbyterian church. 
 
 James had brought himself to believe that he 
 ruled by an indefeasible divine right, that he owed 
 no obedience to earthly laws, and that his subjects 
 had no right in any case whatever to question or 
 resist his absolute authority. But the church, as 
 he found it in existence when he came to the 
 throne, claimed to be entirely free. It claimed the 
 right to manage its own affairs and to be exempt 
 from all earthly control. It claimed the right to 
 have its own views as to the public welfare, and to 
 express these views; the right to endeavour by 
 all available means, by plain speaking in public 
 and private, by warning, counsel, expostulation, 
 spiritual censures, to induce all men in their several 
 stations, even nobles and kings in theirs, to render 
 obedience to the revealed will of God. It was a 
 powerful organisation the whole genius of which 
 was alien from James's notions of government, which 
 expressly repudiated his despotic claims, and which 
 was utterly unmanageable by his methods of " king- 
 
92 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 craft ; " and perceiving how much more favourable 
 to his views the genius of the prelatic system was, 
 and how much more likely it was to be manageable 
 in practice, he formed a decided preference for pre- 
 lacy. One of his favourite maxims came to be, " No 
 bishop, no king," a saying in which there was much 
 truth if by " king " we understand all that he under- 
 stood by it. Most certainly there could be no king 
 such as he claimed to be, so long as a free presbyte- 
 rian church was suffered to exist within his kingdom. 
 
 Accordingly there was nothing in which James 
 came to be more deeply interested than the destruc- 
 tion of presbyterianism and the establishment of 
 prelacy in Scotland. And to his own lasting 
 disgrace, to the shame also in some measure of the 
 church, after persistent and unscrupulous preparation 
 continued through many years, he ultimately suc- 
 ceeded. Every possible means was used to seduce or 
 terrify the church into concession. Assemblies were 
 kept from meeting ; enactments favourable to the 
 king's design were passed by his servile parliament ; 
 the leading men in the church were silenced or 
 banished ; persecution and bribery were both freely 
 employed ; and at length a packed Assembly that 
 met in Glasgow in 1610 was induced to yield, and 
 prelacy became the established religion of Scotland. 
 
 It was only, however, the external framework of 
 the church that became prelatic and erastian; the 
 change was utterly abhorrent to the great body of 
 the Scottish people. The party within the church 
 that really desired episcopacy was, as we have said, 
 numerically small. It consisted mainly of the 
 
ALEXANDER HENDERSON. 93 
 
 bishops themselves and those of the clergy and the 
 upper classes who were directly under their influence 
 or that of the court. Beneath the prelatic forms 
 the heart of Scotland still beat true to Eeformation 
 principles and to presbyterianism. Nothing but 
 the fact that the whole country from end to end 
 was sound and steady in its attachment to the 
 original constitution of the church can account for 
 the suddenness and completeness with which in 
 1638 the whole fabric which it had cost so much 
 craft and cruelty to raise was thrown to the ground. 
 It was in Alexander Henderson's early manhood 
 that prelacy became triumphant, and when he was 
 regent in the University he was known as an apolo- 
 gist and adherent of that system. He was not in 
 those days a religious man, and the party which, 
 though little liked by the people, was so warmly 
 supported by the king and the court, was recom- 
 mended by every worldly consideration. He re- 
 ceived his presentation to Leuchars from Gladstanes, 
 Archbishop of St. Andrews, and that of itself was 
 sufficient proof to the people of the parish that he 
 could not be a presentee of the sort that they would 
 care to receive. They protested against his settle- 
 ment in the only way that the miseries of the time 
 left open to them. When Henderson arrived on the 
 day fixed for his ordination, accompanied by the 
 clergy who were to take part in the ceremony, they 
 found the door of the church securely nailed up, and 
 in order to go through the necessary forms they had 
 to enter the church through one of the windows. 
 After this inauspicious beginning Henderson con- 
 
94 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 tinued his ministry for some little time, perhaps two 
 or three years, with little comfort or satisfaction 
 doubtless either to himself or his people, and then 
 God, to whom this man was a chosen vessel, brought 
 about a remarkable change. Henderson heard that 
 the famous Eobert Bruce was to preach at a com- 
 munion in his neighbourhood. Bruce, who was one 
 of the foremost men of his day both for parts and 
 piety, and one of the most faithful and efficient 
 ministers the Church of Scotland has ever had, had 
 fallen under the displeasure of the despotic court, 
 and had been expelled from his charge in Edinburgh, 
 and at this time he was labouring in the cause of 
 the Gospel here and there as he found opportunity. 
 Henderson, attracted by his great fame, went in secret 
 to hear him, and seated himself in an obscure corner 
 of the building. Bruce, a man of commanding 
 personal appearance, and with great dignity and 
 impressive deliberation in his manner, pronounced 
 as his text after a pause the following words : " Verily, 
 verily, I say unto you, he that entereth not by the 
 door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other 
 way, the same is a thief and a robber." These words, 
 so literally applicable to the manner in which 
 Henderson had entered upon his ministry, went, as it 
 is recorded, " like drawn swords " to his heart. The 
 sermon that followed was a message from God to 
 him, and it issued in his conversion to Christ. It is 
 said by Bruce's contemporaries that no man of his 
 time spoke with such evidence and power of the 
 Spirit, and that none had so many seals of conversion, 
 and Henderson was justly regarded as "the best 
 
ALEXANDER HENDERSON. 95 
 
 fish caught in the net." Eobert Bruce, if ever any 
 man in Scotland was, was in the Evangelical Suc- 
 cession, and the link in the chain next to him is 
 Alexander Henderson. 
 
 This crisis in Henderson's life, which issued in his 
 conversion to so much else that was greater and 
 deeper, led also to his thorough conversion to pres- 
 byterianism. That is a phenomenon which we see 
 repeated again and again in those times, a deepened 
 religious life leading to a withdrawal from prelacy 
 and the party that was identified with it. It was so 
 also, for example, in the case of David Dickson, for 
 many years minister at Irvine, one of the most emi- 
 nent of Henderson's friends and fellow-labourers. 
 He also began life as more or less of an apologist for 
 prelacy and the ceremonies, but with deepening 
 seriousness all that was changed. And it is not 
 needful, in order to account for this, to maintain that 
 episcopacy is in itself necessarily unfavourable to 
 vital and evangelical religion. I must not conceal 
 my belief that there are other forms of church order 
 that have proved more friendly to it ; but many of 
 the best and holiest Christians that the world has 
 seen have been episcopalians. The names that give 
 their titles to the lectures of this course prove that 
 men in the Evangelical Succession are to be found 
 in all the churches. But in Scotland during the 
 seventeenth century nearly all earnest Christians 
 were on the side of presbyterianism, and the whole 
 circumstances of the case made it impossible that it 
 should have been otherwise. No desire for prelacy 
 had ever grown up within the church itself. The 
 
96 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 church's teachers had not found it in Scripture. 
 Pious men suspected and feared it, because associated 
 in their minds with the popery from which they had 
 just escaped, and because allied in practice with 
 many things that they judged unlawful or dangerous. 
 Its presence in the church was not in any measure 
 due to the aspirations of its godly ministers and 
 people, but to the intrigues of secular politicians, 
 who sought its introduction for other than pious 
 ends. And the men who lent themselves as tools 
 for carrying out these intrigues were not pious men. 
 It was the more worldly, the more ambitious, the 
 more obsequious of the clergy who were promoted 
 to bishoprics. Even had the king or the regent 
 wished it otherwise they had no alternative, and 
 indeed James at one time complained that respect- 
 able men could not be got to fill his vacant sees. 
 The piety of the church disliked and opposed the 
 system, and kept aloof from the men who took to do 
 with it ; so that in the case of any one who had 
 come to be in earnest about practical godliness there 
 could hardly be hesitation as to the party in the 
 church with which he was to sympathise. On the 
 one hand there was wealth and distinction and the 
 patronage of the court, but also worldly living and 
 active opposition to godly men ; and on the other 
 hand, with whatever drawbacks, there was the whole 
 strength of the living and striving piety of the 
 church. And in effect the same state of matters 
 continued down to the Eevolution. Prelacy in 
 Scotland during the seventeenth century, whatever 
 it may have been in other countries, or in Scotland 
 
ALEXANDER HENDERSON. 97 
 
 in later times, was identified in the minds of the 
 people with indifference or actual hostility to the 
 Gospel ; and the student of the history will utterly 
 fail to comprehend it if he does not recognise the 
 fact that our presbyterian fathers in all their 
 struggles believed themselves to be contending not 
 only for their own views of church order and the 
 church's freedom from secular control, but also for 
 vital and evangelical religion. 
 
 The spiritual change that came to Henderson led 
 him at once into the ranks of those who opposed 
 prelacy. In all probability he had not previously 
 given the subject much careful study, but it is certain 
 that after this time he became a thoroughly convinced 
 presbyterian. We have ample evidence that he 
 made himself familiar with all the details of the con- 
 troversy, and that he rejected prelacy not only as 
 injurious, in the circumstances of the time and the 
 country, to the interests of practical religion, but as 
 inconsistent with the Word of God, and the consti- 
 tution given to the Church of Scotland by the 
 Reformers. 
 
 It was not long before Henderson had an oppor- 
 tunity of taking his place in public as a combatant 
 on the popular side. His conversion took place 
 probably in 1615, and in 1618 that General Assem- 
 bly met in Perth which passed the celebrated enact- 
 ments known in history as the Perth Articles. 
 James, as we have seen, had succeeded in 1610 in 
 imposing a prelatic constitution upon the church, 
 and he was now bent on bringing details, such as 
 the forms of public worship and the like, into har- 
 
98 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 mony with the usage in other prelatic churches. 
 The Articles passed by the Perth Assembly had 
 reference to kneeling at the Communion, private 
 celebration of the Sacraments, episcopal Confirma- 
 tion, and the observance of holy days. Henderson 
 was a member of that Assembly, and was very 
 prominent in it as one of those who had the courage 
 to offer an open and determined opposition to the 
 projects of the king and the hierarchy. Nothing 
 more shameless was ever seen than the way in which 
 members of this Assembly were openly intimidated 
 and bullied in order to get them to accede to the 
 king's wishes, and it required no ordinary firmness 
 and courage to take the part that Henderson did. 
 One thing that took place at this Assembly shows 
 that the minister of Leuchars had even already 
 arrested the favourable notice of the popular party 
 in the church. He and William Scott of Cupar, one 
 of the most eminent men of his time, were called to 
 be ministers in Edinburgh, and the Assembly agreed 
 to their translation. However, it did not suit the 
 views of the bishops that such men as these should 
 occupy pulpits in Edinburgh, where the citizens were 
 already much too hearty in their opposition to the 
 prelatic innovations, and they found means of so 
 obstructing the settlement that the translation of 
 neither of them took place. 
 
 From the Perth Assembly till 1637, a period of 
 nineteen years, there is nothing known of Henderson 
 which we need to notice. All that time he con- 
 tinued to minister to his country parish. We catch 
 glimpses of him attending meetings for prayer and 
 
ALEXANDER HENDERSON. 99 
 
 conference with his brethren, and there are indica- 
 tions that he was widely known throughout Scot- 
 land, and regarded as one of the most eminent and 
 faithful of the people's religious guides. There can 
 be no doubt from what appeared afterwards, that 
 these were busy and studious years. Then with his 
 gifts and character he must have been useful to the 
 people of his charge and greatly beloved by them, 
 and certainly he loved them and his work among 
 them ; and when, after he had been their minister 
 for more than five-and-twenty years the Assembly 
 translated him to Edinburgh, it was done in spite of 
 his expostulations and earnest entreaties to be 
 allowed to remain. 
 
 Meanwhile, though Henderson seems to have been 
 left without much serious molestation, it was a time 
 of grievous trouble for many of the most eminent of 
 the church's ministers and people. The Articles of 
 Perth were ratified by Parliament in 1621, and this 
 put it into the power of the prelates to enforce con- 
 formity to these Articles not only by means of their 
 despotic and unconstitutional High Commission 
 Court, but by the ordinary processes of law. When 
 the Act of Parliament was passed the king wrote to 
 the prelates saying that the sword was now put into 
 their hands, and that they must not let it rust. 
 They certainly were nothing loath, and severe 
 measures were adopted all over the country, especially 
 against uncomplying ministers, but with very slender 
 success. The people generally would not take the 
 Communion kneeling, thinking that that posture 
 savoured of the old idolatry, and detesting the whole 
 
100 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 policy that by means of cruelty and fraud was 
 endeavouring to force such observances upon them. 
 When James died in 1625 and was succeeded by his 
 son there was only a momentary lightening of the 
 afflictions of the church. It was soon apparent both 
 to the people and the bishops that there was to be 
 no change of policy, that the pretensions of the 
 crown were not to be lowered, that the interests 
 of the hierarchy in Scotland were to be furthered 
 more resolutely and with a higher hand than ever. 
 All the while the church was receiving tokens of 
 favour from her heavenly King. The preaching of 
 the truth was never more powerful and was never 
 more signally owned than at this period ; and even 
 the cruel measures of the church's oppressors in 
 banishing many of the most earnest and godly of 
 the ministers from their own flocks turned out rather, 
 as persecution has so often done, " unto the further- 
 ance of the gospel." These pious men, driven from 
 their homes, only carried their gospel message with 
 augmented power into other districts. The religious 
 revivals in Irvine, Stewarton, and Shotts are con- 
 spicuous manifestations of a kind of influence that 
 was being felt in many parts of Scotland during this 
 period. Spiritual life was deepened and extended 
 among the people, a preparation being thus made for 
 the times of severe trial that were at hand. 
 
 At length the crisis came, the most momentous 
 perhaps that has ever occurred in the church history 
 of Scotland. It originated, as all men know, in an 
 attempt to force upon all the congregations in Scot- 
 land, by the mere mandate of the king, a Service- 
 
ALEXANDER HENDERSON. 101 
 
 book, or prayer-book, which had been prepared under 
 the superintendence of Archbishop Laud. Previous 
 to the appearance of this prayer-book there had been 
 issued a book of " Canons and Constitutions Ecclesi- 
 astical," which contained a complete code of regula- 
 tions for the church, prescribing arrangements not 
 only as to the outlines of the church's constitution, but 
 even as to ecclesiastical vestments, church ornaments, 
 and such other details, everything of course being in 
 accordance with those high-church Anglican notions 
 and usages that were in favour with Laud and his 
 master. There was no pretence of obtaining the 
 consent of the church to the adoption of these 
 Canons they were imposed by the sole authority of 
 the king. " Whoever may have given personal help 
 in their preparation," says Mr. Hill Burton, "they 
 were adopted by the king, and were as much his 
 sole personal act as if he had penned them all alone 
 in his cabinet and sent them as a despatch to those 
 who were to obey their injunctions." " A complete 
 code of laws for the government of a church," Mr. 
 Burton adds, "issued by a sovereign without official 
 consultation with the responsible representatives of 
 that church, is unexampled in European history." 
 
 The substance of these Canons, indicating, as men 
 believed, when taken in connection with other things, 
 a design on the part of the king and Laud to lead 
 the country back to Popery itself, still more perhaps 
 the unexampled tyranny of the manner of imposing 
 them, filled the whole land with indignation and 
 distress. The Service-book, when it appeared, still 
 further intensified these feelings. The Scottish 
 
102 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 people had no blind prejudice against read prayers. 
 They were accustomed to hear the prayers prepared 
 by Knox regularly read in their churches, though 
 not by the ministers. But they objected to the 
 English liturgy, both because it excluded extempore 
 prayer and because there was much in it that they 
 judged unsound or of dangerous tendency. Still 
 more objectionable was this liturgy Laud had pre- 
 pared for them, which they found to resemble the 
 popish Breviary much more nearly than the English 
 prayer-book did. It was a semi-popish book, and 
 it was being imposed under the heaviest penalties 
 upon them and their children, without even the 
 pretence of obtaining their consent or that of their 
 church. The whole heart of the country was moved 
 by these proceedings as it had not been for a genera- 
 tion. Here in its worst form was the absolutism 
 that had so long threatened the utter extinction of 
 their liberties; here was the heel of despotism 
 openly planted on the neck of their church, and the 
 crown openly torn from the brow of Christ, her only 
 King ; and here, moreover, was a fresh introduction 
 of those popish errors that the people had so much 
 reason to fear and hate. This was what the prelacy 
 in church-government, to which they had been in- 
 duced by infamous and unconstitutional means to 
 give their consent, had brought them to. And to 
 what further might it not bring them 1 This step 
 of Charles in imposing the liturgy brought the whole 
 people face to face with his tyrannical claim to 
 absolute dominion over his subjects, over their lives 
 and liberties, their bodies and their souls. 
 
ALEXANDER HENDERSON. 103 
 
 The whole country was deeply stirred. The 
 utmost indignation and anxiety and expectancy 
 filled all men's minds. The nation was like a vessel 
 charged with electricity, and at a touch the explosion 
 came. The day fixed for commencing the use of 
 the Service-book arrived, the 23d July 1637, and in 
 St. Giles', Edinburgh, the reading of the service was 
 interrupted by a popular tumult. This outbreak 
 was, in all the circumstances, sufficiently natural and 
 excusable, but also sufficiently undignified. Still, 
 condemned and regretted as it was by all responsible 
 parties, it led the way. Similar tumults occurred in 
 other parts of the country. Petitions and remon- 
 strances poured in to the Privy Council. Many 
 noblemen and gentlemen, commissioners from various 
 places, with their retainers, and great crowds of 
 people from all quarters, flocked to Edinburgh, and 
 all waited with the utmost anxiety the king's answer 
 to a supplication they addressed to him for the 
 suppression of the Service-book. 
 
 Alexander Henderson must already have become 
 conspicuous in some way as an opponent of these 
 tyrannical proceedings. The outbreak in Edinburgh, 
 as we have seen, took place in July, and as early as 
 March in that same year Samuel Rutherfurd writes 
 to him from Aberdeen as follows : " As for your 
 case, my reverend and dearest brother, you are the 
 talking of the North and South, and looked to as if 
 you were all chrystal glass; your motes and dust 
 will soon be proclaimed and trumpets blown at your 
 slips. But I know you have laid help on one that 
 is Mighty." Henderson, it thus appears, was already 
 B 
 
104 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 known all over the country as an outstanding oppo- 
 nent of the court and the bishops, and it was no 
 doubt this fact that led Spotswood, Archbishop of 
 St. Andrews, to select him as one with whom he 
 might finally try conclusions as to the introduction 
 of the Service-book. He issued a charge to him 
 and two other ministers in his neighbourhood to 
 purchase each two copies of the Liturgy for the use 
 of their parishes within fifteen days, under pain of 
 rebellion. Henderson resolved to test by the law of 
 Scotland the power of the king's warrant to enforce 
 the use of this objectionable Service-book. Accord- 
 ingly he went to Edinburgh and instituted the 
 necessary legal process. The case was decided by 
 the Privy Council, some of the members of which 
 had no great zeal in the cause of the prelates and 
 the king, and the decision was so far in favour of 
 Henderson and his friends that it amounted to a 
 temporary suspension of the compulsory use of the 
 new book. This spirited contest with the Crown 
 had the effect of making Henderson still more pro- 
 minent and influential among all parties. 
 
 Meanwhile the answer of Charles to the Supplica- 
 tion of his people was made public. "With the 
 insanity which according to the proverb precedes 
 destruction, he announced that he would make no 
 concession. He commanded instant reception of the 
 Service-book, condemned all the proceedings of the 
 suppliants, and prohibited their public meetings 
 under pain of treason. But Scotland from end to 
 end was thoroughly roused. Fresh crowds poured 
 into Edinburgh ; and at length the Council, utterly 
 
ALEXANDER HENDERSON. 105 
 
 impotent to give effect to the king's demands for 
 repression, and dreading danger from such large 
 masses of people, agreed with the popular leaders 
 that if they would disperse the multitude some of 
 their number might remain to represent the others 
 and attend to the popular interests. In consequence 
 of this arrangement four Tables, as they were called, 
 were constituted, one for the nobles, one for the 
 gentry, a third for the burghs, and a fourth for the 
 church; and this hastily-constructed representative 
 body answered its purposes so well that before long 
 the virtual government of Scotland had passed into 
 its hands. 
 
 Among the men who constituted the tables, 
 Henderson was influential from the first, and his 
 influence both with these committees and with the 
 people outside so rapidly increased that he soon 
 came to be regarded as the most prominent and 
 powerful man in Scotland. Clarendon, speaking of 
 a time when events had made some progress, says 
 that the king well knew Henderson to be the 
 " principal engine by which the whole nation was 
 moved;" and Principal Baillie, writing after 
 Henderson's death, says that he was "for some 
 years the most eyed man in the three kingdoms." 
 There were other men who brought to the councils 
 of their party the influence of high rank added 
 to personal worth and great abilities. Henderson 
 had nothing but his character and his gifts ; and 
 all must admit that these must have been very 
 remarkable when they enabled him to step almost 
 at once from the position of a country minister into 
 
106 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 that of virtual leader of Scotland. Noblemen like 
 the Earl of Loudon and the Earl of Eothes, to 
 mention no others, would have adorned any party 
 in any country of Europe ; but great as were their 
 services to Scotland and to the cause of civil and 
 religious freedom, they, would themselves probably 
 have been among the first to acknowledge that the 
 services of Henderson to the same cause were 
 greater, that he was of more value to its friends, and 
 more formidable to its enemies than they were. 
 
 What were the qualifications that led Henderson 
 to this great position 1 First among these must be 
 reckoned his genuine godliness. This lay at the 
 foundation of many other excellencies, and it was 
 this, not ambition, not considerations of worldly 
 policy, but his sense of duty to God, his zeal in the 
 cause of Christ, that brought him into the arena of 
 public affairs and made him the harassed, storm- 
 tossed man he was during the last nine years of his 
 life. Men believed in him, they felt he could be 
 trusted as an unselfish, conscientious, incorruptible 
 man. They did trust him in many delicate and 
 difficult affairs, on many occasions, and their trust 
 was never betrayed. Then as giving him influence, 
 especially perhaps among men of his own profession, 
 it may be noticed that Henderson had great learn- 
 ing. In proof of this it is enough to point to the 
 position he took in the Westminster Assembly. 
 The eminence of the members of that Assembly in 
 theological and other learning is beyond dispute, and 
 no single member of it showed more power of dealing 
 with its subjects of protracted debate, or did more 
 
ALEXANDEE HENDERSON. 107 
 
 to influence its decisions, than Henderson. Had 
 most of his life been spent like the last nine years 
 of it, in constant occupation about public affairs, 
 anything like eminence for him in any department 
 of learning would have been out of the question ; 
 but he was fifty -four years of age when in 1637 
 circumstances called him out into public life, and 
 previously during his residence at the university 
 and in the seclusion of his parish the energies of his 
 singularly active and powerful mind had been largely 
 engaged with literature. Then, a considerable 
 element in his influence was his power of public 
 spe aking. No man of his time was more celebrated as 
 "aTpreacher or a debater. His manner in speaking is 
 described as having been quiet, grave, and weighty, 
 yet easy and fluent ; and though he had extraordinary 
 facility and readiness, his utterances had a certain 
 completeness that produced the impression of their 
 having been carefully prepared. But what perhaps 
 struck his contemporaries most was his uniform, 
 penetrating good sense, his sagacity. Nearly every 
 contemporary notice of him has some reference to 
 his "wisdom." Henderson is not one of the 
 striking personages in our national history. There 
 is little that is picturesque in his figure, little that 
 is romantic in the incidents of his life. He is a 
 plain, modest man, full of quiet strength in mind 
 and character, who throughout his life honestly and 
 zealously toiled at such work as seemed to lie 
 nearest his hand in the service of God and his 
 generation. He was courteous, disposed, when that 
 was possible, to be conciliatory, prudent, sagacious, 
 
108 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 averse from extremes in opinion and action; and 
 it was largely his possession in an eminent degree, 
 and in singular combination of these and suchlike 
 comparatively commonplace qualities, that gave him 
 his great influence with all around him. 
 
 Very soon after the Tables were constituted, a 
 memorable resolution was taken. It was resolved, 
 in view of the critical state both of the church and 
 nation, and before the crowds then thronging the 
 capital separated, to do what would perhaps in any 
 other country have been reckoned a very strange 
 proceeding, to join in swearing a national, religious 
 Covenant. In Scotland however this was no new 
 thing. More than once before, solemn Covenants 
 had been drawn and signed, binding the subscribers 
 to renounce and oppose to the uttermost the 
 intolerable corruptions of Eome and to profess and 
 defend the Eeformed religion. Particularly this 
 had been done in 1581, when the king and his 
 courtiers as well as the church had subscribed a 
 national Covenant in favour of the Eeformed 
 doctrines, and this Covenant had been afterwards 
 made obligatory on the whole people by royal 
 proclamation. Pious men throughout the land, 
 in connection with these commotions excited by 
 the Service-book, were lamenting the national sin in 
 having fallen from this former Covenant, and it 
 was this feeling mainly that suggested the swearing 
 of a national Covenant at this juncture. The 
 expression used among them was that they were to 
 renew the Covenant, and in point of fact it was the 
 old Covenant of 1581, verbatim, that was sworn on 
 
ALEXANDER HENDERSON. 109 
 
 this occasion with added clauses, chiefly from the 
 pen of Alexander Henderson, suitable to the exi- 
 gencies of the time. 
 
 I must not pause to describe at length the signing 
 of the Covenant in Edinburgh on 28th February 
 1638. There is perhaps no scene in all our annals 
 that more readily presents itself to the imagination 
 of a Scotsman than that scene in the church and 
 churchyard of the Greyfriars on that chill afternoon. 
 The sublime prayer of Henderson, standing with 
 upturned face among the bowed heads and melting 
 hearts of the people ; the impressive address of the 
 Earl of Loudon, one of the famed orators of his 
 time ; the pause before the aged Earl of Sutherland 
 advancing fixed his name to the deed; and then 
 the tempest of long pent-up enthusiasm that swept 
 through the multitude, the sobs and tears that 
 broke from strong men as they vowed in the 
 presence of God to promote and defend the liberties 
 of the land and the cause of Christ's Evangel. 
 Men's emotions could not be restrained. Some 
 raised shouts of exultation. Some, as they bent 
 over the flat grave-stone on which the parchment 
 was spread, in signing their names added in the 
 emphasis of their enthusiasm the words " till death." 
 Some opening a vein subscribed the bond in their 
 own warm blood. It was a moment of sacred 
 enthusiasm which, so long as Scotsmen cherish any 
 interest in their land or their race, can never be 
 forgotten. 
 
 After this memorable scene at the Greyfriars the 
 Covenant was received in all parts of the country 
 
110 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 with the same enthusiasm, and soon it was adopted 
 and subscribed by what was virtually the whole 
 population. Scotland had now taken her position, 
 and unless Charles was to concede everything it was 
 a position sufficiently trying and alarming for him. 
 It was manifest that it would not be an easy task to 
 subdue them by the strong hand, for the nation was 
 practically unanimous and full of the utmost enthusi- 
 asm, and then moreover Charles was on bad terms 
 with the Commons of England, and a Scottish war 
 would be full of embarrassments to him. But he 
 had no inclination to yield to the Covenanters ; that 
 would have been too humbling to his pride, and 
 would moreover have been equivalent to surrender- 
 ing his cherished dream of absolute power, which at 
 that moment he was bent more than ever on assert- 
 ing in both kingdoms. The line of policy he adopted 
 was one which unhappily for himself he adopted too 
 often, a policy of deceit. He resolved, in spite of 
 difficulties, to prepare secretly- for war, and mean- 
 while to endeavour to blind the Scots and gain time 
 by means of fair but deceitful pretences. He sent 
 down to Scotland as his agent the Marquis of Hamil- 
 ton, who acting on his instructions endeavoured 
 first of all to conciliate the people through their 
 leaders, Henderson among the rest, and get them to 
 renounce the Covenant. This Hamilton soon saw 
 was altogether impossible. He was plainly told that 
 the first step towards any kind of settlement must 
 be the royal assent to the summoning of a Parlia- 
 ment and an Assembly ; and this at length, all other 
 expedients for delay having been exhausted, Charles 
 
ALEXANDER HENDERSON. Ill 
 
 felt himself compelled to grant. An Assembly was 
 summoned to meet at Glasgow on 21st November 
 1638, and Hamilton was appointed his Majesty's 
 commissioner. 
 
 This Assembly of 1638 will be for ever memorable 
 in the church history of Scotland. The country 
 being entirely and earnestly of one mind, all the 
 efforts of the king and the bishops to influence the 
 election of members of Assembly were futile. The 
 choicest and most influential of the ministers and 
 elders were sent up from all quarters, and perhaps 
 the church has never had a General Assembly more 
 entirely competent for its duties. Since the signing 
 of the Covenant in February Henderson had been 
 busied with all kinds of public duties, penning public 
 documents, negotiating with the agents of the court, 
 arranging and transacting the business of the 
 Covenanting party. Among other duties he had 
 been sent on a mission to Aberdeen and the surround- 
 ing country, where the cause of the Covenant had 
 always been weakest, and he had been able to render 
 very essential service there. When the members of 
 Assembly met in Glasgow there was much and 
 anxious consultation as to which of their number 
 should be called to occupy the Moderator's chair. 
 " Our privy consultation," says Baillie, " was about 
 the Clerk and the Moderator. We were somewhat 
 in suspense about Mr. Alexander Henderson : he was 
 incomparably the ablest man of us all for all things : 
 Ave doubted if the Moderator might be a disputer : 
 we expected then much dispute with the bishops 
 and Aberdeen doctors : we thought our loss great 
 
112 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 and hazardous to tyne our chief champion by making 
 him a judge of the party." In spite of these consider- 
 ations, however, it was felt that in their trying 
 circumstances so much might depend on the Moder- 
 ator that the ablest man they could furnish should 
 be called to that post, and accordingly Henderson 
 was appointed unanimously. He discharged his 
 difficult duties to the admiration of the whole As- 
 sembly. It was universally felt and acknowledged that 
 much of the dignity and success of the Assembly was 
 due to him, to his consummate tact, wisdom, firm- 
 ness, and judicious promptitude in act and speech. 
 
 Notice is taken by Baillie of the remarkable 
 character of the devotional services of the Assembly 
 as conducted from time to time by the Moderator. 
 And it was not in public only that Henderson be- 
 took himself to the throne of grace in regard to the 
 momentous affairs then in progress. Notwithstand- 
 ing his arduous labours during the day he used to 
 meet with some of his more intimate friends in the 
 evening, and sometimes spent with them great part 
 of the night in prayer. No one familiar in any 
 degree with the history of these times can fail to 
 have noticed what a prominent place the party with 
 which Henderson acted gave at all times to prayer. 
 It was so in their more private proceedings, and in 
 connection with all their more important public acts 
 it was their invariable custom to proclaim a fast 
 throughout the church. Though Henderson and his 
 friends were necessarily much engaged with civil 
 business, what chiefly sustained and animated them 
 throughout was their belief that the interests of the 
 
ALEXANDER HENDERSON. 113 
 
 gospel and the spiritual welfare of the people were 
 involved in their contendings. They were pious 
 men, engaged in what they believed to be work for 
 Christ, and they strove to do it in a devout and 
 prayerful spirit. 
 
 The Assembly met in the Cathedral church at 
 Glasgow amidst the greatest excitement and expec- 
 tation. The royal Commissioner, acting on his 
 instructions, did his best to sow dissension among 
 the members, but in vain. At length, perceiving 
 that he could not obstruct the business by other 
 means, he dissolved the Assembly in the king's name, 
 and withdrew. Henderson's dignity and firmness 
 and wisdom did not fail him in this very serious 
 crisis. After an address from him the Assembly 
 adopted a protestation to the effect that notwith- 
 standing the withdrawal of the king's Commissioner 
 they could not consistently with their duty to Christ 
 dissolve the Assembly. They then calmly proceeded 
 with the business, and when at length, after sitting 
 for about a month, the Assembly rose, its work had 
 been thoroughly done. They declared the six 
 Assemblies that had been held since the accession 
 of James to the English throne to have been "unfree, 
 unlawful, and null Assemblies." They declared that 
 prelacy was contrary to the principles of the Church 
 of Scotland, unanimously voted its removal, and re- 
 stored presbyterian government in all its former 
 integrity. They deposed the prelates, Henderson 
 pronouncing their sentence, as Baillie records, in a 
 " very grave and dreadful manner." They renounced 
 the so-called Articles of Perth, the book of Canons, 
 
114 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 and the Service-book. In short, they fully carried 
 out the programme they had proposed to themselves 
 in the National Covenant ; they " recovered the 
 purity and liberty of the gospel as it had been 
 established and professed before the prelatic innova- 
 tions." The Second Keformation, as it has been 
 called, was complete. Henderson, alluding to the 
 demolition of prelacy, dismissed the Assembly with 
 these words : " We have now cast down the walls 
 of Jericho; let him that rebuildeth them beware 
 of the curse of Hiel the Bethelite." 
 
 Among the other acts of this Assembly they 
 agreed to translate Alexander Henderson from 
 Leuchars to Edinburgh, and he was inducted to the 
 church and parish of Greyfriars in the following 
 January. This was done contrary to his own wishes, 
 and in spite of his remonstrances. He loved his 
 people, and no doubt the comparative rest of his 
 country parish seemed desirable to him. But he 
 had now said good-bye to rest for the remainder of 
 his life. 
 
 Soon after the Assembly rose, the Covenanters 
 were called to arms. Charles invaded the country 
 by means both of a fleet in the Forth and an army 
 on the border. Henderson, whose pen had been 
 busy since the rising of the Assembly in the service 
 of his party, accompanied the Covenanting army as 
 one of its chaplains. He took part in the so-called 
 pacification of Berwick, and then, probably for the 
 first time, he came into personal contact with the 
 king. Again in the following year the unhappy 
 monarch renewed the war, and the Scots, not waiting 
 
ALEXANDER HENDERSON. 115 
 
 to be invaded, marched their army into England. 
 Charles found himself unable to meet them in the 
 field, and again Henderson was appointed a Commis- 
 sioner for the Scots to negotiate the treaty of Eipon. 
 The scene of the negotiations was presently changed 
 to London, and they were protracted over the greater 
 part of a year. Henderson thus spent the winter of 
 1640 and the earlier months of the following year 
 on to the end of July in London, and during that 
 time he was in close contact with most of those men 
 whose names are conspicuous in the history of the 
 period, or who were to become famous in the still 
 more troubled times that were approaching. Very 
 anxious negotiations went on between the Scottish 
 Commissioners and the English Commissioners and 
 Parliament with a view to their making common cause 
 against Charles and the royalists. This union it was 
 felt on both sides could not be cordial or stable unless 
 based upon an ecclesiastical reformation in England, 
 and the regulation of ecclesiastical affairs, for this and 
 other weighty reasons, became a matter of urgent 
 importance with the Parliament. Elaborate papers 
 connected with these negotiations were submitted by 
 the Scottish Commissioners, and these were mostly 
 from Henderson's pen. No positive conclusion was 
 reached at this stage, but the way was prepared for 
 the alliance that was subsequently formed, and that 
 produced such memorable results. Henderson had 
 work also of other kinds at this time. He took his 
 turn with his brother ministers, Baillie, Gillespie, 
 and Blair, who also were then in London, in conduct- 
 ing divine service in St. Antholin's church after the 
 
116 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 Scottish manner. Their preaching made a great im- 
 pression on the people of London, so much so that 
 though on Sabbaths the service was nearly continuous 
 from early morning till evening the church could not 
 nearly contain the crowds that flocked to hear them. 
 
 Henderson hurried home to Scotland a week or 
 two before the treaty was actually concluded, in order 
 to be present at the General Assembly that met in 
 the end of July. Circumstances made this a very 
 anxious Assembly, and in spite of difficulties occa- 
 sioned by the fact that Henderson did not arrive till 
 some time after the Assembly had begun to sit, they 
 contrived to obtain his services as Moderator. In 
 view of the negotiations that had taken place in 
 London, the Assembly, at Henderson's suggestion, 
 resolved to draw up a Confession of Faith, a Cate- 
 chism, a Directory for worship, and a platform of 
 Government, in which possibly England and they 
 might come to agree. They appointed Henderson 
 himself to prepare these documents, and gave him 
 leave to abstain from all other duties till he had 
 discharged this onerous task ; but it was far beyond 
 any single man's strength, and, moreover, no formal 
 resolution of the Assembly could relieve Henderson 
 from the burden of public affairs. Nothing definite 
 came of this appointment, but the programme he 
 had suggested was that which was soon afterwards 
 carried out by the Westminster divines. 
 
 King Charles came to Edinburgh during that 
 same summer for the purpose of holding a parlia- 
 ment, and as his policy at the moment was to con- 
 ciliate the Scots, whose favour had become an object 
 
ALEXANDER HENDERSON. 117 
 
 with him as well as with his opponents in England, 
 he regularly attended Henderson's ministry. He 
 also appointed him one of his royal chaplains, and 
 in that capacity Henderson conducted family wor- 
 ship in the palace every morning and evening, so 
 that he had ample opportunities of personal inter- 
 course with the king. Charles liked and respected 
 him, and no doubt he tried upon him those blan- 
 dishments that he had used with such success in the 
 case of men like Montrose. Henderson, however, 
 was another kind of man, and was not to be gained, 
 and Charles on his part, alas for himself ! was as far 
 as ever from being disposed to lend an ear to such 
 counsels as Henderson would have given him. 
 
 Meanwhile the troubles were increasing in England. 
 The parliament abolished prelacy, and resolved to 
 summon an Assembly of divines for the purpose of 
 obtaining a satisfactory settlement of religious and 
 ecclesiastical affairs, and a formal proposal was made 
 to the Church of Scotland to send representatives to 
 that Assembly. Henderson, who since his return 
 from London had been constantly employed as the 
 medium of communication between the Covenanting 
 party and the parliamentary leaders, was nominated 
 by the church as one of her representatives, his 
 clerical associates being Eutherfurd, Gillespie, and 
 Baillie. He was very unwilling, on account of the 
 state of his health, to undertake the duty, protesting 
 that on his previous journey to London he thought 
 he should have died before he arrived there. He 
 seems never to have been a robust man, and of late, 
 although his toils and anxieties had been incessant, 
 
118 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 and no doubt chiefly because of these, his health had 
 been very infirm. At the last General Assembly he 
 had asked leave to retire from Edinburgh because 
 his voice had become too weak to fill any of its 
 churches, and because in Edinburgh he always felt 
 more infirm than elsewhere. The people had 
 strenuously opposed his wishes, and had offered to 
 provide him with a house and garden in any suit- 
 able place in the neighbourhood ; but the Assembly 
 had given him the desired permission, and although 
 he never did formally withdraw from Edinburgh, 
 that was doubtless due to the fact that the public 
 duties that were thrust upon him gave him no 
 leisure to attend to his personal affairs, and, indeed, 
 no opportunity of residing with his people after- 
 wards for any length of time. 
 
 In spite of his reluctance, the church felt that she 
 could not dispense with his attendance at West- 
 minster. His departure, however, and that of his 
 companions was arrested owing to the breaking out 
 of the parliamentary war, and in the meantime 
 Commissioners of state were sent to the king for 
 the purpose of offering the mediation of Scotland, 
 and Henderson was requested both by the Privy 
 Council and the Commission of Assembly to accom- 
 pany them. They went to Charles at Oxford, but 
 their mission was of no further use than to convince 
 all parties that no concession would ever be obtained 
 from the king which those who had taken up arms 
 for freedom could safely accept. The Commissioners 
 returned to Edinburgh persuaded that since neutrality 
 in the war was impossible, and since it was obvious 
 
ALEXANDER HENDERSON. 1 1 9 
 
 that the civil and religious liberties of Scotland, 
 as well as of England, depended on the issue of the 
 struggle, the right and wise course for them to take 
 was to enter into a cordial alliance with the English 
 parliament. 
 
 In the General Assembly of 1643 Henderson 
 was for the third time moderator. Deputies were 
 present from the English parliament, and prelimi- 
 naries were arranged for the adoption by the people 
 of both countries of the so-called Solemn League 
 and Covenant. That memorable document was 
 written by Henderson, and is very nobly expressed. 
 It was adopted by the General Assembly and by 
 the Convention of Estates in Scotland ; and the 
 Assembly having renewed their appointment of 
 Commissioners to act with the Westminster divines, 
 Henderson was instructed to set out at once on that 
 business and to obtain the ratification of the Covenant 
 by the English parliament. During the next three 
 years he lived in London busied in the Westminster 
 Assembly and in watching over the interests of his 
 church and country amidst the troubles and un- 
 certainties of these trying times. 
 
 After the adoption of the Solemn League the 
 ruin of Charles hastened on apace. In the begin- 
 ning of 1645 Henderson was once more called to 
 assist in endeavouring to negotiate a treaty with 
 the king at Uxbridge. But that endeavour came 
 to nothing, and he went back to his work at 
 Westminster. During this time his bodily weak- 
 ness had been increasing upon him, and in the 
 course of 1645 he had repeated attacks of a very 
 C 
 
120 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 painful malady ; but he hardly allowed his public 
 duties to be interrupted. The cause of Christ and 
 of his country continued to need what remained of 
 his strength, and he knew of a rest which could not 
 now be far away. 
 
 In the spring of 1646 the fortunes of the king 
 had at length become desperate. The battle of 
 Naseby had been fought, Bristol had been sur- 
 rendered, and the royal cause was everywhere in 
 ruins. Hardly knowing what to do, Charles had 
 suddenly betaken himself to the camp of the 
 Scottish army then in England, and had thereby 
 produced a state of matters very embarrassing to 
 all parties. It had been becoming more and more 
 difficult for the Scots to see how any issue out of 
 the complicated troubles of the time was to be 
 obtained which should be desirable for them and 
 consistent with their Covenant engagements. The 
 one satisfactory issue seemed to them to be that 
 Charles should be induced to consent to the 
 presbyterian Eeformation, as thereby he might be 
 retained on the throne, which they earnestly 
 desired, and all the interests for which they had 
 been contending might be secured. And for the 
 moment they entertained the hope that perhaps 
 this issue might be possible. Charles's misfortunes 
 must have taught him much, and a new state of 
 things had grown up in England which it was 
 thought must induce him to regard presbyterianism 
 with more favour. And moreover Charles in the 
 Scottish camp began to express himself as if he was 
 open to conviction, and indeed it is quite possible 
 
ALEXANDER HENDERSON. 121 
 
 that he had actually begun to consider whether the 
 best issue for him also was not to make some kind 
 of accommodation with the Scots. He desired that 
 Mr. Henderson should be summoned to confer with 
 him as to the conflicting forms of church-govern- 
 ment, and it seemed to all others interested that 
 Henderson was of all men the most likely to 
 influence the king in the way desired. He left 
 London therefore, though ill and little fitted for the 
 journey, and reached the camp at Newcastle about 
 the middle of May, and immediately began his 
 conferences with the King. 
 
 There were of course personal interviews, but a 
 series of papers also passed between the king and 
 Henderson, in which the points at issue between 
 prelatists and presbyterians were discussed. These 
 documents have come down to us, and are of 
 singular interest, revealing not a little as to the 
 character of both the writers. Such a correspond- 
 ence could however hardly be expected to have any 
 practical issue, and Charles neither became, nor 
 pretended to become, a convert to presbyterianism. 
 Henderson's papers appear to me to be creditable 
 to him in all respects. Mr. Hill Burton, who is 
 never consciously unfair, but who is by no means 
 disposed to be over-indulgent to Henderson or 
 men of his stamp, admits that on this occasion 
 he acquitted himself with credit. " He is true 
 throughout to his cause," he says, " and true without 
 violence or arrogance. To his royal opponent he is 
 respectful, but not servile. ... On the whole he 
 acquitted himself with moderation and good taste." 
 
122 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 This was the last public service in which 
 Henderson was to be engaged. While occupied 
 with it he was very ill, dying in short; but no- 
 where in these papers does he allude to his state, 
 or apologise for his weakness, nor indeed does his 
 work need any apology. The last paper in the 
 series is dated July 16th. Soon afterwards he 
 took ship to Leith, wishing to die at home, and on 
 August 19th he died, at the age of sixty-three. 
 
 During these last weeks, as his illness increased, 
 his friends were wellnigh distracted at the thought 
 of losing him at a time when they seemed to need 
 him more than ever. But death was very far 
 indeed from being unwelcome to him. "Never 
 school-boy more longed," he said, " for the breaking- 
 up, than I to have leave of this world." He had 
 no ties of wife or child to bind him to this life, for 
 he had never married. Nor had he, like some men, 
 any pleasure in the exciting public business with 
 which he was so much engaged. He naturally 
 loved retirement and quiet. " When from my 
 sense of myself," he says in the preface of one of 
 his published'sermons, " and of my own thoughts and 
 ways, I begin to remember how men who love to 
 live obscurely and in the shadow are brought forth 
 to light, to the view and talking of the world; 
 how men that love quietness are made to stir and 
 to have a hand in public business ; how men that 
 love soliloquies and contemplations are brought 
 upon debates and controversies ; and generally how 
 men are brought to act the things which they never 
 determined, nor so much as dreamed of before ; the 
 
ALEXANDER HENDERSON. 123 
 
 words of the prophet Jeremiah come to my remem- 
 brance : ' Lord, I know that the way of man is not 
 in himself." ' No doubt his heart had assented at 
 the time to the truth of what the saintly Eutherfurd 
 had written to him when his stormy public life was 
 just beginning : " The wind is now on Christ's face 
 in this land, and seeing ye are with him ye cannot 
 expect the lee side, or the sunny side, of the brae." 
 It was in no sheltered nook Henderson had been 
 living all these years ; and it was happiness to him 
 with his assured hope in Christ to be withdrawn 
 from his incessant labours and from the strife of 
 tongues, from the evils around him and from evils 
 to come. 
 
 His dust was laid in the churchyard of the 
 Greyfriars. His opponents paid him the compli- 
 ment of sending abroad a lying statement to the 
 effect that he had repented on his deathbed of the 
 part he had taken in public affairs. At the Eestora- 
 tion their poor malice led them to cause the 
 inscription over his grave to be effaced. It was 
 renewed at the Eevolution, but it would have 
 mattered little though he had been left like Knox 
 with nothing to mark the spot where he lies. No 
 hand can ever efface the effects of his work on the 
 history of Scotland and on the character of its 
 people. No single man did more to defeat the 
 hateful despotism of Charles I., and procure us our 
 inheritance of freedom. It is due to him more than 
 to any other man that Scotland since his day has 
 been presbyterian and not prelatic, that the West- 
 minster divines and not Archbishop Laud have 
 
124 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 given us our theology and our church order. No 
 one of her sons has ever served Scotland and the 
 Church of Scotland with more modesty and more 
 entire unselfishness, with greater diligence and 
 fidelity, and few indeed with more ability. While 
 he lived, his chief desire and endeavour were 
 to keep alive among the people the light of 
 Evangelical religion, and he is the man of his 
 generation who did most to pass it on to us. 
 
SAMUEL KUTHERFURD. 
 By A. Taylor Innes, Esq., Advocate. 
 
SAMUEL RUTHEEFUED. 
 
 WHEN you explore an island, it is sometimes an 
 advantage to step ashore at a point opposite 
 to that at which previous voyagers have landed. 
 Most men know Samuel Rutherfurd as the author of 
 Rutherfurd 1 s Letters. Eighteen months ago, when his 
 name was enrolled in this Succession, I knew him as 
 the author of Lex Rex. 
 
 Lex Rex is one of the few important books on 
 constitutional law which Scotland has produced. 
 Bearing the sub-title of "A Dispute for the Just 
 Prerogative of King and People," it is really a dis- 
 cussion of the then pressing question of absolutism. 
 "Whether the King be above the Law, or no," 
 involved in those days the practical questions 
 whether he could modify the law and dispense with 
 its exercise on the one hand, and whether the 
 people, on the other hand, could resist him in 
 defence of it. To solve these questions Rutherfurd 
 had to go to the foundations of politics. Govern- 
 ment in general, he lays it down, is from God, and 
 is by His authority. But the particular form of 
 government is by the voluntary choice of men ; and 
 " the aptitude and temper of every commonwealth to 
 
128 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 monarchy rather than to democracy or aristocracy, is 
 God's warrant and call to determine the wills and 
 liberty of the people to pitch upon a monarchy, hie 
 et nunc, rather than any other form of government, 
 though all the three be from God." It follows that 
 there remains a certain sovereignty in the people, and 
 a right to modify or limit, and, in case of necessity, 
 to recall the power already given, while that power 
 must, of course, be always kept within the law. 
 The right of the king is therefore a fiduciary right : 
 he is trustee for the people whom God, by their own 
 choice, has committed to him. And he is in trust 
 in order to administer the law, not to break it, nor 
 to dispense with it, nor yet to enforce his private 
 interpretation of it. Interpretation is the business 
 of his judges, and judges are ministri regni, non regis : 
 they are not his private servants, but his public 
 officers, responsible directly to God for adminis- 
 tration of the law according to their consciences, not 
 according to his. The king is thus the highest 
 official, and absolute power is contrary to nature, 
 irrational, and unlawful. The people have indeed 
 no right to give up their liberties irrevocably, 
 whether it be to Parliament or to king, to one man 
 or to many. Much of this doctrine has become the 
 constitutional inheritance of all countries in modern 
 times. But in that age the author narrowly 
 escaped, and the book itself did not escape the 
 hands of the common hangman. Yet its theories 
 were the same which in the previous century had 
 illustrated Scotland in the famous book of George 
 Buchanan, and which were continued through the 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFURD. 129 
 
 generation after Eutherfurd by the Informatory 
 Vindication, the Jus Pqpuli, and other manifestoes of 
 the Covenanters, down to that Ee volution of 1688, 
 which gave so great a part of them an historical 
 embodiment. But Eutherfurd's treatise is much 
 longer, and also more learned and more logical than 
 the others; and as we hew our way through the 
 forty-four stiff chapters of Lex Bex, where the rights 
 of man are so strangely intertwisted with feudal 
 royalism on the one hand, and covenanting religion 
 on the other, it is hard to believe that all this was 
 the work of the same author who carelessly flung 
 out upon his age what we still recognise as the most 
 seraphic book in our literature. 
 
 What then was the life of the man who embraced 
 in his life two such extremes 1 
 
 Eutherfurd 1 was born about a.d. 1600, and his 
 
 years thus run parallel with the first sixty of that 
 
 century. From Jedburgh or its neighbourhood, he 
 
 came as a student to the College of Edinburgh in 
 
 1617. Four years thereafter, he passed as Master 
 
 of Arts, and two years later, in 1623, he was elected 
 
 Professor of Humanity in his University. Up to 
 
 this time his studies seem to have chiefly been in 
 
 the region of classics and philosophy, including 
 
 logic according to the system of Eamus. But in 
 
 1 So he uniformly spells his own name on his many title-pages 
 from 1643 to 1659. The fact that in earlier years he had some- 
 times written his name Rutherfoord, and also Rutherfuird (never, 
 so far as I have yet seen, Rutherford), shows that he was aware 
 of a possible variety of spelling, and deliberately chose that form 
 which his life-long adoption (down even to his "Latter Will " in 
 1661), makes binding upon us. In his Latin books, the author's 
 name is quaintly given as Rhaetorfortis (1636), or Retorfortis (1651), 
 
130 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 1625, on account of an accusation of immorality 
 which has never been cleared up, 1 he demitted his 
 chair in the University. What he did during the 
 next two years is not known in detail, but he seems 
 now to have betaken himself more to the refuge of 
 religion, as he certainly did to the engrossing study 
 of theology. Only two years later, at all events, we 
 find him settled as minister at Anwoth, and devoting 
 himself to the work of the pastorate there with a 
 zeal which even he afterwards looked back upon 
 with envy. Rising at three in the morning to pre- 
 occupy the day with study and prayer, he then 
 passed out into his parish, so that men said of him 
 forty years later, " He seemed to be always praying, 
 always preaching, always visiting the sick, always 
 catechising, always writing and studying." His 
 preaching made him the leading churchman in 
 that Galloway district, and his studies resulted in 
 1636 in an elaborate book against the advances of 
 Arminianism, his Exercitationes Apologeticce, published 
 at Amsterdam. But the Scottish Church was by 
 this time in troubles other than theological, and 
 Rutherfurd had always been earnest in her cause. 
 James had restored the bishops, and the Bishop of 
 Galloway under Charles I. now insisted that the 
 minister of Anwoth should conform to the cere- 
 monies. He refused, and after a three days' trial in 
 Edinburgh before a court whose jurisdiction he 
 questioned, he was banished to Aberdeen, and 
 prohibited from exercising his ministerial office 
 
 1 Very fairly stated in Murray's Life of Rutherford: Edin- 
 burgh, 1827. 
 
SAMUEL RUTIIERFURD. 1 o 1 
 
 under pain of rebellion. From September 1636 to 
 February 1638, he remained in the north, flooding 
 Scotland with letters, planning books of theology, 
 disputing with Episcopalian doctors and conscientious 
 Brownists, and drawn more and more into the 
 national conflict which culminated in the Glasgow 
 Assembly of 1638. That Assembly, which swept 
 away the Bishops, of course restored Kutherfurd to 
 Anwoth, but its successor in 1639 appointed him 
 Professor of Divinity at St. Andrews, notwith- 
 standing that he was at the same time called by 
 the Magistrates of Edinburgh to be one of the 
 ministers of this city. In 1639, too, the northern 
 forces crossed the border, with their "brave new 
 colour, stamped with the Scottish arms, and the 
 motto, For Christ's Grown and Covenant, in golden 
 letters." The covenant, so championed, was by 
 this time safe against the tyranny of the king. But 
 a new danger to it, or at least to its narrower inter- 
 pretation, appeared in the views of the Independents, 
 and Rutherfurd, who at first opposed vexing their 
 representatives here by civil or ecclesiastical legis- 
 lation, directed against them in 1642 his "Peaceable 
 and Temperate Plea for Paul's Presbyterie in Scot- 
 land." 1 That same year the Westminster Assembly 
 was called by the two Houses to meet in London, 
 and in 1643 Rutherfurd went up as one of the eight 
 
 1 The title commences in a " modest and brotherly " way, but it 
 of course adds, "Wherein our Discipline is demonstrated to be 
 the true apostolic way of Divine Truth." Two of the chapters 
 contain suggestive matter as to separation in a church and from a 
 church, and the whole subject of scandal and separation is fre- 
 quently handled in our author's writings. 
 
132 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 Scottish Commissioners. He remained till 1647, 
 not only taking a zealous and important share in 
 the work of the Assembly, and preaching in the 
 Scots London Congregation, and occasionally before 
 the Parliament, but active also with his pen. In 
 1644 he published " The Due Eight of Presbyteries," 
 a second learned quarto in favour of our " classic 
 hierarchy " or hierarchy of " classes " or courts. In 
 the same fruitful year he gave to the world Lex 
 Bex. In 1645 he issued his "Trial and Triumph 
 of Faith," a volume of sermons preached first in 
 Anwoth and then in London, on the Syrophenician 
 woman and her story. In 1646 appeared another 
 quarto on the " Divine Right of Church Government 
 and Excommunication," with a brief tractate added, 
 " Of Scandall and Christian Libertie ;" and in 1647, 
 " Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself," 
 being, like the book of 1645, a volume of practical 
 sermons, of course with " some necessary digressions 
 for the times." But he now returned to Scotland 
 and to St. Andrews, where, in addition to the ordi- 
 nary work of a professor of divinity and minister 
 of the city, he became Principal of the New College 
 and Rector of the University. And all this was not 
 enough for him. In 1648 he published a large and 
 learned book against Antinomianism, entitled, "A 
 Survey of the Spiritual Antichrist." It was followed 
 in 1649 by "A Free Disputation against Pretended 
 Liberty of Conscience " and the various abettors of 
 that rising heresy. One of the most respectable of 
 these, Oliver Cromwell, found himself at this time 
 called in the course of Providence, and under the 
 
SAMUEL RUTH ERFURD. 133 
 
 orders of the Honourable House, to interfere -with 
 the affairs of Scotland, and did so with great energy 
 on the fields of Preston and Dunbar. A few months 
 after this last event, about Christmas of 1649, 
 Charles Stuart, afterwards Charles II., appeared at 
 St. Andrews, on his way to be crowned and to 
 swear the covenant at Scone, and we are told that 
 " Mr. Samuell Eutherfurde had a speche to him in 
 Latin, running mutch upon what was the dewty of 
 kings." One duty of kings is to unite their sub- 
 jects, and Charles at this time took into his service 
 not a few of the cavaliers who in Scotland had pre- 
 viously opposed the Covenant — an act which at 
 once split the Church into Eesolutioners and Pro- 
 testers, Eutherfurd being the most irreconcileable 
 of Protesters against that amalgamation, and against 
 General Assemblies which countenanced it. Crom- 
 well disposed of our covenanted king and of his 
 amalgamated supporters somewhat prematurely at 
 Worcester in September 1651, but the feud in the 
 Church lasted to the end of Eutherfurd's life, and 
 long after. In that Worcester year Eutherfurd boiled 
 down part of his divinity lectures into a very tough 
 " Disputatio Scholastica " on Divine Providence, with 
 certain Metaphysical Disquisitions appended, 1 and 
 also declined an invitation to a second Dutch theo- 
 
 1 These Disquisitions fully deserve their epithet, being "De 
 Ente," "De Possihili," "De Dominio Dei in Entia et non entia," 
 etc. In the dedication to his students, he says that it was now 
 nearly fifteen years since he had sung a farewell song to Academic 
 strife, and his hesitation in again pushing out his frail skiff (with 
 no literary sail to help it) into that forgotten sea, is founded on 
 his having "grown old, or at least grown rusty, in the absence of 
 controversy," in desuetudine dispv.tandi ! 
 
13-4 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 logical chair — this time at Utrecht. In 1 655 he wrote 
 a book called " The Covenant of Life opened," of much 
 interest theologically ; and in 1 658 there followed " A 
 Survey of the Survey of that sum of Church Discipline 
 penned by" some Connecticut Independent in the 
 rising New England commonwealth. 1 At least one 
 more book of controversy, an "Examination of 
 Arminianism," in 700 pages, was built up in that 
 St. Andrews study, but it was not given to the 
 world till several years after Eutherfurd's approach- 
 ing death; and the last volume which was pub- 
 lished by himself came out in 1659 under the more 
 attractive title of " Influences of the Life of Grace." 
 In 1660 King Charles was restored, and in 1661 
 the author of Lex Rex, cited to appear at Edinburgh 
 on a charge of high treason, made answer from his 
 deathbed, " I behove to obey my first summons." 
 That summons to a higher bar laid almost the first 
 arrest on the swift keen hurrying life. It gave Euther- 
 furd leisure to die, and while the sky of Scotland 
 was darkening all around, on that chamber in St. 
 Andrews there fell the light that never was on land 
 or sea. 
 
 A crowded life ! a life filled with all the intenser 
 interests of its time, and straining to meet them 
 with the whole armour of culture which the time 
 could give. Now, how came that hard and strenuous 
 
 1 Mr. Thomas Hooker, of whose learning and piety Ruth er fur d 
 speaks in a way honourable to both. The preface also contains 
 the usual protest against the spirit of controversy, "as if that 
 were the choicest verity which the man's own engine " (ingeniurti) 
 " hath taken out of an adversary's hand with his sword and with 
 his bow." 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFURD. 135 
 
 soil to burst into the pale gold blossoms and con- 
 summate flower of love % 
 
 There will always be men to find in the facts of 
 Rutherfurd's life a certain strangeness and incon- 
 gruity. Had these facts been otherwise, — had the 
 author of those Letters been a recluse, an enthusiast 
 or a dreamer ; a man living in advance of his time, 
 or living in a time gone by ; a dweller in soft raiment 
 and in king's houses on the one hand, or clothed in 
 camel's hair and making his lodge in the wilderness 
 on the other, — had any of these been the case, we 
 should not have felt it strange. Had it been even 
 some rude child of nature and of the soil, a plough- 
 man by his Scottish furrow or milkmaid in her 
 Highland strath — him or her we might permit to 
 rise at any moment far above us on the wings of 
 devotion and genius; much like that plain brown 
 bird which makes its bed in the heather at our feet, 
 but soars straight up and up till the very heart of 
 heaven palpitates with its song. All that we could 
 readily conceive. But a politician and an ecclesi- 
 astic, a dialectician and a polemic — how came he 
 to be in our literature like an embodied joy whose 
 race after two centuries is but begun 1 The ques- 
 tion will require a further and discriminating con- 
 sideration. But it may be said at once and on the 
 threshold, that they have strangely forgotten history 
 who question whether an ecclesiastic and theologian, 
 even of the most dialectical order, can be at the 
 same time a singer or a saint. Let us recall only 
 how among the foremost hymn-writers of the middle 
 age stand the great scholastic Aquinas, and the 
 
 y 
 
136 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 great churchman Bernard. And if there are those 
 who decline to receive even facts of history without 
 some suggested reason, let them be content with a 
 story which has floated down from the same shadowy 
 time : — 
 
 It was evening in the convent, and one brother 
 still knelt in his cell. Day after day, with fasting 
 and prayer, he had waited — hour after hour of this 
 day he has waited and watched, to see, in some 
 transcendent manifestation, a vision of Christ. And 
 now, at last, a light, a form, a face ! it is the Lord 
 Himself ! But at that moment comes sharp and 
 clear the convent bell, — the bell that calls the poor 
 and hungry to be fed at the Convent door, and calls 
 him, the servitor appointed for that task, to dispense 
 the dole. Shall he go, or stay ] Slowly, sadly, but 
 with unre verted face, he leaves his room ; and not 
 till his whole work is done, not till the last feeble 
 and querulous and thankless applicant has been 
 served as often as he seems to need, not till then 
 does he set his feet to return. But at last with slow 
 feet and sinking heart he does return to his desolate 
 room, and as those feet touch the threshold, lo ! again 
 the gleam, the glory, the Vision ! And as he prostrates 
 himself in adoring gratitude, this voice comes to 
 him, " Because thou wentest, I stayed. Hadst thou 
 stayed, I should have departed ! " 
 
 But we must look more narrowly into our problem. 
 For, whatever may have been true of other men, 
 there is a certain paradox in the case of Butherfurd. 
 It is with him no mere collision between opposing 
 duties. There was indeed no opposition in his case 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFURD. 137 
 
 between the work to which he was called externally, 
 and his own inward impulses and desires. The con- 
 trast which at once strikes every one in the life 
 of Eutherfurd was the index of a deeper contrast in 
 his character. But that inward schism was strong 
 and startling. It looks sometimes as if there were 
 two men in him. One was the man whom all know 
 in his letters, — ardent, aspiring, and unworldly, 
 impatient of earth, intolerant of sin, rapt into the 
 continual contemplation of one unseen Face, finding 
 his history in its changing aspect and his happiness 
 in its returning smile. The other man was the 
 intellectual gladiator, the rejoicing and remorseless 
 logician, the divider of words, the distinguisher of 
 thoughts, the hater of doubt and ambiguity, the 
 scorner of compromise and concession, the incessant 
 and determined disputant, the passionate admirer of 
 sequence and system and order, in small things as 
 in great, — in the corner of the corner of an argu- 
 ment, as in the mighty world outside with its orbits 
 of the Church and of the State. 
 
 Now this twofold activity separates Eutherfurd 
 from a particular type of excellence, by no means 
 uncommon in our age. We may all have known 
 men in whom a tender, aspiring, and somewhat femi- 
 nine nature was combined with a certain limitation 
 on the intellectual side. The limitation may have 
 been original and connate. Or it may, on the other 
 hand, have been superinduced and cherished (as for 
 example by a passion for orthodoxy in matters of 
 science or orthodoxy in matters of religion), with a 
 corresponding growth of fixed and hard lines in the 
 
138 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 inind. Yet hard and strict as we may choose to 
 think the mental environment of such men, the 
 moral altitude to which they rise is often simply 
 admirable. It seems sometimes almost as if they 
 were constructed on the princij)le of the fountain, — 
 the narrower the orifice, the higher the jet. I have 
 said there is something feminine in such characters, 
 and they certainly have in many cases a great 
 attraction for the feminine nature and a great 
 sympathy with it. Eutherfurd had both of these. 
 Among the devout and honourable women of Scot- 
 land were his most intimate and most faithful friends ; 
 and when he sits down, as he sometimes does, to pour 
 out his heart to a new correspondent whom he has 
 never personally met, because they are both, as he puts 
 it, "father's children," you are not surprised to 
 discover that the new-found child is generally of the 
 more appreciative sex, a sister of the one family 
 rather than a brother. Of course in all such cases, 
 and in this case eminently, the great attraction is 
 the positive one, the moral height and purity of the 
 man. But where such purity of heart is combined 
 with fixed ideas and fast lines in the mind, the 
 combination has an apparent strength which attracts 
 and impresses the timid onlookers. Ordinarily, how- 
 ever, it does so by appealing to the reposeful 
 and conservative instinct. But in Eutherfurd the 
 case is not quite so. There is nothing reposeful 
 about his intellect, and no atmosphere of conservatism 
 about the man. His logic is active, his orthodoxy 
 is aggressive, and his life is a kind of double whirl- 
 wind, the currents of its lower or intellectual region 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFURD. 139 
 
 circling incessantly according to their own laws, with 
 a certain independence of all that agitates with 
 storm or splendour the spiritual heights above. Now 
 this fact, that Eutherfurd's logic is masculine and 
 aggressive, rather than feminine and conservative, 
 seems to me not only interesting but important. For 
 if it deprives us of the power of comparing him with 
 individual men around, it at once forces upon us a 
 parallel with our country as a whole. 
 
 Scotland differs from many other countries, and 
 in particular from England, in being more restless, 
 more argumentative, and more controversial. And 
 this is not simply because we are more self-willed, 
 more determined to carry our point and have our 
 own way. That also may be true. But there is a 
 mental as well as moral reason for it. Scotsmen 
 delight far more in the exercise of thinking for its 
 own sake, and they do so when the thinking takes 
 the form of abstract speculation as well as of prac- 
 tical discussion. It follows that, as a nation, we 
 have a passion for the form as well as the matter of 
 truth — sometimes, perhaps, rather for the form than 
 for the matter. It follows, too, that there is a 
 difference in the method and order of our mental 
 procedure. In Scotland the mind acts upon its 
 subject : in England the subject acts upon the mind. 
 And the result is not always in our favour. In 
 Scotland there is at all times more thinking ; but 
 perhaps in England there is, upon the whole, more 
 thought. At all events the slow, helpless, instinctive 
 way in which the English mind lies open to a subject 
 or an idea, and lets it grow gradually into its just 
 
140 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 proportions, produces in the long-run some riper and 
 richer intellectual results than any which our more 
 active manipulation has as yet to show. Now, these 
 national characteristics existed in Scotland two cen- 
 turies ago as they do now, and Eutherfurd was an 
 eminent illustration of them. He was a born 
 logician, and dealt far less with matter than with 
 form. In his study he lived in a world of words ; 
 and the words to him represented ideas which 
 constrained his conscience and his heart. Mean- 
 time the world of facts outside was changing very 
 rapidly, and the changing facts did not fit into his 
 unchanging form. But so much the worse for them, 
 and for those whom they led astray. 
 
 And this leads us to Eutherfurd as a controver- 
 sialist. As such he had some great excellencies. 
 His acuteness, candour, courage, industry, learning, 
 conscientiousness and magnanimity, no less than his 
 love of country and fear of God, come out in every 
 one of his volumes. But he had some great short- 
 comings, closely connected with that of which I have 
 already spoken. I do not conceive myself qualified 
 to deal with his properly theological discussions. 
 But his continual attacks upon some probably very 
 good men of the time, who were held to be " theo- 
 retical Antinomians," on the one hand, and on some 
 on the other such as in my boyhood I have heard dis- 
 criminatingly defended as "serious Arminians," all 
 show one defect. It was a shortcoming of the age, 
 and one in which our century has an enormous 
 advantage. Eutherfurd, in dealing with opponents, 
 never put himself in their place. He scarcely ever 
 
SAMUEL KUTHEKFUKD. 1 4 1 
 
 tried to do it, and does not seem to have acknow- 
 ledged it as a duty of controversy. But it is a duty, 
 and it is at least an enormous advantage, in dealing 
 with opponents, to seek to occupy their point of 
 view ; in particular, to occupy that point of view in 
 which their conclusions commence to branch off from 
 what we hold in common. To put one's-self in an 
 opponent's place is the way, first, to get all the good 
 from him that we can, and secondly, to do all the 
 good to him that we can. It is of course not the 
 logical way of dealing with him. But it is quite 
 consistent with good logic ; and it keeps before us 
 certain considerations which mere logic is sure to 
 omit. For example, all the necessary consequences 
 of an opinion are deducible from it by logic. But 
 all those consequences are not to be charged upon 
 the man who holds the opinion, as if he held them 
 also. Eutherfurd continually omits to notice this, 
 and on one occasion when it is suggested that it is 
 not charitable to impute to certain English writers 
 the extravagances of American familists, he roundly 
 answers that seeing these Englishmen openly held 
 the same theoretically Antinomian doctrines, " they 
 are to be charged with all those, till they clear them- 
 selves or refute those blasphemies." Another illus- 
 tration of the same tendency is his treatment of the 
 question of the fundamentals of religion. He is full 
 of suggestive distinctions upon this ; but he has no 
 hesitation in including among matters of faith, " 1. 
 Fundamental points; 2. Superstructions builded 
 upon fundamentals ; 3. Circa fundamentalia, things 
 about matters of Faith." Are wrong opinions as to 
 
 B 
 
142 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 these last sins ? His answer is, that " God hath in 
 His word determined all controversies not funda- 
 mental, as well as fundamental ;" and the not believ- 
 ing of what God hath revealed must be a sin and 
 transgression of a divine law. 1 The extreme awk- 
 wardness of this only comes out when we remember 
 Rutherford's views as to toleration and the Civil 
 Magistrate. "There be divers opinions," he says, 
 " which are not against points fundamental, which 
 being professed are sins against our brother and the 
 churches. Ergo, many opinions not against points 
 fundamental, if professed, are censurable by the 
 Church, and punishable by the Magistrate." 2 He 
 instances the destruction of Sodom as a revealed 
 truth, the denial of which in a Christian country 
 would give the criminal prosecutor a right to inter- 
 fere. Now all this has a bearing, to which we shall 
 afterwards refer, on the critical events of Rutherford's 
 time, and the want of success of our country in deal- 
 ing with that time. But at present I adduce them 
 as singular illustrations of that blind passion for 
 logic which led him to ignore the different values of 
 facts outside, and invariably to deal with opponents 
 from his point of view rather than from theirs. 
 
 One remark, however, I must make, and it goes 
 deeper than mere illustrations. It is a little hard to 
 ask a man to put himself in the place of his 
 opponents, who has no power of putting himself in 
 the place even of his friends. And I am afraid this 
 must be said of Rutherfurd. He is anything but a 
 
 1 Due Right of Presbyteries, p. 364. 
 - Ibid. p. 363. 
 
SAMUEL EUTHEEFUED. 143 
 
 hard or unfeeling man : he is even a thoroughly 
 unselfish man ; but he is an unselfish egotist. That 
 is to say, he does not put himself in the place of 
 others, Even his sympathy with them is merely a 
 pouring forth of his own feelings in accordance with 
 what he assumes must be their state of mind. He 
 does not inquire what that state of mind is, nor does 
 he, as some men do, feel it by a certain instinct. 
 He does not understand the people themselves. 
 He does not even try to understand them. He 
 does not make you understand them. Rutherfurd's 
 Letters, had they come from the hands of some men, 
 would have been a wonderful amphitheatre of the 
 Scotsmen and Scotswomen around him in that 
 very living time. As it is, it is a gallery of dummies. 
 We do not know one of them, and it is doubtful 
 whether he knew one of them.— Take a closer circle 
 still. He was twice married ; his mother lived with 
 him for six years after his first wife's death ; and 
 his second wife is said by a competent witness to 
 have been " a woman of such worth, that I never 
 knew any among men exceed him, nor any among 
 women exceed her." Yet of these three women that 
 indefatigable pen reveals absolutely nothing. He 
 had nine children, and his letters extend from three 
 years after the birth of the eldest, to six years after 
 the birth of the youngest. But we know more of 
 the birds who built in the kirk of Anwoth, than of 
 the bairns who played in the manse. Now all this 
 reveals a real defect and a serious incapacity. In his 
 family and in his parish, at least, it is plain that 
 Rutherfurd did not give himself to understand those 
 
 y 
 
144 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 around him. He was, no doubt, in bis private 
 life careful and exemplary. He was more — be was 
 impressive. But tbat means that he impressed 
 others. It does not mean that others impressed him. 
 It is plain indeed that they did not, and that he did 
 not greatly desire that they should, or feel any 
 necessity that they should. He never tvaited for 
 others to influence or to impress him. I am not 
 prepared to say that he had not the humility necessary 
 for that. But he had not the intellectual and moral 
 patience for it, though he had the moral unselfish- 
 ness. And so he poured himself forth on all around 
 indiscriminately, giving but not receiving, teaching 
 but not taught. 
 
 Now if that is a real defect even in a man's private 
 life, it is a most serious disability when he comes to 
 deal with public affairs. I do not believe in the 
 right of any man to pronounce judgment on his time, 
 or the movements of his time (and Rutherfurd is 
 often very strong and peremptory in such judgments), 
 except upon condition of his first understanding his 
 time. And I do not see how any man is to under- 
 stand his time, to know what it has and what it 
 lacks, what the State craves at his hands, and what 
 Israel ought to do, unless he first studies to under- 
 stand his time — studies it, that is, with sympathy, 
 with tolerance, and with insight — at least, with that 
 respectful consideration for the views and wishes of 
 men around him, with which he feels it right and 
 natural that men around him should study him. 
 We shall, I think, find that the want of this, to a 
 large extent, explains the very partial success which 
 a man with the high qualities of Rutherfurd had in 
 
 i 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFURD. 145 
 
 public affairs. But what I wish to remark at present 
 is, that it goes far to explain the abiding inward 
 schism — the permanent split and severance in the 
 man himself — which struck us at the first. Many 
 young men commence with such a disjunction in 
 their life ; with a keen interest in ideals and abstrac- 
 tions, but wholly unconnected with reality as it 
 exists around them. But they are not left to that 
 unreal state of things. Dealing with others, meeting 
 with others, mixing with others, in family life, in 
 friendly life, in public life, is God's ordinance for this. 
 It is the bridge by which the gap was intended to be 
 spanned. But no bridge is of use unless you cross 
 it. Even a divine ordinance is worthless, so long as 
 men do not bend heart and mind to its obedience. 
 And as Eutherfurd intellectually dealt with form 
 rather than with matter, so in practical life he 
 persistently dealt with ideas rather than with men. 
 
 There is one indication of this too significant not 
 to be noticed. I allude to the style of metaphor 
 which at the present day interferes with the useful- 
 ness of all his popular writings. It is very strange 
 that Eutherfurd, who early in his life had received a 
 sharp lesson as to carelessness in this region, should 
 be so uniformly and frankly incautious. No doubt 
 others in his age (and it was a grave and manly age) 
 used the like phrases. And in other times men like 
 the great St. Bernard, in his sermons on the Song, 
 have employed a similar vehicle for their thoughts, 
 and used it with much greater elaboration. But 
 Bernard, statesman and world-mover as he was, was 
 after all a man of the cloister, and had the disabilities 
 of his profession. Eutherfurd, as a man immersed 
 
146 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 in ordinary life, should have had quicker instincts of 
 common sense. But the truth is, Rutherfurd was 
 not immersed in ordinary life. He was in the world 
 but not of it in more senses than one. To say the 
 whole thing in a word, no one can give Samuel 
 Rutherfurd his place in a Succession stretching over 
 all the centuries without recognising that he was in 
 v nature and temper a monk. He was a monk in a 
 Scottish parish, and in a Scottish manse. He had 
 all the unworldly purity and aspiration of the 
 cloister ; but he had also somewhat of its incapacity 
 to discern that which is safe and seemly for those 
 without the walls. 
 
 And surely this special point is but a small frag- 
 ment of the great parallel which we are bound to 
 recognise in this case with the cloister. We have 
 nothing in Scotland equal to the conjunction found 
 in Rutherfurd of intense scholasticism with intense 
 devotion. It was St. Thomas and St. Francis under 
 one hood. But still it was a conjunction, not a 
 union. And during the long ages of the Latin 
 Church precisely the same conjunction was found in 
 many a solitary, who for lack of the fusing influences 
 of life was never able to unite the two sides of his 
 being. And so it was with Rutherfurd. We began 
 with saying that there were two men in him. I 
 have now to say that the two men — the two halves 
 of the man — were never made into one effective 
 whole. To the very last the scholasticism and the 
 devotion, however closely intermixed, are never 
 fused together ; in Bacon's phrase, they are iron and 
 clay — " they cleave, but they do not incorporate." 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFURD. 147 
 
 All this, I think, was necessary to be said. But 
 history, and the evangelical succession which flows 
 through history, are more interested in the other side, 
 and, of course, in the first place, in the Letters. A 
 book which even in our own century has been edited 
 by men so representative as Thomas Erskine of 
 Linlathen and Dr. Andrew Bonar does not need 
 analysis or reproduction. But it is singular to what 
 an extent its power has been acknowledged by men 
 not all of the same school. The "Remains" or 
 table-talk of Richard Cecil, the English divine of a 
 previous generation, are a little forgotten now, but 
 in masculine strength and hard-headedness they are 
 rather above than below the taste of the present age. 
 Yet as to Rutherfurd's Letters he breaks out in one 
 place, " It is one of my classics. Were truth the 
 beam, I have no doubt that if Homer, and Virgil, and 
 Horace, and all that the world has agreed to idolise, 
 were weighed against that book, they would be 
 lighter than vanity. He is a real original." Take 
 a greater man still, Richard Baxter, Rutherfurd's 
 contemporary and opponent. He once said to 
 Principal Carstairs, " Hold off the Bible, such a book 
 as Mr. Rutherfurd's Letters the world never saw the 
 like." 1 All I shall say of them at this point is, that 
 they represent his whole life. There is a great gush 
 from Aberdeen in the year 1637; but sixty-five 
 previous, and eighty which follow that date, cover the 
 thirty-four years between his ordination and death. 
 And they are all like each other, and all like him, 
 
 1 " Which," our honest Principal added, "was a great token and 
 evidence to me of Mr. Baxter's true piety." 
 
148 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 Our next step therefore is from his letters to his ser- 
 mons. Eutherfurd was one of the most famous men 
 of the pulpit in his day : " one of the most moving 
 and affectionate preachers in his time, or perhaps in 
 any age of the Church." And his sermons were as 
 incessant as his letters. When a professor no less 
 than when a pastor, in London and St. Andrews as 
 well as in his own parish by the Solway, throughout 
 his life indeed, with the one exception of the time 
 when he was a banished minister in Aberdeen, he 
 was " always preaching." Take of the two sermon 
 volumes he published that which is less known, the 
 book on " Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to 
 Himself." Ou almost the first page which I open I 
 find this sentence : — 
 
 " Would sinners but draw near [to Christ], and 
 come and see this king Solomon in his chariot of 
 love, and behold his beauty, the uncreated white and 
 red in his countenance, he would draw souls to him. 
 There is omnipotency of love in his countenance ; 
 all that is said of him here are but created shadows : 
 ah ! words are short to express his nature, person, 
 office, loveliness, desirableness. What a broad and 
 beautiful face must he have, who with one smile and 
 one turning of his countenance looks upon all in 
 heaven and all in the earth, and casts a heaven of 
 burning love, east and west, south and north, 
 through heaven and earth, and fills them all !" 
 
 That is the exact note which we all remember as 
 most frequent in the Letters, but indeed everything 
 that is characteristic of them is to be found in some 
 part of this one volume of London Sermons. I 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFURD. 149 
 
 cannot forbear instancing another passage, a prose 
 monody, which recalls the music of a well-known 
 poem by the present laureate : — 
 
 " If it be so, that death finding so precious a 
 surety, as Christ's princely and sinless soul, did make 
 him obey the law of the land, ere he escaped out of 
 that land : what wonder that we die, who are born in 
 the land of death 1 All things under the moon must 
 be sick of vanity and death, when the heir of all 
 things, coming in amongst dying creatures, out of 
 dispensation, by law must die. If the Lord's soul, 
 and the soul of such a Lord die and suffer wrath, then 
 let the fair face of the world, the heavens, look like 
 the face of an old man full of trembling, white hairs, 
 and wrinkles — then let man make for his long 
 home, let time itself wax old and grey-haired. 
 Why should I desire to stay here, when Christ 
 could not but pass away ! — And if this spotless soul 
 that never sinned was troubled, what wonder then 
 many troubles be to the sinner ? Our Saviour, who 
 promiseth soul-rest to others, cannot have soul-rest 
 himself; his soul is now on a wheel sore tossed. And 
 all the creatures are upon a wheel, and in motion ; 
 there is not a creature since Adam sinned, sleepeth 
 sound. Weariness and motion is laid on moon and 
 sun, and all creatures on this side of the moon. 1 
 
 1 Mr. Tennyson, on the other hand, complains that 
 
 ' ' While all things else have rest from weariness, 
 We only toil." 
 
 But this is in the person of a lotus-eater, whose sympathy with 
 the bondage of the creation was perhaps less penetrating than that 
 of Rutherfurd or Paul. 
 
150 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 Seas ebb and flow, and that 's trouble ; winds blow, 
 rivers move, heavens and stars these five thousand 
 years, except one time, have not had six minutes' 
 rest; living creatures walk apace toward death; 
 kingdoms, cities, are on the wheel of changes, up and 
 down ; mankind run, and the disease of body-trouble 
 and soul-trouble is on them, they are motion-sick, 
 going on their feet, and kings cannot have beds to 
 rest in. The great All of heaven and earth, since 
 God laid the first stone of this wide hall, hath been 
 groaning and weeping for the liberty of the sons of 
 God. The figure of the passing-away world is like 
 an old man's face, full of wrinkles, and foul with 
 weeping : we are waiting till Jesus shall be re- 
 vealed from heaven, and shall come and wipe the 
 old man's face. Every creature here is on its feet, 
 none of them can sit or lie. But Christ's soul now 
 is above trouble, and rests sweetly in the bosom of 
 God. Troubled souls, rejoice in hope." * 
 
 Forty years before Samuel Eutherfurd preached 
 these words in St. Andrew's kirk in London, he fell 
 into a well when playing with other children in their 
 native parish of Nisbet. They ran away for assistance, 
 and on their return they found the boy sitting on a 
 green knoll, unhurt but dripping, and to their question 
 how he had got out he answered, " A bonnie white 
 man came and drew him out of the well !" It was 
 no doubt some fair-haired shepherd of Teviotdale 
 who passed that way ; but those who heard and 
 read his preaching in after days loved to think that 
 the bonnie white man was a stranger from the fair 
 country, in that garb which is " candor here and 
 1 Christ Dying, p. 13. 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFURD. 151 
 
 lustre there," 1 sent not only to draw the young 
 Kutherfurd out of the pit, but to put anew song in 
 his mouth, or at least to touch the child's lips with the 
 wild honey of the unknown land which was yet afar 
 off. 2 For through thirty years of preaching in later 
 days, a fragrance of heaven clung to his lips. All the 
 accounts agree in this, and agree, too, as to the centre 
 of that constant attraction. "I went to St. Andrews," 
 said an English merchant in the Protectorate, " and 
 there heard a little fair man; and he showed me 
 the loveliness of Christ." An old Morayshire 
 minister who survived the Ee volution, looking back 
 over his lifetime, said, " I have known many great 
 and good ministers in this church, but for such a 
 piece of clay as Mr. Kutherfurd was, I never knew 
 one in Scotland like him, to whom so many great 
 gifts were given." How did that piece of clay 
 strike contemporaries % Other observers give us (in 
 Wodrow's Analeda) what amounts to a description 
 of him. It is a pen-sketch which is invaluable, for 
 no portrait of Kutherfurd has come down to us. 
 " He had two quick eyes, and when he walked it 
 was observed that he held aye his face upward and 
 heavenward." " He had a strange utterance in the 
 pulpit, a kind of shreigh that I never heard the like." 
 " Many a time I thought he would have flown out of 
 the pulpit when he came to speak of Jesus Christ." 
 We can still see him — the little fair man, with the 
 falsetto in his voice, and the quick heavenward eyes 
 — heavenward, even when he is pelting Mr. Baxter 
 
 1 Herrick's "White Island." 
 
 2 So the legends of other child-poets — especially of Horace, also 
 an animosus infans — "two quick eyes." 
 
152 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 or pounding Dr. Crisp, but when he leaves them and 
 all things else to speak of his Master within that 
 shining veil, it seems now as if he would himself 
 follow those upward eyes — the whole man is on 
 tiptoe for the sky ! 
 
 Here then we have the Eutherfurd of the letters 
 almost bodily in his sermons. But that is not the 
 only thing that is there. The other Eutherfurd is 
 in the sermons too. When he stepped into his 
 pulpit in Anwoth or St. Andrews, his congregation 
 knew they were to get from him all that was in him. 
 And his sermons contain, — almost every one of his 
 lectures at least contains, — not Eutherfurd the poet 
 and evangelist alone, but Eutherfurd the theologian 
 and systematic, the casuist and ductor dubitantium, 
 the debater and controversialist, the churchman and 
 preacher to the times. And all this a congregation 
 in those days expected and demanded. These were 
 all subjects in which they took a deep interest, and 
 they insisted upon their being discussed, and dis- 
 cussed in the pulpit. Whatever may be the improved 
 rule of the days to come, it was never the custom of 
 Scotland in the time gone by (as it has become to a 
 large extent in England, and still more in Germany) 
 to feed grown men on Sundays with spoon-meat or 
 with slops. " They gave the people of their best;" 
 they fed them with meat as well as milk, not on 
 Thursday, Friday, and Saturday alone, in books 
 and magazines, in news-rooms and in lecture-rooms, 
 but on the day which God had made, and in that 
 house of God which, whatever else it is, was built 
 to be the pillar and ground of the truth. I do not 
 
SAMUEL RUTHEKFUKD. 153 
 
 say that they always did this wisely. I do not say 
 at present that they did it successfully. I do not 
 even say that they did it upon a right method ; that 
 the outward and inward, the life of religion and the 
 science of religion were always joined together 
 in those days on any true internal principle of 
 connection. But they were joined. They were 
 connected. They were continually connected, in 
 every book and in every sermon. Heart and head 
 were united even in the popular and pulpit theology 
 of our fathers, more heart and more head too than 
 we in modern days count ourselves worthy to receive. 
 The theological and controversial digressions which 
 fill half the sermons of the age, may not have been 
 necessary in that form. But in some form they were 
 necessary, for they represented the working of the 
 purest minds of that time upon the subjects which 
 most attract the human soul at all times. To the 
 uneducated man in modern days, Arminianism and 
 Antinomianism are mere big-words which he finds 
 himself rather tempted to look down upon. But to 
 the student of history, they stand for permanent 
 tendencies in the nature of man, tendencies which it 
 is no more possible for the human being to escape 
 than it is for the inhabitant of the tropics to escape 
 from the regions south and north of the equator. 
 Whether the theological equator runs exactly where 
 our seventeenth century put it, or whether it was 
 such a fixed line at all as was then supposed, may be 
 questioned. But the intellectual excursions, the 
 controversial raids which were made on both sides, 
 largely fulfilled the purpose in that day of a mental 
 
154- THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 discipline. They carried out into detail that 
 masculine conception of religion which was never 
 wanting even to the most emotional of the Puritans, 
 but which Rutherfurd especially might have been 
 tempted to forget. He never forgot it ; and nothing 
 is clearer than that his remembrance was due, not 
 to his own intellectual tendencies alone, but to his 
 sense also of the permanent spiritual needs of him- 
 self and his people. I have said earlier in this 
 lecture that he had no great power of putting 
 himself in the mental position of others. It is the 
 more necessary to observe that that did not prevent 
 him from feeling their great common needs and 
 sympathising with their great common sorrows. 
 " When one arm is broken off and bleeds, it makes 
 the other bleed with it," were the words with which 
 he called for a pen to write to David Dickson on the 
 death of a child. He had the pastor's eye for those 
 that were in trouble, and the priest's heart for all 
 that were out of the way. " He was extremely and 
 almost excessively charitable " to the poor, and he 
 used to say that it had never been better with him 
 than when in Anwoth he sat on the mortar-stone at 
 his own door speaking about their souls to the beggars 
 who gathered around. Rutherfurd, as a pastor, lived 
 for others, not for himself, and (to return to the 
 point in hand) the long discussions which he intro- 
 duced into his sermons were not only intended to 
 meet the needs of his people, but were largely suc- 
 cessful in meeting them. The form of those discus- 
 sions may have been too scholastic and sj^stematic, 
 but scattered through them all there is very much 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFURD. 155 
 
 not only of stimulus for the mind, but of nourishment 
 for the heart and guidance for the life. 
 
 From all this I think it follows that the contrast 
 which now strikes us as existing between Rutherfurd 
 in his letters and Rutherfurd in his books was not 
 nearly so visible to men of his own time. It was 
 bridged over by the Rutherfurd of the sermons. But 
 it is high time to say also, that the conjunction of the 
 two things — of the two sides — in this one life is 
 largely accounted for by the necessities of the times. 
 Rutherfurd, as we saw, lived a quiet life in his own 
 parish until the questions which afterwards rent the 
 State in pieces invaded his retirement. The most 
 peace-loving parish minister may consent to take an 
 interest in public affairs when these threaten to 
 banish him, as they did some ministers whom we 
 remember, from their manses and their work. But 
 Rutherfurd did not need such a personal stimulus. 
 He was at no time a man of "a private spirit ;" and 
 henceforth there was no repose for him, because there 
 was none for his Church. Charles and Laud, the 
 royal supremacy and a more than English liturgy, 
 came all down upon us together : what was Scotland 
 to do 1 Some Scotsmen knew what to do. There 
 were fools and fribbles in plenty, but there were also 
 men who could do and dare and suffer, and take 
 burden for others. But the burden grew heavier 
 and more complicated. It was a simple thing for the 
 Church to become free, and to refuse to be governed 
 by civil proclamation or by statute. But what if it 
 wished to be free, and at the same time to coerce 
 others by civil statute and proclamation ? How were 
 
156 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 those whom the bishops had oppressed as sectaries 
 in Galloway to subjugate the sectaries of Aberdeen 1 
 The Scottish Covenant was a noble confession, but the 
 imposition of it on all holders of office was very like 
 a forcing of conscience. And all this difficulty be- 
 came aggravated fourfold when England came in. 
 Even to have a common sovereign was no easy 
 problem for two nations, one of whom held it its 
 duty to defend, and the other to decapitate him. 
 But the church problem was more complicated still. 
 Both peoples belonged to the catholic visible church, 
 in which Rutherfurd earnestly believed, and they 
 were bound to profess the Reformed faith together. 
 The church in both lands ought to stand on one 
 platform : and they set about constructing it. But 
 some men refused to stand on that platform, and 
 insisted on their Christian right to stand separately. 
 Was this to be tolerated ] Of course it broke up 
 the whole fair fabric of uniformity. And that fabric to 
 Rutherfurd seemed very fair. He went to England 
 with a glowing sense of the unity of the Christian 
 Church on the one hand, and with all his Scottish 
 ideas of national oneness on the other ; and now he 
 who would have been content to be "a common 
 rough barrow-man in Anwoth," seemed called 
 upon to build the very temple of the Lord. His 
 imagination caught flame : year after year he gave 
 himself and every faculty to that magnificent under- 
 taking ; and in volume after volume we may trace 
 the eager anticipation that breaks forth in the motto 
 to his " Due Right of Presbyteries : " " Who is she 
 that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFURD. 157 
 
 clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with 
 banners !" 
 
 And he failed. For once in our history, Scotland 
 had an opportunity of establishing its own polity 
 and its own ideas on the other side of the border, and 
 it failed. We did our best ; or, at least, we did our 
 utmost : and did not succeed. In vain did Euther- 
 furd point out that " in God's matters there be not, 
 as in grammar, the positive and comparative degrees : 
 there are not here, truth, and more true, and most 
 true. Truth is in an indivisible line, which hath no 
 latitude, and cannot admit of splitting." 1 English- 
 men listened, and did not exactly contradict. But 
 they found that truth, as it was seized hold of by 
 their own minds, was a good deal split up, and many 
 of them were disposed to keep fast hold each of that 
 particular strand which God had put into his grasp, 
 and to let their neighbours do the like. Much was 
 accomplished in the way of union, no doubt. We 
 got a Confession and a Catechism. But the authori- 
 tative erection of the Presbyterian polity, with 
 Assemblies to govern it, was too much for England, 
 joined to us though it was, not only in a "civil 
 league," but also in a "religious covenant." And 
 soon that noble League and Covenant, binding 
 together the stronger and weaker nations, became a 
 danger for Presbyterianism in Scotland. "What a 
 fearful judgment of God is this upon us," says honest 
 Baillie, " that, we thought, should have bound the 
 nations unseparably, is like to be the first separation 
 of them." We crowned our young king at Scone, 
 1 Dedication of hue Right of Presbyteries. 
 C 
 
158 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 with the Covenant in one hand, and in the other his 
 claim to the crown which his father had just laid 
 down with his life at "Whitehall. England and its 
 Lord General were forced in self-defence to attack 
 us, and field after field "with blood of Scots em- 
 brued," were but the beginning of our discomfiture. 
 Cromwell, indeed, having given us hard blows, 
 followed them up with soft and rather incoherent 
 words. We were not incoherent, even in defeat. 
 We demonstrated in the clearest and most logical 
 way that we were right, and that our platform was 
 the only true, orderly, sensible, and scriptural way 
 of managing a church and a nation. The Lord 
 General did not always answer, and when he did he 
 was often barely grammatical : only sometimes there 
 was a pathetic outburst that came near to the heart 
 of the matter. "I beseech you, in the bowels of 
 Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken I" 
 We sincerely thought otherwise ; and the Common- 
 wealth, recognising the painful honesty which afflicted 
 us, took the mildest measures that were possible. 
 But they were effectual measures. It shut up our 
 Assembly and Parliament. It suspended our national 
 independence. Not only had we failed in what we 
 attempted in England, we now lost also that which 
 we had possessed in Scotland. And Rutherfurd 
 accepted it as absolute failure. " The Lord," he says 
 in one of his latest letters, " hath removed Scotland's 
 crown, for we owned not His crown. We fretted at 
 His catholic government of the world, and fretted 
 that He would not be ruled and led by us in 
 breaking our adversaries, and He maketh us to suffer 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFURD. 159 
 
 and pine away in our iniquities, under the broken 
 government of His house." And yet that time was 
 prosperity compared with what followed. Ruther- 
 furd, like many religious men who have no gift 
 of understanding their age, was apt to speak 
 peremptorily and even prophetically about it ; and 
 he made many bad shots in consequence. 1 But it 
 needed, as he himself said when he lay down to die, 
 no gift of prophecy to see that dark days were then 
 coming. They came, and they deepened into the 
 "killing time;" and it was all the result, direct or 
 indirect, of our failure in the days of the Common- 
 wealth. England then needed our considerate 
 sympathy, if ever a nation did, and we did not give 
 it. And we needed the support and strength of 
 England, though we knew it not. So the time 
 passed, unredeemed, and when the Restoration came, 
 it was our act as truly as the act of our southern 
 neighbours, and the results fell most heavily on us. 
 
 Now, one of the collateral questions suggested 
 by our subject is this. Assuming that all this public 
 action in Rutherfurd's time, and, in particular, on 
 the part of Rutherfurd himself, resulted in failure, 
 was it a necessary failure 1 Was it a mere misfortune 
 and fatality *? Or was it a grave blunder and mis- 
 take, such as a later age, an age which is yet to come, 
 
 1 In the dedication to his sermons published in 1645, he 
 describes the temper of the age he lived in as "the declining 
 temper of the world's worst time." It was the time which those 
 who seek to occupy his exact standpoint have always looked back 
 to as not only the one golden age of the Church of Scotland, but 
 as the only time when the world around it seemed prepared to join 
 its triumph. 
 
160 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 might avoid? Carlyle gives a certain answer to 
 this question, from the English side, and from the 
 point of view of a biographer. " With Oliver 
 Cromwell born a Scotsman, with a Hero King and a 
 unanimous Hero Nation at his back, it might have 
 been far otherwise " than it was. " With Oliver 
 born Scotch, one sees not but the whole world might 
 have become Puritan," and Puritanism he has defined 
 on the previous page, somewhat too favourably, as 
 " the attempt to bring the divine law of the Bible 
 into actual practice in men's affairs on the earth." 
 We may admit that Cromwell made a mistake in 
 not being born a Scotsman, as we certainly made an 
 immense mistake in not ardently adopting him into 
 the family. But let us leave persons, and consider 
 how we might have dealt with principles. I cannot 
 help thinking that if Scotland and England in that 
 age had simply broken the yoke of arbitrary power 
 in Church and State, and got rid of the Koyal 
 supremacy in ecclesiastical matters, and of Prelacy as 
 founded upon it, there was no insuperable obstacle 
 thereafter. The difficulty was that we had to acknow- 
 ledge the rights of minorities and of individuals, who 
 were, as we thought, in the wrong, or who had not 
 yet attained to be in the right. That difficulty, so 
 far as regarded the great question between Inde- 
 pendents and Presbyterians, might, I think, have 
 been overcome, if not in the way in which it was 
 actually smoothed over in England by Cromwell, 
 by some similar plan of mutual forbearance. But 
 it could not be done without abandoning that testi- 
 mony against toleration in which not Rutherfurd 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFURD. 161 
 
 only, but the whole Scots Commissioners joined. It 
 could scarcely be done without abandoning, even in 
 Scotland, the right, dear to both sides, of forcing 
 people in a parish to attend their parish church, 
 and of treating Quakers and Separatists as enemies 
 to the civil law. More than that. It could not, I 
 think, be done, or at least it could not be carried 
 out as a real and permanent experiment, without a 
 change in the whole attitude of mind of the men of 
 that day — certainly in the whole attitude of Ruther- 
 furd's mind — to the doctrinal system, as well as 
 the ecclesiastical. It was not necessary that they 
 should give up their own belief either in the one 
 system or the other, or even that they should cease to 
 hold them up as the models to which men must 
 ultimately come. But what were they to do with 
 those who in the meantime did not attain to 
 them 1 Rutherfurd's answer generally was, " You 
 must believe in them, for they are God's truth." 
 But sometimes, when in a conciliatory mood, his 
 answer seems to be, " You must believe in them, or 
 reject them, and refute them ; and here am I and 
 a hundred others ready to discuss them with you 
 from morn till night." And he was by no means 
 prepared for the answer, which was in the hearts 
 of many and on the lips of some, "No, we will do 
 neither the one nor the other. We will not accept 
 your system. And we will not reject it. We will 
 not even consider it. We have our own religious 
 questions which interest us, and we must attack 
 them under God's leading and in our own way." 
 There were many " Seekers " in London and in 
 
162 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 England in those days, besides the sect known by 
 that name, and our Scots Commissioners did not err 
 much when they accused the whole people whom 
 they met of being tainted with the same insubordinate 
 spirit. Where they did err was in not seeing first 
 that such objectors were standing on their right — \ 
 their absolute and God-given right ; and, secondly, 
 that the prevalence of such a spirit, if it brought its 
 own dangers along with it, was also a sign of infinite 
 hope. Rutherfurd, of course, would not see the 
 hope : he saw only the dangers to his system. He 
 and his friends pressed their views upon the 
 English people with the same pertinacity and almost 
 the same authority with which they would have 
 ignored the rights of a younger generation of their 
 own countrymen (for every new generation comes 
 fresh into the world, and a Scotsman is born as 
 ignorant as John Milton). With all my belief in 
 Presbyterianism, — nay, because of my belief in 
 Presbyterianism as the inevitable future of the self- 
 governing English race and of the Church universal, 
 — I sympathise with the whole of the indignant 
 remonstrance : — 
 
 "Dare you for this adjure the civil sword 
 To force our consciences which Christ set free, 
 And ride us with a classic hierarchy 
 Taught ye by mere A. S. and Rutherford?" 
 
 And so Rutherfurd rhymes for ever to the "civil 
 sword," and his failure in that crowning public aim 
 is recorded in literature as in history. In other 
 things — even in other public things, and in the great 
 Scottish duty of his time — he did not fail. But 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFURD. 163 
 
 even on our side of the border, as in the continued 
 and repeated breach with the Resolutioners, the 
 same temper reappears which we have seen in his 
 dealings with England and the Independents, — 
 followed here also by unfortunate results. And 
 in both cases the failure is clearly connected with 
 something which we have sought to trace in the 
 man. We must ask therefore with regard to the 
 man, as we have done with regard to the enterprise 
 in which he was engaged, Was failure necessary % 
 Once when he was preaching, and had suddenly left 
 the dissensions of the time to speak of the scent of 
 the fair " Rose of Sharon," the Laird of Glanderston 
 was heard to say in a loud whisper, " Ay, now you 
 are right — hold you there ! " And undoubtedly 
 that loud whisper has been the verdict of posterity. 
 It is perhaps substantially true, but it must be taken 
 with a certain modification of meaning. If any one 
 thinks that Samuel Rutherfurd should have confined 
 himself to that side of his nature, or that side of his 
 preaching, the answer is that it was impossible — 
 impossible and undesirable. His public duties and 
 relations to others, his position as a minister and a 
 Scotsman, nay, as an educated man and a thinker, 
 made it impossible. He could not do it without 
 ignoring the whole world of duty on the one hand, 
 and the whole world of truth on the other. But if 
 what is meant is, that this was the highest and the 
 central thing in Rutherfurd, it is most true, and it 
 instantly raises another question. It is the business 
 of that which is highest to rule, not to reign merely, 
 but to govern — why did it not seem to do so 
 
164 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 here % All Rutherfurd's energy in other directions 
 only amounts to talent, while in his letters he is a 
 religious genius. But genius is a plastic and a vital 
 power; its prerogative, and therefore I think its 
 duty, is to unify that which is broken, and to quicken 
 that which is dead. Was it not possible for Ruther- 
 furd, first as a theologian and then as an ecclesiastic, 
 to have worked out from his own centre — from that 
 glowing apprehension of Christ and the presence of 
 Christ which filled him 1 Was it not the business 
 of that central fire to fuse the cold masses around 
 it, that so they might all flow into their native 
 mould and assume their appropriate form 1 
 
 It might have been, perhaps : and to some extent 
 it ought to have been : but it was not even attempted. 
 That internal connection was not the manner of the 
 age. Had it been attempted we might have lost 
 something, and also gained. Rutherfurd's words 
 might no doubt have thus been pruned, and his 
 soaring " thoughts condensed within t his soul and 
 changed to purpose strong." And that theological 
 purpose would have left him no time for one-half of 
 his work in controversial detail. But on the other 
 hand his life would not make some men in modern 
 days feel as if they were handed a harsh and astrin- 
 gent cup, with a lump of sugar at the bottom. And 
 above all, it would not have presented that aspect in 
 his own time. That would have made room for 
 a diffused and pervasive charity to Royalists, brother- 
 hood with Independents, reconciliation with Resolu- 
 tioners. Had that astonishingly discursive intellect 
 been only concentrated, so as to unfold that which 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFUED. 165 
 
 was in Kutherfurd's own heart — nay, to unfold Him 
 who was in it in the form in which He was there, I 
 believe the result might have been memorable ; — 
 though doubtless after all it might have failed to 
 reconcile that distracted time. 
 
 Ah ! we find it so easy to be wiser than our 
 fathers were. You see we have this great advantage 
 over them : we can vary and amend the questions 
 which are to be answered, whereas they had to 
 answer them as they were put by Providence, and 
 as they were bequeathed to them by their fathers. 
 I have suggested that the question of principle even 
 with regard to that crowning of the edifice which 
 our fathers looked for in England, was not quite 
 incapable of solution. But practically, as all those 
 external questions came up to be dealt with by them, 
 it was about the most hopeless business that ever 
 heroic men broke their hearts upon. You know 
 Carlyle's way of putting it : " Given a Divine law of 
 the Bible on the one hand, and a Stuart King, 
 Charles First or Charles Second, on the other ; alas, 
 did history ever present a more irreducible case of 
 equations in this world 1 " But the personal diffi- 
 culty was the smallest part of it. With any English 
 monarch, with any British legislature, the question 
 would have been equally hopeless to men encom- 
 passed with the hard traditions of feudalism and 
 ecclesiasticism by which our fathers were bound. 
 And no one, I think, who looks in detail into that 
 history can doubt the unselfishness and magna- 
 nimity with which, amid the cruel necessities of 
 the time, they gave themselves to their work, ever 
 
 / 
 
166 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 laying the heavier burdens inward and outward 
 upon themselves, and seeking to be foremost only in 
 suffering for the public weal. But if we have any 
 difficulty about the estimate, there is an easy way 
 to test it. We have got out of all those strict and 
 strait necessities, we have no rigid barriers imposed 
 upon us from the present or the past, we are en- 
 lightened and free — what use do we make of our 
 advantages 1 Yes, freedom is a great virtue, but 
 " you of the virtue, how strive you 1 " Ah ! it is 
 not for us in our languorous time, when every door 
 opens at a touch, and every barrier falls with a 
 push, it is not for us, so backward to act and so 
 slow to suffer, to speak with easy lips of the failure 
 Of those of old ! 
 
 But did they fail after all ? Rutherfurd thought 
 he did, and said so. But men are sometimes 
 not the best judges of that which themselves have 
 done, not even at the close of life. God does 
 not always pay wages on the Saturday night; 
 and he never pays in the precise coin which we 
 have taught ourselves to expect. It is strange 
 to see how many of the men who have done the 
 greatest things in this world were brought to the 
 verge of some good land, and perhaps saw it with 
 their eyes, but were not allowed to go over. Luther's 
 life ended when his Germany was broken and miser- 
 able, and we can understand how even that strong 
 soul was heard to say long before, " The world seems 
 to me like a decayed house, David and the prophets 
 being the spars, and Christ the main pillar in the 
 midst that supports all." And again, " Ah ! how 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFURD. 167 
 
 willingly would I now die, for I am faint and over- 
 wrought, and at this time I have a joyful and 
 peaceable conscience." Scotland was never in a 
 more torn and distracted state than when John 
 Knox lay down to die, calling upon "his dear 
 brethren " to pray with him " that God in his mercy 
 will please to put an end to my long and painful 
 battle " ..." for as the world is weary of me, so am 
 I of it." So it was with the last days of Henderson, 
 and of Eutherfurd, as well as of thousands of our 
 unknown countrymen whose record is on high. All 
 these Scotchmen, though they obtained a good 
 report through faith, received not the promise, God 
 having provided some better thing for us, that they 
 without us should not be made perfect ! But they 
 planted the strong roots of our liberties, and we at 
 the best can but reap the harvest of a field which 
 other men have tilled and sown. Those who come 
 after us to the latest age will gather the fruit not of 
 the prayers only, but of the efforts, of men who two 
 hundred years ago passed away with unsatisfied 
 eyes from their broken work, the hot heart stilled 
 after the storms of life, and the seal of death upon 
 the faithful brow. 
 
 But Eutherfurd at least did not pass away with 
 unsatisfied eyes. The seal set upon his closing life 
 shines before us all, and no man can read failure 
 there. He does not fail, who, when earthly things 
 are breaking and crumbling around him, finds him- 
 self suddenly in the centre and heart of all, and 
 sees the face which his whole life has sought to see. 
 For this after all was what that life had sought. 
 
168 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 Not earthly peace, not success or honour, not the 
 prosperity even of his church, not wisdom even divine, 
 was what he had desired. He sought above all 
 things to see one Face which is yet unseen. And 
 because he desired this one thing, and sought it, with 
 no consciousness of desert, yet in painful paths of 
 uprightness, the vision was not denied to him which 
 other eyes have missed. How often from many a 
 dull house in Scotland and many a decorous manse 
 has gone up the cry, " Lo, these many years do I 
 serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy 
 commandment : and yet — thou never gavest me a 
 kid ! " But this man, who thought much of Christ 
 and little of others and less of himself, and who 
 often transgressed even that eleventh commandment of 
 love 1 in passionate striving after an unwise ideal — 
 this man had the ring put upon his hand and shoes 
 upon his feet, and was feasted in Christ's palace of 
 Aberdeen ! So it had been even of old, and now 
 when he had nothing left to desire but that which 
 he had always desired, his Desire came to him un- 
 sought. I do not quote those last words which 
 have passed in our time into Christian song. And 
 I abstain now, as before, from citing the letters in 
 which his latest aspirations are so often anticipated. 
 But I take instead a passage from the volume of 
 sermons which we did not formerly quote, his Trial 
 and Triumph of Faith, or rather from its Dedica- 
 tion : — 
 
 1 The tradition is well known, of Archbishop Usher appearing 
 incognito at the " mortar stone " of the Anwoth Manse, and when 
 the guest was asked by Rutherfurd at the nightly catechising 
 how many commandments there were, he answered, " Eleven ! " 
 
SAMUEL EUTHERFURD. 169 
 
 " There is not a rose out of heaven, but there is a 
 blot and thorn growing out of it, except that one 
 only rose of Sharon, which blossometh out glory. 
 Every leaf of that rose is a heaven, and serveth ' for 
 the healing of the nations ;' every white and red in 
 it, is incomparable glory ; every act of breathing 
 out its smell, from everlasting to everlasting, is spot- 
 less and unmixed happiness. Christ is the outset, 
 the master-flower, the uncreated garland of heaven, 
 the love and joy of men and angels. But the foun- 
 tain-love, the fountain-delight, the fountain -joy of 
 men and angels is more ; for out of it floweth all the 
 seas, springs, rivers, and floods of love, delight, and 
 joy. Christ cannot tire or weary from eternity to 
 be Christ ; and so, he must not, he cannot but be an 
 infinite and eternal flowing sea, to diffuse and let 
 out streams and floods of boundless grace. Say that 
 the rose were eternal ; the sweet smell, the loveliness 
 of greenness and colour must be eternal. Oh, what 
 a happiness, for a soul to lose its excellency in His 
 transcendent glory ! What a blessedness for the 
 creature, to cast in his little all, in Christ's matchless 
 all-sufficiency ! Could all the streams retire into the 
 fountain and first spring, they should be kept in a 
 more sweet and firm possession of their being, in the 
 bosom of their first cause, than in their borrowed 
 channels that they now move in. Our neighbourhood, 
 and retiring in, to dwell for ever and ever in the 
 fountain-blessedness, Jesus Christ, with our borrowed 
 goodness, is the firm and solid fruition of our eter- 
 nal happy being. Christ is the sphere, the con- 
 natural first spring and element of borrowed drops 
 
170 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 and small pieces of created grace. The rose is 
 surest in being, in beauty, on its own stalk and 
 root : let life and sap be eternally in the stalk 
 and root, and the rose keep its first union with 
 the root, and it shall never wither, never cast its 
 blossom nor greenness of beauty. It is violence 
 for a gracious soul to be out of his stalk and root ; 
 union here is life and happiness; therefore the 
 Church's last prayer in canonic Scripture is for 
 union, ' Amen : Even so, come, Lord Jesus.' It 
 shall not be well till the Father and Christ the 
 prime heir, and all the weeping children, be under 
 one roof in the palace royal. It is a sort of mystical 
 lameness, that the head wanteth an arm or a finger ; 
 and it is a violent and forced condition, for arm and 
 finger to be separated from the head. The saints 
 are little pieces of mystical Christ, sick of love for 
 union. The wife pf youth, that wants her husband 
 some years, and expects he shall return to her 
 from over-sea lands, is often on the shore; every 
 ship coming near shore is her new joy ; her heart 
 loves the wind that shall bring him home. She 
 asks at every passenger news : ' Oh ! saw ye my 
 husband? What is he doing] When shall he 
 come 1 ? Is he shipped for a return?' Every ship 
 that carrieth not her husband, is the breaking 
 of her heart. The bride, the Lamb's wife, blesseth 
 the feet of the messengers that preach such 
 tidings, 'Kejoice, Zion, put on thy beautiful 
 garments, thy King is coming.' Yea, she loveth 
 that quarter of the sky, that being rent asunder and 
 cloven, shall yield to her Husband, when he shall 
 
SAMUEL EUTHEEFUED. 171 
 
 put through his glorious hand, and shall come riding 
 on the rainbow and clouds to receive her to himself." 
 After all, Rutherfurd's life and death speak with 
 one voice, and the central and characteristic thing 
 in him is also the highest. Essentially, his life is 
 not a theory of Christ. It is not even a picture 
 of Christ. It is a mere window — a window which 
 enabled him not so much to show that Face to 
 other men as before all things and above all things to 
 gaze upon it himself. Men have complained that 
 the window is colourless. It is enough for a window 
 that it be transparent, provided only that there be 
 a living face outside which gives itself to be seen. 
 The window does not make the Face, and the Face is 
 all that the gazer desires. 1 It is indeed this merely 
 transparent and passionate intuition which gives 
 Rutherfurd his place in the Evangelical Successsion 
 of the world, and will continue to do so, so long as 
 men believe that Christ is not dead who died for 
 men. This is that in Rutherfurd which is for all 
 time. Other things more for his time, and perhaps 
 
 1 May I venture to quote a few sentences from an old book which 
 Dr. John Duncan taught me to love : — 
 
 "There is a certain peculiar strain, or (if I may so call it) 
 heroic temperament of love, which, wherever it is found, makes it 
 belong, as unalienable, unto God. The very nobleness of it entitles 
 him to it . . . Other passions, like other rivers, are most liked when 
 they calmly flow within their wonted banks ; but of Seraphic Love, 
 as of Nilus, the very inundations might be desirable, and his over- 
 flowings make him the more welcome . . . Seraphic love (whose 
 passionateness is its best complexion) has then most approached 
 its noblest measure, when it can least be measured. For he alone 
 loves God as much as he ought, that, loving him as much as he 
 can, strives to repair the deplored imperfection of that love, with 
 an extreme regret to find his love no greater." — Seraphic Love : a 
 Letter by the Hon. Robert Boyle. 
 
172 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 for ours, have led us, as they led him, too far afield^ 
 and from all of these we, like him, now come back 
 to that memorable close. We come back to learn 
 how, during a lifelong communion with the unseen, 
 
 "That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, 
 Or decomposes but to recompose, 
 Becomes my universe that feels and knows ! " 
 
 " Life," says the same great modern poet, " is just 
 our chance of the prize of finding love," and Euther- 
 furd's native country needs not less but a great deal 
 more of this general doctrine. But within that 
 generality there is one particular suggestion with 
 which we may close. The name in this Succession 
 with which I have been inappropriately intrusted 
 seems to me fitted to remind the world at large, and 
 especially our utilitarian Scotland, that the love of 
 God is the crown and goal of all things, and that 
 religion is not a means only but an end. True, it 
 is also the greatest of all means. " No heart is pure 
 that is not passionate ; no virtue is safe that is not 
 enthusiastic." Yet amid all our lifting of levers 
 and turning of wheels, let us remember that religion 
 is not mere motive power, nor is it a matter of 
 police inward or outward. It is not mere machinery 
 of salvation or mere means even of holiness ; religion 
 is its own end, and love exists for love. And love 
 is better than consistency, better than good sense, 
 better than good taste, better than moderation, 
 better even than wisdom. All these are noble gifts. 
 They are all the gifts of love. But love is better 
 than all the gifts of love. 
 
AKCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 
 
 By W. G. Blaikie, D.D., LL.D., 
 
 Professor of Apologetics and of Pastoral Theology, 
 New College, Edinburgh. 
 
ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 
 
 THE " Evangelical Succession," as I understand it, 
 denotes a chain of spiritual magnates, kings of 
 men, higher by head and shoulders than their fellows, 
 who have appeared from age to age since the beginning 
 of the Christian era, and have given a new impulse 
 to Christian thought, a new direction to Christian 
 activity, or a new warmth to Christian devotion. 
 
 Ever and anon, as the ages roll past, comes forth 
 one of these royal figures, himself an incarnation of 
 the Gospel, arresting attention by his holy gifts and 
 force of character, and devoting all that he is and 
 has to the building up of the kingdom of God. It 
 is not that he has espoused the evangelical creed as 
 one might espouse a theory in science, or a doctrine 
 in politics ; it is rather the creed that has seized 
 hold of him ; or, to speak more correctly, that 
 great Being whose grace the creed embodies and 
 proclaims. His creed is not an adjunct, separable 
 from him by any sharp process of division ; it is 
 part of his very being, the vital substance of his soul. 
 However different the members of this great suc- 
 cession may have been in nationality, in education, 
 
176 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 in church connection, in social surroundings, in 
 individual gifts and qualities, they have been alike in 
 the most vital experiences of their souls. Starting 
 with the publican in his prayer, " God be merciful to 
 me a sinner," — at the close of their career they all 
 join the white-robed company, and give glory and 
 honour and power to Him that sitteth on the throne, 
 and to the Lamb. Perhaps another point of resem- 
 blance might be hinted : while they lived, their 
 fellows seldom knew their worth, but after they 
 were gone, a halo gathered round their memory, and 
 some who had spitefully used them hastened to 
 build their tombs. 
 
 How is this "Evangelical Succession" to be 
 accounted for 1 How comes it that so many kingly 
 men have been apprehended in this way by the doc- 
 trines of Divine grace, and that their lives have been 
 so remarkably moulded by them ? It is not what 
 we should have naturally expected. That so many 
 of the most noble members of our race should 
 have identified themselves with a creed that 
 humbles man to the dust, depreciates all his natu- 
 ral attempts to please God, and throws him empty 
 and helpless on the mercy of a Saviour, is the very 
 opposite of what naturally we should have been 
 disposed to look for. To gender an attitude of 
 soul so little in accord with the natural temper of 
 strong high-minded men demands some remark- 
 able agency outside themselves. If there be no such 
 spiritual agency apprehending the souls of men ; if 
 all spiritual life is a mere natural evolution of 
 elements that are there from the beginning, then 
 
ABCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 177 
 
 some of the greatest of our race have fallen into an 
 error as unaccountable as it has been ruinous. If 
 it be not true that we are supernaturally saved by- 
 Christ and sanctified by the Spirit, the " Evangelical 
 Succession " have, one and all, been dupes and fools. 
 Gifted with clearer vision than other men, they 
 have plunged into deeper darkness. Higher in 
 moral purpose, in the loftiness of their character 
 and aims, they have been the subjects of a more pro- 
 found delusion. Born leaders of the world, they 
 have proved blind leaders of the blind, and both 
 have fallen into the ditch. 
 
 Does it not give a better explanation of the pheno- 
 menon to hold that these kingly men are products of a 
 Divine plan, — a plan that, however to us it may seem 
 stationary, is always advancing by slow but steady 
 stages towards its final consummation 1 Would it 
 not seem that, from the first, God designed to plant 
 along the ages a great series of witnesses to those 
 sublime truths which the world needs most to know, 
 but which it is slowest to learn 1 — that as of old, 
 in times of threatened invasion, lights were kindled 
 along a great chain of heights in our country, till at 
 last the alarum reached the remotest parish, so, along 
 the ages, a series of mighty men have been raised to 
 commanding positions, that they might hand on, as 
 it were, to future generations, those sublime truths 
 that concern most the welfare of men and the glory 
 of God 1 The agreement of the " Evangelical 
 Succession " in their views of Divine grace, and in 
 their attitude towards it, is certainly not to be 
 accounted for by any process of evolution from 
 
178 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 within, — it has come to pass because the men have 
 been sj)ecially taught of God. It is a law of science 
 that the coincidence of a great number of adapta- 
 tions proves design. An isolated adaptation might 
 have no such origin, but the coincidence of many is 
 a conclusive proof of plan and purpose. The 
 appearance of one great evangelical champion might 
 go for little. But when a remarkable succession 
 appears, — in Apostolical times, in mediaeval times, 
 in Keformation times, and in modern times, — each 
 displaying a banner with substantially the same 
 inscription, all summoning the attention of men to 
 the same great method of grace and redemption, the 
 same great work done on Calvary, the same great 
 foundation of everlasting peace and blessing, that is 
 surely an indication of the finger of God, who never 
 leaves Himself without a witness, controlling the 
 tides of history as really as the movements of the 
 spheres. 
 
 The reality of the Divine influence in the case of 
 the " Evangelical Succession " becomes more appa- 
 rent when we observe that many of the men were 
 drawn, by some invisible power, out of the course of 
 life and teaching which would otherwise have seemed 
 to be natural to them. No man seemed more bound 
 to Judaism than Paul. One would have thought 
 that for a polished, intellectual nature like Augus- 
 tine's, the realms of philosophy and literature would 
 always have been the congenial home ; but after long 
 tossing about, and much earnest inquiry after 
 truth, he consecrates himself to Christ, and becomes 
 an apostle and champion of grace. Luther and 
 
ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 179 
 
 Knox had been reared in the Church of Kome, and 
 before they could even understand their life-work, 
 the mighty spell had to be broken which naturally 
 bound them to the papacy. Science was the natural 
 delight of Chalmers ; and even after he was engaged 
 in the Christian ministry, the objects of that ministry 
 appeared to him to be trivial and easy; it was a 
 power from heaven that broke in on his slumber, 
 and revealed to him those "magnitudes" which 
 swayed his life thereafter, — " the littleness of time 
 and the vastness of eternity." In the case of Leighton 
 there was likewise an interference, though of another 
 kind, with what might have seemed the natural 
 course of his life. There were many strong cham- 
 pions of evangelical truth in Scotland in his time. 
 The whole national movement in favour of the 
 covenants undoubtedly rested on that basis. But 
 Leighton did not feel at home with these men. 
 There was something in their tone and ways of work 
 that repelled him. He allowed himself in public 
 life to fall into the hands of a set of men who were 
 the bitter enemies of evangelical religion. But 
 notwithstanding these disturbing forces, he re- 
 mained to his last hour and with his whole heart 
 profoundly attached to the doctrines of the grace of 
 God. Facile though he was in ecclesiastical arrange- 
 ments, and blind to the spiritual bearings of the 
 course he followed, he would rather have cut off his 
 right hand than consciously have mutilated the 
 scheme of grace. 
 
 Leighton comes unexpectedly upon the scene, in 
 saintly beauty, in the troubled history of our country 
 
180 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 in the first half of the seventeenth century. We know 
 little of his family or of his education, or of the his- 
 tory of his spiritual life. The only relatives that 
 we know much of, his father and his brother, were as 
 unlike to himself, and as unlike to one another, as can 
 well be imagined. His father, a Puritan and Pres- 
 byterian of the severest type, seems to have possessed 
 every hard quality that his son wanted, but none of 
 the gentle saintliness in which he shone. His 
 younger brother, Sir Elisha as Burnet styles him, 
 Sir Ellis as he is called by others, was a man of low 
 character, a proselyte to the Church of Rome, and a 
 courtier of Charles II. — one who lived as much for the 
 world as Robert Leighton lived above it. We long, 
 but long in vain, to know something of his mother. 
 It would be most instructive to know how the 
 spiritual life dawned upon Leighton ; not probably 
 by any sadden burst, interrupting a youth of sin, but 
 silently and tenderly like the morning dew, drawing 
 him like Josiah to the Lord while his heart was yet 
 tender, early neutralising the germs of original sin, 
 and so purifying and beautifying his nature that 
 even in early youth, like M'Cheyne, he had all the 
 mellowness of a spiritual father. Bishop Burnet's 
 account of him has been often quoted, but no sketch 
 of his character would be complete without it : — 
 
 "He was the son of Dr. Leightoun, who had in Arch- 
 bishop Laud's time writ Zion's Plea against the Prelates, for 
 which he was condemned in the Star Chamber to have his 
 ears cut and his nose slit. He was a man of a violent and 
 ungoverned heat. He sent his eldest son Robert to be bred 
 in Scotland, who was accounted a saint from his youth up. 
 He had great quickness of parts, a lively apprehension, with 
 
ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 181 
 
 a charming vivacity of thought and expression. He had the 
 greatest command of the purest Latin that ever I knew in 
 any man. He was a master both of Greek and Hebrew, and 
 of the whole compass of theological learning, chiefly in 
 the study of the Scriptures. But that which excelled all the 
 rest was, he was possessed with the highest and noblest 
 sense of divine things that I ever saw in any man. He 
 had no regard to his person, unless it was to mortify it by a 
 constant low diet, that was like a perpetual fast. He had 
 a contempt both of wealth and reputation. He seemed to 
 have the lowest thoughts of himself possible, and to desire 
 that all other persons should think as meanly of him as he 
 did himself ; he bore all sorts of ill usage and reproach 
 like a man that took pleasure in it. He had so subdued the 
 natural heat of his temper that in a great variety of 
 accidents, and in a course of twenty-two years' intimate 
 conversation with him, I never observed the least sign of 
 passion, but upon one single occasion. He brought him- 
 self into so composed a gravity, that I never saw him laugh, 
 and but seldom smile. And he kept himself in such a 
 constant recollection, that I do not remember that ever I 
 heard him say one idle word. There was a visible tendency 
 in all he said to raise his own mind, and those he conversed 
 with, to serious reflexions. . . And though the whole course 
 of his life was strict and ascetical, yet he had nothing of 
 the sourness of temper that generally possesses men of that 
 sort. He was the freest from superstition, of censuring 
 others, or of imposing his own methods on them possible. 
 So that he did not so much as recommend them to others. 
 He said there was a diversity of tempers ; and every man 
 was to watch over his own, and to turn it in the best 
 manner he could. His thoughts were lively, oft out of the 
 way and surprising, yet just and genuine. And he had 
 laid together in his memory the greatest treasure of the 
 best and wisest of all the ancient sayings of the heathens 
 as well as Christians, that I have ever known any man 
 master of : and he used them in the aptest manner 
 possible. . . . His preaching had a sublimity both of 
 
182 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 thought and expression in it. The grace and gravity of 
 his pronunciation was such, that few heard him without a 
 very sensible emotion. I am sure I never did. His style 
 was rather too fine; but there was a majesty and beauty 
 in it that left so deep an impression that I cannot yet 
 forget the sermons I heard him preach thirty years ago." l 
 
 It is instructive to mark that this rare beauty 
 and saintliness of character grew up on Calvinistic 
 soil. Among other things which this course of 
 lectures on the " Evangelical Succession " is designed 
 to show, one is, that a profounder and more com- 
 plete Christian life may be formed on the basis of 
 the Augustinian or Calvinistic theology than on 
 any other. The theology that ascribes all good 
 in man to the grace of God; the theology of hymns 
 like "Bock of Ages," and "Jesus, lover of my soul," 
 is that which penetrates deepest into the heart, and 
 fills it most with the things of God. Some might 
 look for more practical impulse to systems that 
 ascribe part of the efficacious power to man him- 
 self. But in such cases, the effect is comparatively 
 superficial. If Calvinistic theology works accord- 
 ing to its nature, it makes men look to the Divine 
 fountain for all that is truly good. It reveals a 
 profound difference between all that is born of the 
 flesh and that which is born of the Spirit. The 
 desire is created for a process by which our whole 
 nature shall be transformed by the power of God. 
 The heart is thrown open for all the influences of 
 heaven — for the Sun of righteousness to shine on 
 it, for the breath of heaven to quicken it, for the 
 1 History of his own Time, vol. i. p. 186, ff. 
 
ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 183 
 
 whole power of the Spirit to purify, strengthen, and 
 impel it heavenwards. If all this were not in 
 Calvinism, it would be hard to be a Calvinist. We 
 know well that there are perversions of the doctrines 
 of grace, — ugly and repulsive, and not so rare as one 
 might wish ; corruptio optimi fit pessima — " the best 
 wine turns to the sourest vinegar ;" but cases like 
 that of Leighton reveal the true foundation of spiri- 
 tual excellence ; they lay bare the process by which 
 even those that " have lien among the pots, become 
 like the wings of a dove covered with silver, and 
 her feathers with yellow gold." 
 
 We proceed to sketch briefly the career of 
 Leighton. He was born about the year 1611, and 
 educated partly at Edinburgh, and partly in France 
 and Holland. His father, Dr. Alexander Leighton, 
 was a man of strong convictions and courageous 
 temper. He was author of a book entitled Zion's 
 Plea against Prelacy, a book written in the bitter 
 style of controversy that we so often meet with, 
 steeped in a scornful spirit, and in other ways 
 irritating and offensive. But had it been a hundred 
 times worse, it would not have justified the brutal 
 and infamous treatment inflicted on its author in 
 1630 by the Star-Chamber, at the instigation of 
 Archbishop Laud. He was sentenced to pay a fine of 
 £10,000, to be degraded from the ministry, to be 
 brought to the pillory at Westminster, publicly 
 whipt, have one of his nostrils slit, one of his ears 
 cut off, and one of his cheeks branded with S.S., 
 " Sower of Sedition ; " this punishment to be re- 
 peated a week after at Cheapside ; and thereafter, 
 
1 84: THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 he was to be imprisoned in the Fleet prison for the 
 remainder of his life. The public punishments 
 were inflicted with revolting barbarity, and Leighton 
 was immured in the Fleet for many a year. His 
 son was at this time in his twentieth year, and 
 most of the time of his father's imprisonment he 
 spent as a student abroad. He seems to have 
 found his most congenial fellowship among some 
 Jansenists, whose views of Divine grace and 
 of the quiet contemplative life were in harmony 
 with his own. When he espoused the cause of 
 Prelacy, his Presbyterian brethren used to hint, 
 from his intimacy with members of the Church of 
 Rome abroad, that he had Eomeward proclivities. 
 It is plain, however, from his writings, that he was 
 thoroughly averse both to the dogmas and the policy 
 of the Church of Eome. He was attracted by that 
 mystic devotion, the devotion of the cloister and 
 the closet, with which that Church has often been 
 identified; and to his love for that style of piety 
 we may trace somewhat both of the strength and 
 the weakness of his character. 
 
 While Leighton was studying abroad, the great 
 Church revolution of 1638 had occurred in Scotland, 
 and the whole Episcopal system had been swept 
 away. He appeared to acquiesce in that revolution, 
 solemnly accepted the covenants which bound all 
 that took them to the extirpation of Popery and 
 Prelacy, and was ordained Presbyterian minister of 
 Newbattle, near Dalkeith, in 1641, at the age of 30. 
 Here he remained for eleven years. He devoted 
 himself with remarkable assiduity to his pastoral 
 
ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 185 
 
 duties ; and although he did not find himself free 
 from troubles, it is probable that' the years spent at 
 Newbattle were among the happiest of his life. 
 Here doubtless his Commentary on First Peter was 
 given to his flock in the form of pulpit lectures, and 
 here too many of his sermons were written. 1 It is 
 worthy of note that Leighton composed nothing 
 with a view to publication, with the exception of a 
 couple of letters in his later years in connection 
 with the questions that were before the Church. All 
 that we now have under his name was posthumous. 
 The fact that his great eminence as a writer stands 
 connected with the early part of his life is of some 
 interest to us. It was while he was a Presbyterian 
 and a Covenanter that nearly all his works were 
 written. It is striking too, to note the marvellous 
 signs of maturity, maturity of Christian experience, 
 maturity of scholarship, and maturity of spiritual 
 judgment, which he attained so early. His congre- 
 gation was large, though not larger than under his 
 predecessors — at the time he left there were 900 
 communicants. Yet we do not read of any great 
 spiritual revival under his ministry, or of godly 
 people being drawn to Newbattle as they were drawn 
 to Irvine under David Dickson, and to Fenwick 
 under William Guthrie, erecting dwelling-houses 
 on the glebe, in order to be, as they expressed it, 
 " under the drop of their ministry." The records of 
 the presbytery show that several times he was cited 
 before the court and censured for neglecting the 
 
 x See West's " Chronology of Archbishop Leighton's Writings," 
 in his edition of Leighton's Works, vol. vii. p. 352. 
 
186 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 instructions of the church and for other breaches 
 of ecclesiastical order. 1 It is evident that he was 
 getting out of sympathy with the spirit of the 
 Church. At last he tendered his resignation. The 
 presbytery were unwilling to accept it, until his 
 appointment as Principal of the University of 
 Edinburgh in 1653 gave them a tangible reason 
 for doing so. 
 
 That important office he held from 1653 to 1661. 
 " He was a great blessing in it," says Burnet ; " for 
 he talked so to all the youth of any capacity or 
 distinction that it had a great effect on many of 
 them. He preached often to them ; and if crowds 
 broke in, which they were apt to do, he would have 
 gone on in his sermon in Latin, with a purity and 
 life that charmed all who understood it. Thus he 
 had lived above twenty years in Scotland, in the 
 highest reputation that any man in my time ever 
 had in that kingdom." 
 
 Of Leighton's work in the University we have 
 still a considerable monument in the Latin discourses 
 which he delivered to the students, and in his ad- 
 dresses at graduation, and on other college occasions. 
 Here all the resources of his scholarly mind found 
 a suitable outlet. Appropriate and sparkling sayings 
 from heathen moralists and philosophers, and from 
 the Christian Fathers, seem to stand at his beck, to 
 use a phrase of Milton's, like nimble servitors ready 
 for his service, and shine like gems in his pages. 
 But while he is ever ready to accept the testimony of 
 uninspired men where it bears effectually on the 
 1 Scott's Fasti. Part I., pp. 294-5. 
 
ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 187 
 
 enforcement of truth or duty, he makes no compro- 
 mise of the authority of Scripture, which he holds 
 to be different in kind from all other ; and no con- 
 cealment of the great doctrines of grace, as the 
 foundation alike of Christian character in this life 
 and of hope for the life to come. His one great 
 desire is to draw off the hearts of young men from 
 all those earthly objects to which they are prone to 
 look as the source of happiness, and to lead them to 
 God and the things of God as the only fountain of 
 true satisfying delight. He dwells much on hap- 
 piness, what it is, and what it is not ; on the 
 punishments of hell as the fruit of sin, and on 
 eternal felicity in heaven as the gift of grace. That 
 there is an element of asceticism in some of his 
 representations cannot be denied. Leighton has 
 no good word for this present life. He invariably 
 speaks of it as " a most wretched, miserable 
 existence," as " a weary, wretched life," utterly 
 hollow and vain. "Laughter," he says, "amid so 
 many sorrows, dangers and fears, must be considered 
 as downright madness." The world is always 
 something to be trodden on ; mortification is the 
 only safe attitude of the spirit towards it. If he 
 knew L' Allegro and II Penseroso, which had been 
 published some eight years before he became Prin- 
 cipal, there is no doubt which he would have 
 preferred : 
 
 "Hence vain deluding jo3 T s, 
 The brood of Folly without Father bred ! 
 How little you bested 
 Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys ! . . . 
 
188 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 But hail, thou goddess sage and holy, 
 Hail, divinest Melancholy ! 
 Whose saintly visage is too bright 
 To hit the sense of human sight, 
 And therefore to our weaker view, 
 O'erlaid with black — sage wisdom's hue." 
 
 No one will suspect Leighton of the sour feeling 
 that has so often, and in many cases so unjustly, 
 been ascribed to the Puritans, of grudging to others 
 a happiness which their own temperament refused. 
 What he and many others felt so deeply was, that 
 the tendency of young persons to resort to broken 
 cisterns and forsake the fountain of living waters 
 could lead to nothing in the end but disappointment 
 and misery. His eye sparkled, his face glowed, his 
 soul thrilled as he pointed his students to the 
 heavenly springs of bliss, out of which he longed and 
 panted to see them drink their fill. In spite of his 
 gravity, and perhaps his asceticism, we have Burnet's 
 testimony that he had a great influence on many 
 of them. Would only that a like influence had pre- 
 vailed ever since in all our great seats of learning ! 
 
 It might have been well for Leighton had he con- 
 tinued for life to fill his academical office. But 
 after the restoration of Charles II. a very different 
 line was chalked out for him, and in accepting it, 
 Leighton began a series of mistakes which ended in 
 bitter disappointment and failure. The king had 
 solemnly promised by letter that the Presbyterian 
 constitution of the Scottish Church would be pre- 
 served j but in spite of his letter, he resolved to 
 restore Episcopacy, let the opposition of the nation 
 
ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 189 
 
 be what it might. In the selection of the new 
 bishops, it was believed that a man of Leighton's 
 saintly character would give lustre to a list where 
 sanctity beyond doubt was sadly wanting. Leighton 
 was most unwilling to accept; but believing Epi- 
 scopacy to be the primitive government of the Church, 
 thinking he might be of use in mediating between 
 the contending parties, and not able to see that it 
 was his duty absolutely to refuse, he agreed to be 
 consecrated, but bargained for the see of Dunblane 
 as being one of the smallest and most obscure. 
 Along with Sharp, and two other ministers he went 
 to London, and was consecrated in Westminster 
 Abbey. As Sharp and he had received only pres- 
 byterian ordination, it was deemed necessary then 
 (though it had not been insisted on in 1610) that 
 the new bishops should first be ordained canonically, 
 and he was weak enough to allow himself to be 
 privately ordained along with Sharp, a deacon and 
 a priest, before being raised publicly to the epi- 
 scopal office. He returned to Scotland with the 
 dignity of a prelate, and a peer of parliament, but 
 he would not allow himself to be styled " my lord ; " 
 he usually wrote his name as plain Eobert Leighton, 
 and he even reproved his friends when they addressed 
 their letters to " the most rev. father in God," or 
 gave him any other title inconsistent with the sim- 
 plicity of a servant of Christ. 
 
 Every true friend of Leighton's memory now de- 
 plores the step which he was thus led to take. It 
 was a very serious thing for a man, who by calmly 
 taking and administering the covenants had solemnly 
 B 
 
190 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 sworn to extirpate Prelacy, to become one of the 
 heads of a prelatic church. He could not even 
 defend himself by the argument by which he tried 
 afterwards to reconcile the Covenanters to a modi- 
 fied prelacy, that the covenant did not denounce all 
 Episcopacy, but only prelacy after the type of the 
 English hierarchy; for he now became a prelate 
 after that very type. It was not seemly for a son 
 to place himself in close confidential relations with 
 men who had treated his father with such revolting 
 insult and barbarity. He must have known too the 
 private character of the king; he knew that in 
 setting up Episcopacy he violated his solemn pledge ; 
 he knew that he was utterly unworthy to rule the 
 affairs of the church of Christ ; yet he took part in 
 arrangements that placed the whole constitution 
 of the Church of Scotland at the mercy of the royal 
 prerogative. He knew that his colleagues in the 
 episcopate had no spiritual sympathy with him in 
 his aims for the church and the country ; if he could 
 have been blind to the fact before, he must have 
 had a rude awakening on his journey with them 
 from London, during which he became so tired of 
 them, and they of him, that he parted from them at 
 Morpeth, reaching Edinburgh a few days before 
 them, and thereby avoiding the grand imposing 
 entrance into the capital on which they were bent. 
 And what could Leighton expect from a hierarchy 
 of which Sharp was the head 1 Whether he had 
 betrayed his brethren or not, it was evident how 
 pleased he was with his worldly elevation — how 
 well he liked "to ride up the High Street in the 
 
ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 191 
 
 new coach he had brought from London, with a 
 lackey in purple livery running on either side." All 
 these were significant forebodings of what after- 
 wards came about : of the failure and disappoint- 
 ment which followed all Leighton's plans ; ay, and 
 of something worse than failure and disappointment, 
 — something of which he spoke to Bishop Burnet 
 when he told him that in the whole progress of that 
 affair there appeared such cross characters of an 
 angry providence, that however fully he was satis- 
 fied in his own mind as to episcopacy itself, yet it 
 seemed that God was against them, and that their 
 struggles to build up the Episcopal Church were 
 like a fighting against God. 
 
 Leighton went to work with great ardour in his 
 diocese to accomplish the spiritual ends he had so 
 deeply at heart. He aimed very earnestly at 
 promoting holiness in his clergy, drew out and urged 
 on them rules for a holy life, preached constantly in 
 their churches, went about among them like a 
 brother, and, as Bishop Burnet said, surpassed his 
 lessons by his life. Wodrow remarks, however, that 
 the clergy of the diocese of Dunblane were a most 
 ignorant and scandalous set, and that Leighton never 
 attempted to turn any of them out. In reference to 
 the general condition of the Church, he tried to 
 soften the persecutions of the Presbyterian clergy 
 and people, and he urged plans of conciliation with 
 a view to all coming together. He went to London 
 to represent the cruelties that were inflicted on the 
 Covenanters, and obtained a promise from the king, 
 which came to little, that such harshness should 
 
192 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 cease. In 1 670, it was deemed desirable to translate 
 him to the archdiocese of Glasgow. The west of 
 Scotland was the headquarters of the opposition to 
 Episcopacy, and the headquarters likewise of spiritual 
 life. It was thought that a man like Leighton was 
 the best fitted to make an impression on such a 
 district. He sought out the most spiritual preachers 
 among his clergy, and sent them into the disaffected 
 parishes ; but the people either refused to hear them, 
 or if they did, they showed that they knew their 
 Bibles too well to be moved by their arguments. 
 He proposed to the ministers a scheme of accommo- 
 dation, in which Episcopacy was brought so near to 
 Presbytery that his own brethren were alarmed, and 
 began to whisper treachery. But the ministers 
 declined his scheme. Leighton's heart was crushed 
 by the scenes he witnessed, and his inability to 
 remedy them. In 1673, he went to the king, as 
 indeed he had gone before, begging to be relieved 
 of an office in which he could do no good. He was 
 ordered back to his diocese, but allowed to renew his 
 request after a year. When the year had elapsed, 
 his request was granted, to his unutterable relief. 
 He left Scotland, buried himself in his sister's 
 country house in Sussex, where he remained in 
 profound solitude, which was disturbed only once 
 by a message from the king proposing to send him 
 on business to Scotland. He urged his years and 
 feebleness as an apology ; to his great joy his excuse 
 was accepted, and he was saved the pain of further 
 ecclesiastical duty. He died in 1684. 
 
 It has always been a great problem how so good 
 
ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 193 
 
 a man should have occupied so false a position in the 
 ecclesiastical business of the time. The problem is 
 well put by "Orwell" in the introduction to The 
 Bishop's Walk. " Here was a servant of God who 
 found himself strangely ranged on the devil's side 
 in the great conflict of the age, though fully minded 
 all the while to fight the battle of the Lord. That 
 is the problem, settle it as we may. For that the 
 struggle of those days involved constitutional govern- 
 ment, liberty of conscience and true religion in this 
 land, is surely past all question now among men 
 who think, or who have any tolerable capacity 
 for thinking." What then could be Leighton's 
 inducement to enter on a course which to his own 
 consciousness was unblest, and which ended in such 
 defeat that he was fain to hide himself from his 
 fellows for the rest of his life 1 That he was 
 constitutionally inclined to Episcopacy, — that he had 
 that highly sensitive, cultured nature which we still 
 find in a few instances gravitating towards that 
 system, is the merest fragment of an explanation. 
 It is much more to say that his whole soul recoiled 
 from the controversies of the time, and the injury 
 which the cause of religion sustained from them ; 
 that he longed intensely for peace, and that he 
 thought he might act the part of a mediator between 
 the contending parties. He thought he might act 
 the part of a mediator, for in common with the 
 Presbyterians he was a very cordial Calvinist, and 
 in common with the other side, he favoured Episco- 
 pacy and he disliked the Covenants. But even this 
 does not give a sufficient explanation of Leighton's 
 
194 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 course. For Leighton gave his deliberate support 
 to the famous Act of 1669, declaring the king's 
 supremacy over all persons and in all causes eccle- 
 siastical. That Act placed the Church at the feet of 
 the monarch ; it would have allowed him to establish 
 Popery or Arianism if he had chosen ; and in point 
 of fact, it was the occasion of much of the bitter 
 persecution that followed, — many a man braved the 
 dragoons of Claverhouse, or went to the gallows, 
 rather than acknowledge that the king was supreme 
 in all causes ecclesiastical. Burnet says that Leighton 
 did not approve of the Act, and that he got some 
 things altered in it; nevertheless he voted for it. 
 Not only so, but when Alexander Burnet, his pre- 
 decessor in the see of Glasgow, was expelled through 
 an exercise of the power conferred by that Act on the 
 king, Leighton accepted his office. 1 
 
 You ask, How could a man that habitually lived 
 at the gate of heaven do such things] Orwell 
 hints that he was of that mystic temper that is apt 
 to look on religion as something above and apart 
 from everyday life and duty. There is no doubt 
 that that mystic devotion which would be admir- 
 able if men lived always in the cell or the closet is 
 often found wanting when they have to face the 
 storms and temptations of life. Instances might be 
 given of men whose writings are most saintly, but 
 who, in the battle of life, have not proved either 
 very straightforward or sweet-tempered. But it 
 cannot be said either that Leighton did not see the 
 
 1 At first he accepted it only in commenclam, evidently troubled 
 about the matter ; but afterwards in full. 
 
ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 195 
 
 connection of religion with common life, or that, in 
 his personal conduct, he betrayed any special ten- 
 dency toward the weaknesses which a high position 
 often develops. In his Commentary on First Peter, 
 there is a very constant sense of the obligation of 
 Christians to rule all the affairs of common life by 
 regard to the will of God. And when he became a 
 bishop and an archbishop, he showed none of that 
 worldliness and self-importance which is said to be 
 the common snare of the order. What it was that 
 impelled Leighton to the strange course he followed, 
 it is most difficult to say. For it was a very serious 
 thing for so godly a man to take side with the 
 king's party against those who held that the honour 
 of the Eedeemer was invaded, and who were testify- 
 ing their sincerity by suffering the loss of all things, 
 and going bravely to the scaffold in His cause. It 
 may be that Leighton came to have a profound dis- 
 trust in the people and in the popular government 
 of the church. An able friend makes the suggestion 
 that there may have been latent ambitions in a 
 nature like Leighton's, that were drawn into activity 
 by his elevation. A more common supposition is 
 that he was weak and facile, and was thus drawn 
 into acts which neither his judgment nor his 
 conscience could approve. It is certain he was not 
 immaculate. Nebuchadnezzar's image was not the 
 only structure where gold and clay were together. 
 
 The fact is, that from want of private letters and 
 other evidence of his sentiments, we cannot clear 
 away all the mystery of Leighton's conduct. The 
 voice of history now proclaims that he was altogether 
 
196 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 wrong in his expectation of any good coming either 
 to church or state from the policy of the king and 
 his advisers. The Covenanters understood better 
 the game which the king was playing. They knew 
 better that if the Church and the country were to be 
 saved, the royal policy must be resisted to the 
 death. And it was well both for Church and 
 country that this view prevailed. Some may think 
 that the Presbyterians were unreasonable in resist- 
 ing all Leighton's proposals for agreement. And it 
 is certain that he carried concession to the very 
 verge of surrender. But the Presbyterians had no 
 confidence in the king and the whole prelatist party. 
 They hated their Erastianism even more than their 
 prelacy. They distrusted their worldliness, their 
 want of sympathy with the Church in her spiritual 
 aims. Rugged they may have been, far below 
 Leighton in culture and refinement; but their 
 instincts were more true, and their attitude more 
 firm ; and it was their firmness, not Leighton's sweet- 
 ness, that saved the Church, and saved the country. 
 
 It remains for us now to speak of Leighton as he 
 appears in his works. Burying the unhappy period 
 of his episcopate we return to those earlier days 
 when, as a true bishop of souls, he was feeding his 
 flock, and preparing those sermons and expositions 
 which are destined not only to preserve the fra- 
 grance of his memory, but to be a permanent treasure 
 to the church of God. 
 
 It has sometimes been said that Leighton's 
 countrymen have been slow of appreciating his 
 
A.KCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 197 
 
 worth as a writer. But this is hardly true. The 
 first editor of some of his works, Principal Fall, 
 was a Scotchman, and so was Wilson, the publisher 
 who first gave them to the world in something like 
 a complete form. In issuing his edition (1745) 
 Wilson had the assistance of the eminent Philip 
 Doddridge, who though a nonconformist had much 
 of Leighton's spirit and who absolutely revelled in 
 his writings. No man ever did more to make a 
 writer known, or to commend him to all devout and 
 earnest people throughout the churches. Speaking 
 of the great trouble which he had had as editor in 
 correcting the text, he says, " The delight and edifica- 
 tion which I have found in the writings of this 
 wonderful man (for such I must deliberately call him) 
 would have been a full equivalent for my pains, 
 separate from all prospect of that effect which they 
 might have upon others. For, truly, I know not 
 that I have ever spent a quarter of an hour in 
 reviewing any of them, but even amidst that inter- 
 ruption which a critical examination of the copy 
 would naturally give, I have felt some impressions 
 which I could wish always to retain. I can hardly 
 forbear saying, as a considerable philosopher and 
 eminent divine with whom I have the honour of an 
 intimate correspondence and friendship said to me 
 in a letter long ago, and when my acquaintance with 
 our author's works was but beginning, ' There is a 
 spirit in Archbishop Leighton I never met with in 
 any human writings, nor can I read many lines in 
 them without being moved.' " 
 
 That which we are disposed to set down as 
 
198 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 the most remarkable feature of Leighton's writings 
 is, his magnificent conception of the true spirit of 
 Christianity, and the charm with which that spirit 
 is developed and commended. 
 
 Leighton is both a doctrinal and a practical 
 writer, and he is most careful both as an expounder 
 of truth, and a pleader for duty. Yet perchance you 
 will find many writers that expound truth as clearly 
 and enforce duty in a sense as cogently as he. But 
 I know not where you will find a writer that infuses 
 so much of the spirit of Christ into his expositions 
 and exhortations. We feel as if his works had been 
 written in the ivory palaces, amid the aroma of 
 myrrh and aloes and cassia ; or as if he had been 
 in the lodging of Jesus at Bethabara with Andrew 
 and John, and had beheld His glory, and heard the 
 words that dropt from His lips like the honeycomb. 
 Nor is the charm less because the spirit of Christ 
 seems to come to us in and through the spirit of 
 Leighton himself. " That which we have seen and 
 heard," he might have said, " declare we unto you, 
 that ye also may have fellowship with us ; and truly 
 our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son, 
 Jesus Christ." If he speaks strongly of the glory of 
 Christ, it is as one who feels all that he says. If he 
 contrasts the riches of heaven with the so-called 
 treasures of earth, the deepest sincerity is apparent 
 in the contrast. If he bids you forget and forgive, 
 you cannot doubt that he himself forgets and forgives. 
 If he urges you to overcome the world, you see him 
 standing above it. If he calls you to an obedience 
 that never halts, to a trust that never fails, to a hope 
 
ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 199 
 
 that is never dimmed, to an ardour that is never 
 chilled, you do not find him delineating such high 
 things as if he had already attained, or were already 
 perfect; but you do find him, amid the conscious- 
 ness of much infirmity and shortcoming, stretching 
 forth his hands to God, viewing with longing eyes 
 the heights that are yet afar off, and thinking with 
 holy delight, "What will it be to be there !" And 
 you feel the impulse of his companionship quicken- 
 ing your desires and rousing your energies, and 
 sending you to the throne of grace in the spirit of 
 the Psalmist : " My soul cleaveth to the dust : 
 quicken thou me according to thy word." 
 
 The great aim of Leighton was to promote the 
 spirit of Christ. The possession of this spirit was 
 in his view the very essence of salvation. It grieved 
 him if creed or covenant were placed in the room of 
 the living Saviour; if men came short, however near, 
 of personal union and communion with Christ. He 
 sought to gain for Christ the innermost springs of 
 the heart. He sought to commend the truth of God 
 in every lawful way to the understanding, the 
 conscience, the very heart and soul of his hearers. 
 His great object was to get men's hearts brought 
 into pure sympathy with the truth and the will of 
 God ; — to get them to delight in the law of the Lord 
 after the inward man ; to get their hearts enlarged 
 that thus they might run the way of God's command- 
 ments ; to make it their meat and drink, and joy, 
 and recreation, and heaven on earth, to do the will 
 of God. 
 
 Now, let us observe carefully, that in following 
 
200 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 out this aim Leighton steered clear of certain 
 erroneous courses into which many good men have 
 fallen. In the first place, his eagerness to promote 
 the spirit of true Christianity did not lead him to 
 disparage the letter. It did not make him careless 
 of dogma. It did not tempt him into that nebulous 
 doctrinal or non-doctrinal atmosphere into which it 
 has tempted many. It did not lead him to dilute 
 the doctrine of atonement as it led men like Erskine 
 and Maurice. It did not tempt him to idealise and 
 etherealise the whole of Christian doctrine as it 
 tempted Dean Stanley. Leighton was a man of very 
 exact, thorough, Calvinistic theology. In the develop- 
 ment of doctrine he went quite as far, perhaps a little 
 further than Calvinistic theologians of the present 
 day, such as Cunningham and Hodge. If he sur- 
 passed them in the beauty of the practical structure 
 which he reared on his theology, it should never be 
 forgotten, and it were unmanly to deny, that his 
 foundation was the same. 
 
 If any one doubts this, he has only to study his 
 works. There he will find the plainest affirmations 
 of the eternal decree and personal election of God ; 
 of the covenant of redemption as made with Christ ; 
 of a people whose names were written down from 
 eternity given to Christ to be redeemed ; of justifica- 
 tion and acceptance by faith alone ; of the imputa- 
 tion of guilt to Christ and the imputation of Christ's 
 righteousness to the believer; of regeneration as 
 wholly a product of grace ; of personal assurance, of 
 the invincibility of grace, and the final perseverance 
 of all who have been called to the fellowship of God's 
 
ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 201 
 
 Son. 1 If this reference to the contents of his works 
 be too wide, we are willing to stake our assertion on 
 his commentary on a single verse — 1 Peter ii. 24 — 
 " Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on 
 the tree." It is impossible to read that passage and 
 not see that Leighton held in all its features the 
 theology of the Eeformers and Covenanters. He 
 held it and he was held by it. True, he loved 
 devout Komanists ; he enjoyed the society of Jan- 
 senists. But he did not hold with them on disputed 
 points ; against the Jansenists he held firmly to the 
 doctrines of imputation. Coleridge says very candidly 
 but very truly, that in his age the Calvinism 
 of Leighton made him unpopular with English high 
 churchmen. Though not a presbyterian in worship 
 and government, he was essentially a presbyterian 
 in doctrine ; and his affinities to Eutherfurd, Dickson, 
 and Gillespie were far stronger and deeper than to 
 Fairfoul, Sydeserf, or Sharp. 
 
 But if so, how came it that Coleridge was so cap- 
 tivated by Leighton'? In his Aids to Reflection, 
 as is well known, Coleridge culls many passages 
 from his Commentary on Peter, and commends him 
 as a prince among religious teachers. The large- 
 ness of his view, the clearness of his eye, the com- 
 pleteness and fine balance of his thoughts, the 
 purity of his spirit, seem to have made a great 
 impression on Coleridge, as well as the absence of 
 certain offensive features by which some Calvinistic 
 writings are marked. But the explanation is easy. 
 Leighton's rare qualities enabled him to present a 
 1 All these are in the Commentary on First Peter. 
 
202 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 symmetrical theology, — a system not of raw bones 
 and glaring features, but mellow, fragrant, full of 
 grace and beauty. It is to be observed that in rude 
 hands, Calvinism is very liable to be exaggerated 
 and caricatured. Exaggerated it has sometimes 
 been by its own friends, and remorselessly caricatured 
 by its enemies. Leighton presented it in fine pro- 
 portions; the Divine side and the human side in 
 harmony ; the theoretical balanced by the practical ; 
 the letter quickened by the spirit ; the intellectual 
 toned by the devotional. It seemed to Coleridge 
 that so beautiful a structure could not be built on a 
 Calvinistic base. If Leighton expressed the views 
 of Calvin, it must have been in a sense of his own. 
 Coleridge admits, for example, that Leighton taught 
 the doctrine of imputed righteousness. But he is 
 sure that the sense in which he held it must have 
 been some non-Calvinistic sense. What that sense 
 was, he candidly owns that he has never been able to 
 discover. Little wonder! But this treatment of 
 Leighton by Coleridge is very strange and very un- 
 worthy. One of his chief objects in the Aids to Reflec- 
 tion was to promote precision of thought and precision 
 of language. Yet at the very time when he commends 
 Leighton, and justly, as a writer of wonderful pre- 
 cision, he confesses himself unable to understand the 
 sense in which he uses a well-known expression. 1 
 Another erroneous tendency of which Leighton 
 
 1 Coleridge shows himself a poor theologian ; as when he affirms 
 that the doctrine "that the claim to the finished work of Christ is 
 conferred in baptism" has ever been held by all the Reformed 
 Churches, including the Church of Scotland ! See vol. i. pp. 236-7. 
 —4th Edition. 
 
AECHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 203 
 
 steered clear is, the undue exaltation of the inner 
 consciousness of man. In any attempt to secure for 
 truth a due acceptance from men, two factors have 
 to be considered, the authority from which it comes, 
 and the faculties to which it is addressed. If the 
 authority be a Divine authority, outside our minds, 
 the duty of men is simply to bow to it. If once our 
 minds recognise this claim — recognise the Divine 
 authority by which the truth comes to us, we have 
 no choice but to receive it. But our reception of it 
 will be very different according as our inner con- 
 sciousness welcomes it or recoils from it. Wherever 
 you have a skilful religious teacher, he makes it his 
 endeavour to secure from the inner consciousness as 
 cordial a welcome as possible to the doctrines which 
 he teaches. St. Paul made it his aim to " commend 
 himself to every man's conscience in the sight of 
 God." And Leighton followed in his steps. It is 
 one of the marked characteristics of his teaching 
 that he so constantly commends it to the acceptance 
 of his hearers. In favour of the truths he proclaims, 
 he makes his appeal to whatever is sound in the 
 intellect, reasonable in the habits, or genuine in the 
 affections of men. Yet he does so without ever con- 
 veying the idea that the inner consciousness is the 
 ultimate authority or judge of truth. No man 
 could have been more loyal to the Scriptures as the 
 ultimate authority — the authoritative utterance of 
 the supreme judge and fountain of truth. No man 
 adhered more rigidly " to the law and to the testi- 
 mony ; " yet no man ever sought more earnestly to 
 find chords in the human spirit that would respond 
 
204 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 to the message which he brought to them from 
 God. 
 
 But this was something quite different from the 
 tendency now so common, to exalt the inner con- 
 sciousness to the place of supreme tribunal, and 
 to turn the Scriptures and everything else into mere 
 quarries from which reason is to make its selection. 
 Here are the two extremes : the stiffly orthodox, 
 deeming it enough that a truth is taught in Scripture, 
 and demanding its reception on that all-sufficient 
 ground, no matter how hard it is to digest ; and the 
 rationalist, protesting that it is absurd to try to 
 do men good by forcing doctrines on them by sheer 
 authority, and finding so much more agreeable a 
 mode of influence in calling on themselves to choose 
 the good and to refuse the evil. It is to be 
 remarked that in discussing this question, an 
 ambiguous use is often made of the word " authority," 
 and that what is true enough of mere human 
 authority is often falsely ascribed to that which is 
 Divine. But between these extremes comes in the 
 position of Leighton and all such men : that the 
 ultimate authority and supreme judge of truth for 
 man is God, speaking to him in the Scriptures ; that 
 the simple fact that God has there proclaimed it 
 ought to secure for any doctrine the unqualified 
 acceptance of all men ; but that to secure for truth 
 its fitting place and its due influence in the soul, it 
 is desirable to remove prejudices, to appeal to what- 
 ever in the soul comes nearest to it, to establish for 
 it a friendly relation to something which is there 
 already, and thus to get it to move sweetly and 
 
ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 205 
 
 freely among the springs and motives of our being. 
 It is on this middle ground only that we can maintain 
 our position as Protestants, giving supreme honour 
 to the authority of the Word, and yet giving due 
 weight to those faculties of our inner nature with- 
 out which men may be driven but cannot be 
 drawn. 
 
 Among other ways by which Leighton accom- 
 plishes this object, one is the copious use of illus- 
 tration. He has an active and almost poetical 
 imagination, though its wings are clipped, and it is 
 not allowed very daring flights. Illustration is an 
 admirable way of discovering and giving effect to 
 affinities between the truth of God and the mind of 
 man. Thus he illustrates the prevalent neglect of 
 Christ, although all the Divine attributes centre in 
 Him, by the figure of a bordered picture or engra- 
 ving, where men's eyes are drawn to the meadows 
 and fountains and flowers exhibited in the border, 
 while they may be overlooking the central piece 
 which is the principal thing in the picture. To 
 look to God through a medium of unpardoned sin 
 is like looking at the heavens through red glass — 
 everything seems dark and troubled. The sympathy 
 which the members of Christ owe to one another is 
 illustrated by the sympathetic action of the parts of 
 the human body : " If there be but a thorn in the 
 foot, the back boweth, the head stoopeth down, the 
 eyes look, the hands reach to it, and endeavour its 
 help and ease." The growing up of the church into 
 Christ is illustrated by an ingenious figure, possibly 
 suggested by the high blocks of building in our 
 c 
 
206 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 own old town. " In times of peace the church may 
 dilate more, and build, as it were, into breadth ; but 
 in trouble, it arises more in height ; it is then built 
 upwards, as in cities where men are straitened, they 
 build usually higher than in the country." The 
 duty to " honour all men " is thus enforced : " The 
 Jews would not willingly tread upon the smallest 
 piece of paper in their way, but took it up ; for 
 possibly, said they, the name of God may be on it. 
 . . . Trample not on any . . . the name of God may 
 be written on that soul that thou treadest on ; it 
 may be a soul that Christ thought so much of as to 
 give his precious blood for it : therefore despise it 
 not." 
 
 We offer a concluding remark on Leighton's 
 position in the literature of Scottish Theology. It 
 is remarkable that though he never wrote for the 
 press, he marks an era in the literary history of the 
 Scottish pulpit. It was a complaint against 
 Leighton, that like Hugh Binning and Andrew 
 Gray, two eminent preachers who died very young, 
 he discarded the old orthodox method of preaching, 
 i.e. the formal divisions, and uses, and applications 
 of various sorts, and was thus guilty of a daring 
 " innovation." Though such a respectable and 
 godly minister as David Dickson joined in this 
 charge, at the present day we can only smile at it. 
 The pulpit style of Leighton, Binning, and Gray 
 indicates a great advance on their predecessors. 
 Leighton's long residence in France and mastery of 
 the French tongue, as well as his familiarity with 
 Latin, Greek, and other languages, made his diction 
 
ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 207 
 
 more elegant, and his English style more free and 
 flexible than that of any previous Scottish preacher. 
 The influence of scholarship in refining and purify- 
 ing was seen in him much more than in most of his 
 contemporaries. This subjected him to the criticism 
 of the narrow-minded, but it has served to per- 
 petuate his influence. The uncouth style of most 
 of the Presbyterian writers of the covenanting period 
 makes their writings wellnigh unreadable. Samuel 
 Eutherfurd's Letters is almost the only Scottish 
 book of the period that has passed the ordeal of 
 time, and it probably owes something to its being 
 in the form of letters. The truth is, as has been 
 pointed out elsewhere, the style of the Scottish 
 preachers was formed out of three languages, Latin, 
 Scotch, and English. Latin was the language of 
 the universities, Scotch of conversation, and English 
 of the press. It was not till the following century 
 that Scotch preachers in general came to be quite 
 at home in the pulpit in the use of the English 
 tongue. 1 
 
 Notwithstanding his presbyterian training and his 
 episcopalian office, Leighton is one of the names that 
 belong, beyond reasonable question, to the Church uni- 
 versal. All attempts to attach him to one system, and 
 monopolise in its favour the glory of his name, are alike 
 dishonest and discreditable. He belonged to a broad 
 church in the best sense of that term. Most loyal to 
 the Christian revelation, and most faithful in his at- 
 tachment to the great vital truths of the Gospel, he 
 was catholic in his sympathies and charitable in his 
 i For the Wovk of the Ministry, p. 48. 
 
208 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 judgment ; glad to find good in every system, and 
 to recognise as brethren all who loved the Lord 
 Jesus Christ. His charity did not make him in- 
 different, nor his Catholicism latitudinarian. His 
 toleration was not the kind that rebukes the bitter- 
 ness of theologians in that very spirit of bitterness 
 which it affects to rebuke. His charity was not that 
 which laments the divisions of Christendom in that 
 scornful tone which only serves to increase them. 
 His spirit was a healing spirit, though he fell on evil 
 times and unhappy methods of conciliation. No 
 man could have been more willing to make in his 
 own person every sacrifice that could be called for 
 in the interests of peace. No heart was ever more 
 ruled by the brotherly spirit of Christ. Scotland 
 has not had too many such men ; let us hope 
 that the attention which has been called to him 
 this winter in various quarters will serve to draw 
 many hearts to his example. No character could 
 show more conclusively how one may be a member 
 of the school of Calvin, and at the same time a 
 scholar, a gentleman, and a saint. 
 
RICHARD BAXTER. 
 
 By Eev. James Stalker, M.A. 
 
fijJls ^ 
 
 EICHAKD BAXTER. 
 
 THE name of Richard Baxter stands in this 
 course of lectures for English Puritanism, — 
 one of the most notable phases through which 
 Evangelical religion has ever passed. 
 
 Puritanism was originally a dissent from some 
 parts of the organisation which was imposed on the 
 Church of England at the Reformation. Unlike the 
 Reformation in Scotland, which was essentially a 
 popular movement, the English Reformation was, to 
 begin with, more an affair of politics than religion, 
 and the new form given to the Church was deter- 
 mined rather by the policy of statesmen than the 
 spiritual necessities of the people. But as the new 
 doctrines spread and the open Bible did its work, 
 the religious sentiment, growing purer and stronger, 
 could not get expression in the forms provided for 
 it by ecclesiastical compromises ; the new wine had 
 been put into old bottles, and, as its heat and force 
 developed, it threatened to burst the bottles. At 
 first a few voices were raised demanding a purifica- 
 tion of the ceremonies and prayers of the Church 
 
212 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 from the taint of Popery ; and gradually the voices 
 multiplied, till the demand became the general voice 
 of England. 
 
 But Puritanism was much more than this ; this 
 was only its most superficial aspect. In its deepest 
 nature it was a great revival of true religion, and is 
 to be traced back in the last resort to the will and 
 blessing of the Spirit of God. During the last 
 quarter of the sixteenth and the first half of the 
 seventeenth century the Wind which bloweth where 
 it listeth was breathing over the face of England ; 
 and the souls in which religion was a reality, the 
 homes where the children were trained in the fear 
 of God, and the pulpits in which the Gospel was 
 preached in purity and power, were daily multiplying. 
 
 One feature of the movement which turned out to 
 be of immeasurable importance was the part played 
 in it by the Bible. Never at any other period has 
 the Word of God been searched with the same 
 earnest faith and keen-eyed intelligence. It was 
 still comparatively a new book to the English people; 
 there was not the mass of other literature to com- 
 pete with it for men's leisure which there is now ; 
 it was accepted without hesitation as divine ; and all 
 the strength of the English mind was put forth in 
 mastering its view of the universe. The Bible in 
 its turn reacted on the mind of the nation, com- 
 municating to it something of its own force and 
 dignity. The reader who goes back among the 
 sources of Puritan literature breathes a more potent 
 atmosphere, and feels himself surrounded by minds 
 more serious and masculine than he meets with 
 
RICHARD BAXTER. 213 
 
 elsewhere. The Biblical view of the world expands 
 and elevates all who receive it ; and the great mass 
 of Englishmen had then begnn to read their Bibles. 
 This was the real origin of the political achieve- 
 ments of Puritanism, which have become so memor- 
 able. Political historians are wont to treat of 
 Puritanism as an epoch in the progress of the 
 democratic revolution, which is working at the 
 present hour in every European State, and slowly 
 causing the old order to give place to the new. The 
 fundamental idea of the old order was that the 
 world existed for the sake of the few, to whose 
 pleasures and dignity the obscure multitudes 
 were meant to minister. Many forces, some of them 
 noble and some ignoble, have for centuries been 
 crumbling this idea down • but it has never felt the 
 attack of any enemy so formidable as Puritanism. 
 As the masses of England read their Bibles, they 
 discovered that they too were somewhat ; their souls 
 had the highest origin, and the poorest man among 
 them was dear to God. Their belief in the distinc- 
 tions which had made them look up to the wealthy 
 and high-born as their natural superiors was shaken. 
 The Bible gave them a new standard to measure 
 things by ; it seemed to say that it was character and 
 not birth which made a man worthy of reverence. 
 Was not the poorest man who loved God and led a 
 holy life greater in the eyes of Heaven than any 
 drinking, swearing cavalier 1 If a fair trial were 
 made, might it not turn out that not the man of birth 
 but the man of worth was the better man 1 The 
 trial was made in right earnest ; and on Marston 
 
214 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 Moor and Worcester field the old system of things 
 fell crashing to the ground ; for the aristocracy of 
 character beat the aristocracy of blood with their 
 own weapons; and the vision rose before men's 
 minds of an England in which honour and power 
 should be the rewards of character alone, and glory 
 to God in the highest the end of all men's en- 
 deavours. 
 
 Some may think that a better representative of this 
 great movement than Baxter might have been chosen. 
 Others might indeed have been easily found, for the 
 time was prolific of great names. Cromwell himself 
 might have been chosen, for the strongest throb in 
 the irregular pulsations of that big heart was for the 
 Evangel, and the vision which inspired his endea- 
 vours, though crossed and dimmed by the glare of 
 ambition, was, from first to last, England for God and 
 God for England. Milton might have been chosen, 
 for the materials for the architecture of Paradise Lost 
 — that vast structure of petrified music — were but 
 the stones gathered out of the ruins of Puritanism. 
 Or, if it was desirable that a religious movement 
 should be represented by a divine rather than a lay- 
 man, our choice might have fallen on either of two 
 others : Owen was far greater than Baxter in mass 
 of intellect and in his grasp of the Puritan concep- 
 tion of the universe, and Goodwin was his superior 
 in pure genius. Yet upon the whole, perhaps the 
 claim of Baxter's name to represent Puritanism might 
 be successfully vindicated. He combined in himself 
 some of the best qualities of these others, and he 
 
RICHARD BAXTER. 215 
 
 surpassed them all in his hold upon what was the 
 most characteristic thing in Puritanism — faith in the 
 value of the individual soul and in the possibilities 
 of the common mind of England, if saturated with 
 the Word of God. 
 
 The child is father of the man ; the ruling con- 
 victions of manhood are merely another form of the 
 impressions which have been driven deepest into 
 the mind in boyhood; and a great career is generally 
 only the working out of a programme which has been 
 sketched with the bold hand of youth. Baxter's 
 career was prefigured in the events of his earliest 
 years. 
 
 As soon as his eyes opened with intelligence on 
 the world, they fell upon a small image of the 
 great struggle which was going on in every parish 
 of England. He was born in a Puritan home, his 
 father being a substantial yeoman in Shropshire ; 
 one of his first experiences was the pain of being 
 sneered at by his companions as a Puritan's son ; 
 and the differences of religious character among the 
 neighbours formed the most prominent object in the 
 spectacle of life on which his keen young eyes looked 
 forth. " In the place where I first lived," he says, 
 "and the country about, the people were of two 
 sorts. The generality seemed to mind nothing 
 seriously but the body and the world ; they went to 
 church, and could answer the pastor in responses, 
 and thence to dinner, and then to play. They 
 never prayed in their families ; they read not the 
 Scriptures or any good book or catechism ; few of 
 
216 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 them indeed could read, or had a Bible. Most were 
 swearers, though they were not all equally gross. 
 The other sort were such as had their consciences 
 awakened to some regard for God and their ever- 
 lasting state, and, according to the various measures 
 of their understanding, did speak and live as serious 
 in the Christian faith, and would inquire what was 
 duty and what was sin, and how to please God and 
 make sure of salvation, and make this their business 
 and interest, as the rest did the world. They read 
 the Scriptures, and such good books as the Practice 
 of Piety, Dent's Plain Man's Pathway, and Dodd on 
 the Commandments. They used to pray in their 
 families and alone, some with the book, and some 
 without. There were where I lived about the 
 number of two or three families in twenty which by 
 the rest were called Puritans, and derided as hypo- 
 crites and precisians that would take on them to be 
 holy." Thus the boy grew up observing that 
 godliness was a mark of reproach, but also of a real 
 superiority which drew the sympathy of his conscience 
 and aroused his better feelings. In after years the 
 ideal which floated always before his mind, as the best 
 work he could do for England, was to make men 
 like his father and homes like that of his childhood. 
 But there was one feature in the case darker than 
 all the rest. It was to be expected that the 
 excellent of the land, if persecuted by the rabble of 
 the profane and worldly, would at least enjoy the 
 favour of the public guardians of morality and 
 religion. But this was far from being the case. 
 The Puritans at that time were nearly all conformists, 
 
RICHARD BAXTER. 217 
 
 and the most regular attenders of the parish 
 churches ; but nothing was commoner than to 
 hear jeers and tirades from the pulpit against them- 
 selves. The Church encouraged the breaking of 
 the Sabbath, the sports by which the day was 
 desecrated being regulated by a book which had the 
 sanction of both Church and State. As Baxter's 
 father was reading or praying on Sabbath afternoon, 
 the ears of his household were constantly disturbed 
 by the shouts of the revellers outside. " Sometimes 
 the morris-dancers would come into the church in 
 all their linen and scarfs and antic dresses, with 
 morris-bells jingling at their legs, and, as soon as 
 common prayer was read, hasten out presently to 
 their play again." The state of the clergy in the 
 neighbourhood was inconceivably low. The vicar 
 of Baxter's parish was an old blind man, who never 
 preached, but repeated the prayers by heart, and 
 employed to read the lessons, one year a common 
 labourer, another a tailor ; and at last his own son, 
 "the best stage-player and gamester in all the 
 country," took orders, and supplied one of his two 
 livings. Within a few miles around there were 
 nearly a dozen clergymen of the same description. 
 Between six and ten years of age Baxter was 
 schooled by four successive curates of the parish, 
 two of whom never preached, and the two who had 
 the most learning of the four drank themselves 
 to beggary, and then left the place. These memories 
 never left his mind, and, when he became one of 
 the leading ecclesiastics of the country, they de- 
 termined his views and his policy. If in his young 
 
218 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 years a man has seen a Church identified within the 
 whole circle embraced by his knowledge with a low 
 tone of morality, ministered to by a worldly and 
 dissolute clergy, and by its lack of discipline en- 
 couraging the ungodly to shelter their sins beneath 
 its protection, his subsequent views of it, if he grow 
 up an earnest man, are not likely to be of a very 
 friendly nature, or to be easily changed by the 
 professions and arguments of its apologists; and, 
 although Baxter was the most charitable of men, 
 these early experiences wrought into him a con- 
 viction which could never be moved, that the system 
 of diocesan episcopacy had in its very nature a 
 tendency to laxity of morals in both clergy and people. 
 / The religious example of his home was not lost 
 i on the sharp-witted lad, and at an early age he 
 \ became the subject of decisive religious impressions. 
 These were prolonged through years of anxiety, 
 before he was able to rest in the peace of the Gospel, 
 and in these painful years he acquired the materials 
 for that analysis of the subtlest states of religious 
 emotion in which he became so great a master. There 
 was another feature of his conversion which had im- 
 portant issues in his after-life. There being no clergy- 
 man in the neighbourhood to whom he could confide 
 his difficulties, he was thrown upon books, from which 
 he derived great benefit. This inclined him ever 
 afterwards to have recourse to these silent friends, 
 rather than to living men, in times of need ; it gave 
 him a faith which anticipated the methods of our 
 modern tract societies in the virtue of the distri- 
 bution of literature as a means of doing good ; and 
 
RICHARD BAXTER. 219 
 
 it had something to do in making him the most 
 prolific writer in the English language. 
 
 Soon after the event just referred to, his thoughts 
 began to turn to the ministry as the work to which 
 his life should be devoted. Once, indeed, he was in 
 serious clanger of being diverted from this purpose. 
 Some relative or neighbour proposed to his family 
 to get an introduction at Court and make a courtier 
 of him. He actually did, for three months, wear the 
 garb of a page in Whitehall ; but the Puritan boy 
 was scared with the Sabbath-breaking, the oaths, 
 and theatrical entertainments of the Court ; and, the 
 death of his mother occurring at the time, he gladly 
 embraced the opportunity of escaping back to his 
 books. 
 
 The shadow of death deepened his desires after 
 .'the sacred profession ; and this shadow fell on his 
 young spirit soon in a still more impressive form. 
 He was attacked with an illness which threatened 
 to take him out of this world. It was the beginning 
 of a lifelong martyrdom of disease. During three- 
 quarters of his life he believed himself to be con- 
 stantly on the brink of the grave, and scarcely awoke 
 one day without the thought that it might be his last. 
 Whether he was really as ill as he supposed, or to 
 what extent he may have been a victim of hypo- 
 chondria, I cannot say. Such diseases as he believed 
 himself suffering from seem scarcely reconcilable 
 with the long age he lived to and the Herculean 
 toils he bore. He gives in his autobiography ac- 
 counts of his diseases and symptoms which alter- 
 nately appal, disgust, and amuse. But whatever the 
 
220 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 original evil may have been, his own attempts to 
 cure himself and the prescriptions of the scores of 
 doctors he consulted must have caused an amount of 
 real suffering which may well be pleaded in excuse 
 of some faults of character such as a rather petulant 
 temper and occasional vehemence of denunciation. 
 On the whole, however, the effect of these sufferings 
 and fears was highly salutary. They gave a keen 
 edge to his convictions ; they quenched the ambition 
 of literary and oratorical fame, and taught him to 
 "preach — according to his own oft-quoted phrase — as 
 a dying man to dying men ; they weakened his temp- 
 tations, making the world appear to him, as he said, 
 nothing better than a dead carcass ; and above all, 
 they bred in him such a jealous penury of time as 
 enabled him to get through the work of a dozen 
 men. When he entered the ministry it was with 
 the conviction that he had at most but a few years 
 to live, and with a consuming desire to be the means 
 of saving a few souls before he died ; and so power- 
 ful were the impressions of spiritual realities on his 
 own mind, that he thought no heart could be so 
 hard as to resist the onset of his attack. 
 
 Baxter's public life commenced in 1638, when he 
 was three-and- twenty years of age. He became 
 pastor of Kidderminster, the town with which his 
 name is inseparably associated, in 1640, and remained 
 there, except during a few years when he was 
 acting as a chaplain in the Parliamentary army, till 
 the fall of the Commonwealth, after which, till his 
 death in 1691, he had no certain dwelling-place, but 
 
RICHARD BAXTER. 221 
 
 was hunted hither and thither in the persecutions 
 which the restored Stuarts inflicted on Nonconfor- 
 mity. Thus his active life extended over the most 
 stirring period of English history, embracing the 
 Civil War, the Commonwealth, the Restoration, and 
 the Revolution. 
 
 It was a time in which no man of ability could 
 keep out of politics and ecclesiastical controversy, 
 and in these Baxter played a large rather than a 
 great part. 
 
 He had not the gifts of a statesman ; he lacked 
 that pliability of mind which is essential to the 
 leaders of the public, nor had he that sensitiveness 
 to the indications of the Divine intention in events 
 which, in a period of rapid change, is the highest 
 quality of the Christian statesman. He was a rigid 
 theorist, who yet was moved by strong and genial 
 impulses, and sometimes he obeyed the one motive 
 and sometimes the other. 
 
 The Civil War breaking out soon after his ministry 
 commenced, he espoused the Parliamentary side, as 
 it was the cause of the religious party, but was never 
 quite sure whether this step was consistent with the 
 proper theory of things. He was asked by Crom- 
 well to accept the chaplaincy of the original regi- 
 ment of Ironsides, but refused, and ever afterwards 
 regretted his refusal. When he did appear on the 
 scene as chaplain of Colonel Whalley's troop, Crom- 
 well received him with coldness, and perhaps a touch 
 of amused disdain, because Baxter, though appear- 
 ing rather late in the day, had come with a very 
 strong intention of impressing his own views on the 
 
222 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 mind of the army and the course of events. This 
 must be held to have coloured the very severe view 
 taken by Baxter of the Protector's character. He 
 regarded him as haughty and ambitious, ridiculed 
 his high-flown piety, and believed him capable of 
 using religion as a cover for selfish aims. " He 
 would not dispute with me at all," he says, in de- 
 scribing an interview with him, " but poured him- 
 self out very fluently in the extolling of free grace, 
 which was savoury to those that had right principles, 
 though he had some misunderstanding of free grace 
 himself. He was a man of excellent natural parts 
 for affection and oratory, but not well seen in the 
 principles of his religion ; of a sanguine complexion, 
 naturally of such a vivacity, hilarity, and alacrity as 
 another man hath when he hath drunken a cup too 
 much ; but naturally also so far from humble 
 thoughts of himself that it was his ruin." When 
 the conduct of Cromwell began to shape itself towards 
 a change in the form of government, Baxter 
 denounced him in the army and to his own face as a 
 usurper. Cromwell, on the other hand, treated him 
 with great clemency, tolerating language from him 
 which might have been expected to cost him his 
 head. In truth, no contrast could be more complete 
 than that between the attitudes of these two men. 
 Cromwell, placed in a position where he was com- 
 pelled to act, but crushed down with the responsi- 
 bility of action on which the honour and the future 
 of England would depend, and looking earnestly 
 therefore to discern the Divine intention, whose 
 instrument he desired to be, was soon carried by the 
 
RICHARD BAXTER. 223 
 
 stream of things away from the old moorings and 
 out of sight of the well-known landmarks, and felt 
 that Providence had loosed him from many theories 
 and even pledges which he had once expected always 
 to bind him. Baxter, on the other hand, had fastened 
 himself to a theory of the rights of kings and the 
 duties of subjects, and, standing at his post, watched 
 the tide of events drifting by with nothing but 
 acrimonious criticism for those who were painfully 
 endeavouring to understand the current. During the 
 whole of the Commonwealth he continued to hold 
 the same language towards Cromwell, although in 
 his parish of Kidderminster he was enjoying the 
 peace and prosperity which Cromwell was securing 
 for him and the other earnest ministers of the 
 country with superhuman toil and a breaking heart, 
 and although he had himself to acknowledge that, 
 through the Protector's endeavours for the purifica- 
 tion of the Church and the revival of religion, 
 " England was like to become a Land of Saints, a 
 pattern of holiness to the world, and the unmatchable 
 Paradise of the Earth." 
 
 When Richard Cromwell's feeble rule succeeded 
 that of his great father, Baxter reasoned himself 
 into the conviction that the son might be acknow- 
 ledged as the lawful sovereign, although the father 
 was a usurper, and, chancing at the time to publish 
 a book, he dedicated it to the new Protector. But 
 before many months were past, he was in London 
 plotting for the King's return; he got a national 
 thanksgiving proclaimed for Monk's success; he 
 procured from Charles a proclamation against 
 
224 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 debauchery and profanity, intended to pave the way 
 for his acceptance among the religious party \ and 
 upon the ' Restoration taking place was appointed 
 one of the royal chaplains — so eager was he in 
 cutting the rod which was to smite his own back. 
 The blows came soon and terribly. In a few months 
 he was expelled from the Church, along with two 
 thousand more of the most pious ministers in England ; 
 and for more than twenty years he was treated like 
 an outlaw — dogged by spies, dragged before brutal 
 judges, harassed by incessant fines and imprisonments 
 — in the name of the man whom he had helped to set 
 on the throne, while the golden visions which had 
 shone before him during the sway of the usurper 
 were quenched in the profanity and animalism of 
 the new reign. 
 
 This is not a heroic record. But one word 
 requires to be added to it in Baxter's vindication. 
 Unsteady as was his political career, there was 
 never one step of it dictated by a selfish motive ; for 
 he was the most self-denying and unselfish of men. 
 He risked his life in the outspokenness of his 
 opposition to Cromwell, and on the single occasion 
 when he appeared as royal chaplain before the new 
 King, he preached such a sermon of righteousness, 
 temperance, and judgment to come as the royal ears 
 never probably listened to again. When Cromwell's 
 Triers ejected the inefficient vicar of Kidderminster 
 and Baxter was entitled to step into the vicarage, he 
 refused to avail himself of his rights, leaving the 
 degraded wretch in possession, while he continued 
 to live on the curate's stipend of £80 a year ; and 
 
RICHARD BAXTER. 225 
 
 after his own ejectment he begged piteously to be 
 permitted to minister to his beloved flock with no 
 stipend at all. He refused the bishopric of Hereford, 
 offered to him while the negotiations between the 
 Nonconformist and Episcopal parties at the begin- 
 ning of the new reign were still pending, his 
 conscience not permitting him to accept the conditions 
 on which it was offered, though others of his brethren 
 accepted them without reproach ; he preferred to 
 accept five-and-twenty years of shame and suffering. 
 Facts like these make us half ashamed to recall such 
 a man's political mistakes, even though the lapse of 
 time may have made them patent to every eye. 
 What is the highest political wisdom to a stainless 
 integrity and purity of heart like this 1 
 
 Baxter's efforts as an ecclesiastic were not more 
 successful than his political career, although he 
 expended on them the strength of a giant and his 
 failure was due as much to his virtues as his faults. 
 During the period of the Civil Wars and the 
 Commonwealth, the ecclesiastical air of England was 
 torn with winds of opinion as numerous and violent 
 as those which in Virgil's verse torment the air of 
 the vast ^Eolian cave. Everything had suddenly 
 been changed § the intoxication of liberty had gone 
 to men's brains; a young, Titanic strength was 
 moving in the mind of the country ; and the temper 
 of the time invested every theological fancy with 
 supreme importance. All opinions had free course, 
 and sects sprang up like mushrooms. This was the 
 storm on which Baxter had to ride. He was the 
 leading religious debater of the age. Every thought 
 p 
 
226 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 and fancy of every sect was passed through his mind 
 and weighed in the balances of his judgment ; and, 
 in the war carried on by the orthodox against the 
 enemies who multiplied like a phantom army, the 
 chief part of the artillery was supplied out of his 
 single resources. He encountered Papists, Prelatists, 
 Anabaptists, Quakers, Antinomians, Vanists, Seekers, 
 and many other eccentrics whose very names have 
 perished. Yet he never fought with the weapons of 
 a mere ecclesiastical champion, but always with the 
 generosity of a courteous knight. He used, indeed, 
 in some measure the ferocious language which was 
 exchanged on every side in the controversies of those 
 times, and it is painful now to read some things he 
 said against Owen, Goodwin, and others who have 
 been since admitted among the saints of the Church 
 universal. But no controversialist was ever readier 
 to see and appreciate the arguments of an adversary. 
 Indeed, those with whom he acted had constantly to 
 complain that he saw too much good in the enemy ; 
 and it was scarcely considered a satisfactory com- 
 pensation for this that he told his friends their faults 
 in unmistakeable language with the same impartiality 
 with which he recognised the virtues of opponents. 
 While he selected something from the opinions of 
 every party, he stood up for each and all of the 
 miscellaneous mass of opinions which constituted his 
 own creed as stiffly as any sectary for the shibboleth 
 of his sect. It was sometimes alleged that among 
 the parties of England the one to which Baxter 
 belonged consisted of a single man, and even within 
 his party there was not perfect harmony ; a clever 
 
RICHARD BAXTER. 227 
 
 pamphleteer published a discussion in Baxter's style, 
 in which the argument on the one side was carried 
 on by Eichard, and that on the other by Baxter. 
 In negotiation he was scarcely ever successful ; he 
 always stated his own views with fulness and clear- 
 ness, but he failed to unite those with whom he 
 acted or to conciliate opponents, and had not the 
 art of getting business pushed through. 
 
 Brought up in the Church of England, he early 
 joined the party in it that objected to the cross in 
 baptism, kneeling at communion, and other rites 
 which were thought to savour of Popery; and he 
 came by and by to the conviction, as has been 
 already mentioned, that the system of diocesan epi- 
 scopacy was unscriptural and intolerable, because it 
 laid on bishops a charge which no human being was 
 able to fulfil, and involved that absence of effective 
 church discipline to which he attributed most of the 
 irreligion of the country. When, during the Civil 
 War, the Solemn League and Covenant was sworn 
 to by the Parliament and people, and Presbyterianism 
 became for a time the form of national religion in 
 England, he welcomed the change, and ever afterwards 
 accounted this the best existing ecclesiastical system, 
 and believed those who adhered to it to be the most 
 pious and solid portion of the English people. Yet 
 he was shy of calling himself a Presbyterian or by 
 any other ecclesiastical name. He longed for a more 
 comprehensive Church, which should include all the 
 principal parties into which the religious world was 
 divided — Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Independents, 
 and Baptists. His plan was to give to each minister 
 
228 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 as much authority over his own congregation as 
 would please the Independents, but to bring the 
 ministers of districts and counties together in con- 
 ference after the fashion of the presbyteries and 
 synods of the Presbyterians, and at these meetings 
 a kind of bishop was to preside as primus inter pares 
 to please the Episcopalians. The state of flux in 
 which all things were during the Commonwealth 
 afforded ample opportunity for the discussion of such 
 projects, and Baxter laboured by innumerable 
 meetings, letters, pamphlets, and books to bring the 
 parties together. When the King came back, he 
 thought his great object was at last within his grasp, 
 for Charles at first professed himself favourable to a 
 union of all opinions. But, after months of anxious 
 negotiation, Baxter found that the King's professions 
 were only intended to last until he was firmly seated 
 in the throne, and that the Episcopal party never 
 intended to grant the smallest concession to the 
 scruples of their opponents. He and his brethren 
 had to go forth into the cold, and his fondly- 
 cherished dreams of a great comprehensive national 
 Church came to an end. Even after this, however, 
 his charity impelled him to continue his efforts after 
 comprehension by devising schemes of union among 
 the sections of Nonconformity. But these projects 
 met with little success, and his brethren had to 
 complain that his tolerant way of speaking of 
 Episcopacy, and his practice of occasionally wor- 
 shipping and taking the communion in the National 
 Church, weakened their position as an organised 
 party outside the Establishment, and induced weak 
 
RICHARD BAXTER. 229 
 
 persons to go back altogether into conformity because 
 they could not appreciate the reasons spun by his 
 subtle mind for his dubious course. Perhaps they 
 were right \ yet we cannot help loving the ideal soul, 
 which, though forced to engage in a score of con- 
 troversies, lived so far above them, and in an age of 
 strife championed so chivalrously the cause of charity 
 and peace. 
 
 What has been said will have suggested to every 
 one that Baxter was not intended by nature for the 
 noisy public arena into which the stress of circum- 
 stances forced him, but for the silent and fruitful 
 labours of the study. Certainly, if he could have 
 chosen his own lot, this would have been his choice, 
 and, even as things were, his superhuman capacity 
 for work enabled him to gratify his natural pre- 
 dilections in spite of the distractions of his busy 
 life. He perhaps read more books than any other 
 human being has ever done; and, though his 
 scholarship was neither polished nor accurate, no 
 mind, even in that age of intellectual giants, was so 
 full a magazine of information as his. He was 
 equally at home among the Fathers of the early 
 Church, the schoolmen of a later age, and the 
 Protestant theologians of Germany, Holland, France, 
 and England. But his studies ranged far beyond 
 the literature of his own profession, and included 
 mathematics, physics, medicine, and, in the fullest 
 measure, ethics, logic, and metaphysics. The extent 
 of his own writings shows the marvellous range of 
 his ideas. As one approaches the study of them, 
 
230 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 one is reminded of Newton's remark about the 
 universe, that all he could do was to pick up a few 
 pebbles on the shore, while the ocean stretched 
 away before him unknown and unexplored. Baxter 
 published a hundred and sixty-eight distinct works, 
 many of which were of enormous size. 
 
 Yet he had all this multifarious knowledge well in 
 hand. As he said, he had a mind which abhorred 
 confusion ; it was a mind capable of both making the 
 subtlest distinctions and wielding the most ponderous 
 masses of thought with equal facility, and it organised 
 all its acquirements from a centre of its own. It 
 was not only encyclopaedic, but philosophic too, with 
 a strong instinct to think everything in one piece. 
 Had Baxter been born under a happier star, he might 
 have given the world a system of organised thought 
 as vast and compact as that of Aquinas himself. 
 As it was, he put together in his Metlwdus, written 
 in Latin, a complete and highly original system of 
 theology, and in his Christian Directory, written in 
 English, a complete system of Ethics. Of the former 
 I speak only from hearsay, but to any student of 
 Ethics who may be wearied with the meagre fragments 
 of psychology and aesthetics generally supplied by 
 English writers under the name of Moral Philosophy, 
 and may desire to see human life in its variety and 
 meaning exhibited in a system which will surround 
 him and rise above him like a firmament fretted 
 with stars, I can confidently recommend the latter 
 work. 
 
 Baxter was not, like some system-builders, a mere 
 mechanical arranger of the dogmas of the Church. 
 
RICHARD BAXTER. 231 
 
 He was a thinker to the very core of his nature, and 
 could not but look at everything with his own eyes. 
 In his very first book, Aphorisms of Justification, he 
 wandered far from the beaten track, and all his life 
 he continued to hold a number of views so peculiar 
 that he would certainly have been numbered among 
 the heretics had not the fervour of his zeal for men's 
 salvation, and his transparent devotion to Christ, 
 restrained the tongues of those who might have 
 ruined him with that hateful name. He believed 
 that in the heat of the controversy with Rome 
 Protestants had been betrayed into an exaggerated 
 doctrine of faith. He was not sure that before 
 justification men were incapable of works which 
 might be called good ; and he was quite sure that 
 those statements of Protestants must be false which 
 implied that it made no difference in the eyes of 
 God whether unjustified men were humane and 
 upright, or degraded and criminal. His own doctrine 
 of faith approached dangerously near to the Romish, 
 as he included in this term not only a fiduciary act, 
 but also love and works ; and he did not hesitate 
 to affirm in his Autobiography that the doctrinal 
 differences between Papists and Protestants arose 
 chiefly from misunderstandings and mistakes about 
 words, and that the evil of Popery lay in its practical 
 abuses — its tyranny, its idolatrous forms of worship, 
 and its befriending of ignorance and vice. He could 
 never quite assure himself about the Calvinistic 
 doctrine of the perseverance of the saints ; and in 
 later life he wrote : " 1 am not so much inclined to 
 pass a peremptory sentence of damnation upon all 
 
232 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 that never heard of Christ, having some more reason 
 than I knew of before to think that God's dealing 
 with snch is much unknown to us." 
 
 It will be observed that all these declinations from 
 orthodoxy lean towards one quarter, and they are 
 all to be explained by a certain habit of mind. In 
 its gravest and intensest moments the religious mind 
 feels itself to be utterly in the hands of God ; gazing 
 on the dazzling whiteness of His holiness, it sees 
 every sin to be so horrible and every sinful charac- 
 ter so black that it has no disposition to distinguish 
 one sin from another or to mark the superiority of 
 one man to another ; it feels itself to be altogether 
 as an unclean thing, and confesses that, if it is to be 
 saved, its salvation must, from first to last, be the 
 work of God. If it theologises in this mood, a 
 system like Calvinism is the result, in which man is 
 nothing and God everything : all that man can do 
 or need do appears too trivial for attention in com- 
 parison with God's sovereign grace, which, having 
 taken salvation in hand, carries it irresistibly through. 
 But there are facts of human experience which 
 hardly get justice in this mood. In a cooler mood 
 there seems to be a great difference between one sin 
 and another, and one man and another ; a great deal 
 seems to depend on our own obedience or disobe- 
 dience ; and the course of our salvation is observed 
 to pursue anything but the even tenor which might 
 be supposed to belong to a work which is wholly 
 Divine. These two classes of facts are recognised 
 in the Bible with equal frankness, but they have 
 never received equal justice in theology. Perhaps 
 
RICHAED BAXTER. 233 
 
 human theology is unequal to the task. It must 
 always be one-sided. The Calvinistic system seizes 
 upon the truest and profoundest side ; and to it 
 Baxter was attached with the best of his mind and 
 the most sacred experiences of his life : he used even 
 to say that he accepted without reserve the Assem- 
 bly's Catechism and the Decrees of Dort. But his 
 discursive mind saw and his fairness acknowledged 
 the other side too ; and his intellectual courage was 
 too great to allow him to shrink even from the 
 impossible task of reconciling both. 
 
 The truth is, Baxter united to the Evangelical 
 spirit some of the characteristics of a Broad 
 Churchman. There was a decided vein of scep- 
 ticism in him, which was alien to his age and 
 akin to the modern spirit. In youth he was assailed 
 with shocking suggestions of unbelief, to which we 
 probably owe his voluminous contributions to apolo- 
 getic literature. He may be said to be the father of 
 this species of literature in England. Of course his 
 lines of argument are now antiquated, for no books 
 grow so quickly old as those in this department ; 
 but there is still in these productions an interest 
 and pathos which always belongs to any writing 
 which shows a streak of blood from the writer's 
 heart. His doubts did not abate with advancing 
 years ; he confesses that even in old age he was 
 often full of such suggestions of scepticism as must 
 have made him an infidel, if he had not had the ex- 
 perience of God's grace for a lifetime to look back 
 upon ; this was the only anchor which kept its grip 
 in all storms. It is an easy thing to make such 
 
1/ 
 
 234 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 confessions now-a-days; many a swaggering fellow 
 wears them as a feather in his cap. But it was 
 different in such an age and in such a man. There 
 is not in literature anything more touching than 
 the pages of his Autobiography, in which he thus 
 lays bare his heart, with the noble words : " I am 
 not so foolish as to pretend my certainty to be 
 greater than it is merely because it is a dishonour 
 to be less certain." It is a strange sight in that age 
 of faith to see the man who had long been the fore- 
 most champion of the orthodox acknowledging that 
 they were " all still in the dark." Such modesty and 
 candour, joined with the profoundest godliness and 
 most self-denying zeal, may be a sign to an age like 
 our own, in which many, while resting all their own 
 hopes and their hopes for the world, as he did, in 
 Christ crucified, yet think that some mistakes may 
 have been made in the past, and that God has still 
 much light to give mankind in the future. 
 
 There is something painful in the thought that so 
 much of Baxter's toil of brain and pen — those vast 
 speculations, those schemes for union — should have 
 descended into utter oblivion. He lives in the ^ 
 memory of the world merely as the pastor of Kidder- 
 minster and the author of two or three books of 
 popular theology, though he says that his pastoral 
 work was a mere recreation in comparison with his 
 other labours, and almost apologises for publishing 
 the plain and simple treatises by which he is remem- 
 bered. Yet perhaps he could not have done the 
 work which is remembered if he had not also done 
 
EICHARD BAXTER. 235 
 
 that which is forgotten. His simplest treatise grew 
 out of the soil enriched by his vast studies; the 
 sinewy strength which the Kidderminster people felt 
 in his most extemp orate harangues was acquired in 
 controversies of which they knew nothing ; his own 
 people listened to him with a deeper respect because 
 his was a name which filled all England. 
 
 Kidderminster was in many respects a favourable 
 sphere for ministerial work. He had been led by 
 his first efforts in preaching to desire a parish 
 whose inhabitants were ignorant of the Gospel, 
 so that he might sow on virgin soil ; and Kidder- 
 minster, in this respect, entirely corresponded with 
 his wishes. It contained a rude and ignorant 
 population, whose spiritual training had been en- 
 tirely neglected. 
 
 It was a town of about 3000 inhabitants, which a 
 man of Baxter's size could thoroughly fill. He and 
 his assistants were the only ministers, so that he 
 could take possession in a way which the religious 
 divisions of our time do not permit to any minister. 
 The inhabitants were well-to-do weavers, in whose 
 shops any movement which stirred head or heart 
 spread with great rapidity. They gave him some 
 rough usage at first ; but as soon as they were 
 assured of his unselfish desire for their good, they 
 rallied to him with enthusiasm, and it was not long 
 before his influence was felt in every house of the 
 town. He acquired for them also a profound respect, 
 and, Tory though he was, their qualities led him to 
 form the opinion that " freeholders and tradesmen 
 are the strength of religion and civility in the land, 
 
236 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 and gentlemen and beggars and servile tenants are 
 the strength of iniquity." 
 
 His preaching soon told on these shrewd and 
 independent minds. They so crowded the capacious 
 parish church that five galleries had to be put into 
 it during his incumbency. He had a powerful 
 voice and a moving style of oratory ; his words were 
 plain and pithy, and he addressed himself to the 
 broad sympathies and common-sense of his hearers, 
 though now and then, he confesses, he intentionally 
 preached clean over their heads, " that they might 
 be kept humble, and still perceive their ignorance, 
 and be willing to keep in a learning state." 
 
 But it was not chiefly by his preaching that he 
 achieved the results which make the record of his 
 pastorate one of the brightest pages in the history 
 of the sacred office. He early became convinced that 
 the minds of the majority were not reached by 
 preaching and required to be addressed in a more 
 direct manner ; a man is affected by a few earnest 
 words about salvation spoken to himself alone, who 
 will listen to sermons for a lifetime without apply- 
 ing them to his own case ; a perplexed soul is likely 
 to get more satisfaction from a quarter of an hour's 
 talk with a minister than from listening to a whole 
 year's sermons. Under the influence of these con- 
 victions Baxter invented the plan of operations 
 which he called catechising. He devoted seven 
 hours a week to it. His parishioners came to his 
 house, family by family, and to each family he devoted 
 about an hour's time, hearing them repeat a catechism 
 he had put into their hands, and exhorting them to 
 
RICHARD BAXTEE. 237 
 
 cultivate domestic piety. Besides, he took each in- 
 dividual apart, questioned him closely as to his 
 religious state, and urged him tenderly and earnestly 
 to immediate decision. In short, he anticipated the 
 methods pursued in our day in the inquiry-meetings 
 connected with revivals. In Kidderminster there 
 was no revival ; but the objects at which a revival 
 aims were reached in a still more satisfactory way. 
 It was rarely that a family left his door without 
 being affected to tears. He had reason to believe 
 that a third of the grown-up inhabitants of the 
 place were converted, and the fruits among the 
 young were even more abundant. Family worship 
 was set up in the homes of the people; when he 
 first went there, there was only about one family in 
 a street that worshipped God, but, when he left, 
 " there were some streets where there was not past 
 one family in the side of the street that did not so." 
 Large prayer-meetings were organised, in which his 
 parishioners repeated to each other the previous 
 Sunday's sermons and prayed for their minister's 
 success ; and " some of them became so able in 
 prayer that very few ministers did match them in 
 order and fulness and apt expressions, and holy 
 oratory with fervency." 
 
 The blessing spread beyond Kidderminster. Some 
 one has said that God gives bishops to the Church 
 whether she makes use of them or not ; and, without 
 the name, Baxter became the bishop of the county 
 in which he lived. The neighbouring ministers 
 courted his society, attracted by his fame, his earnest- 
 ness, and the hope of learning the secret of his success. 
 

 238 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 He met with them once a month in friendly confer- 
 ence and encouraged them to introduce discipline 
 into their congregations and begin the catechising. 
 He diffused his pet ideas still more widely by means 
 of the printed page, especially in his Reformed Pastor 
 — perhaps the very best of all his books. This work 
 was written to advocate his hobby of catechising, 
 which is explained in minute detail. But it is, be- 
 sides, an incomparable treatise on every part of 
 pastoral duty, exhibiting with rare wisdom the needs 
 of the people and the difficulties, the encouragements, 
 and the qualifications of the minister, while over , 
 every page there spreads a glow of enthusiasm for 
 the salvation of men and of love to the Saviour whose 
 contagion cannot be resisted even by the dullest ■, 
 reader. It is, in fact, an unconscious portrait of ,' 
 the author himself, which is worthy to hang in that ' 
 gallery of the imagination in which mankind preserves ! 
 its memorials of the very noblest spirits of all time. 
 
 The close intercourse which Baxter held with the 
 families of his congregation, and the acquaintance 
 which his catechising gave him with every phase of 
 religious experience, qualified him for his work as a 
 popular writer. Here again he was an inventor and 
 pioneer. " Rich beyond all Protestant rivalry," says 
 Sir James Stephen, " in sacred literature, the Church 
 of England, from the days of Parker to those of Laud, 
 had scarcely produced any one considerable work of 
 popular instruction. The reigns of Whitgift, Bancroft, 
 and Laud were unmolested by cares so rude as those 
 of evangelising the artisans and peasantry. Jewell 
 
RICHARD BAXTER. 239 
 
 and Bull, Hall and Donne, Hooker and Taylor, lived 
 
 and wrote for their peers and for future ages, but 
 
 not for the commonalty of their own." Baxter's 
 
 productions in this species of literature are of great 
 
 extent and variety; but the main body of them 
 
 forms a series written upon a definite plan, which was 
 
 suggested to him by his friend, Archbishop Usher. 
 
 I It was to consist of separate books for persons in all 
 
 'the chief religious states, — for careless sinners, for 
 
 , inquirers, for young Christians, for weak Christians, 
 
 'for strong Christians, for advanced Christians, for 
 
 /backsliders. Baxter nearly, if not altogether, carried 
 
 out this extensive design, though the only one of 
 
 these books which still maintains its place among 
 
 i the living is the first of the series — the Call to the 
 
 'Unconverted. So popular was this remarkable piece 
 
 in his own day that 20,000 copies were sold in the 
 
 year of publication, and it has maintained a steady 
 
 popularity ever since. He knew of many entire 
 
 families that had been converted through it, and 
 
 when we reflect to how many persons it has since 
 
 been made a blessing, there gathers round the work 
 
 a sacredness which is grander far than Greek or 
 
 Eoman fame. 
 
 These writings cannot be called models of style ; 
 and yet, perhaps, they are models of the species of 
 literature to which they belong. They were written 
 currente calamo and sent off to the printer with scarcely 
 a correction. The style is far too diffuse for the 
 modern reader, accustomed to get his knowledge 
 supplied in small, well-packed parcels. But their 
 author cultivated this style of deliberate purpose. 
 
240 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 His own natural style was of the most condensed 
 order ; " but," he says, " I considered that I speak to 
 plain, unlearned men that cannot find our meaning 
 in too narrow a room, and that use to overlook the 
 fulness of significant words. As they must be long- 
 in thinking, so must we be long in speaking ; or else 
 our words fall short of the mark, and die before they 
 can produce the desired effect, so great is the distance 
 between these men's ears and their brains." Within 
 these wide and rugged banks, however, there is al- 
 ways flowing a copious stream of thought. In spite 
 of diffuseness, too, there are scattered over the pages, 
 at intervals not too great, pithy and epigrammatic 
 sayings which ring in the memory like proverbs, 
 strokes of humour, bright metaphors, and passages 
 of unconscious eloquence. In his best books, such 
 as the Reformed Pastor, these gems can be gathered 
 in handfuls. But the prime characteristic of his 
 style is its earnestness. He began every book with 
 the thought that he might die before finishing it ; 
 he therefore goes straight to the point, reasoning of 
 sin and salvation, life and death, heaven and hell, as 
 one who has immediate business with the reader, and 
 will not let him go till it is finished, and heaping up 
 appeals, questions, exclamations — anything to secure 
 the attention and arouse the conscience. As one 
 reads, the awfulness of eternity envelops the heart, 
 and the great white throne rises before the eye of 
 the mind. 
 
 The greatest of all these popular treatises is, of 
 course, the Saints' Everlasting Best. Most readers, 
 I imagine, take it to be the product of mellow 
 
RICHARD BAXTER. 241 
 
 and somewhat exhausted age. On the contrary, it 
 was his first book but one. It is often the case 
 that the first book of a voluminous author is the 
 best. The first crop taken from the mind has the 
 lushness of long, unmolested growth ; the grass is 
 soft and sprinkled with the gay flowers of spring ; 
 but when the field has been often mowed, the crop 
 gets hard and stumpy. 
 
 Whilst serving as army chaplain, Baxter was 
 suddenly overtaken by one of his fits of illness, in 
 which he lost nearly a gallon of blood. He was 
 removed to the house of his friend, Sir Thomas Rous, 
 and lay there for months in expectation of imme- 
 diate dissolution. His thoughts naturally turned 
 towards that land into which he seemed about to 
 pass, and to give steadiness to his reflections he 
 began to write them down. His notes rapidly 
 multiplied till they swelled into a bulky volume. 
 This was the way in which this masterpiece came into 
 existence. Like the few best books in the world, 
 it was not made, but grew. Its origin reminds us 
 of Buny an's quaint account of the growth of the 
 Pilgrim* s Progress : — 
 
 " I did not think 
 To show to all the world my pen and ink 
 In such a mode ; I only thought to make 
 I knew not what ; nor did I undertake 
 Thereby to please my neighbour ; no, not I ; 
 I did it mine own self to gratify. 
 
 Thus I set pen to paper with delight, 
 And quickly had my thoughts in black and white ; 
 For, having now my method by the end, 
 Still as I pulled, it came ; and so I penned 
 Q 
 
242 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 It down ; until at last it came to be, 
 
 For length and breadth, the bigness which you see." 
 
 The Saints Rest is professedly a book on heaven, 
 and says much which is true and affecting on this 
 sublime theme. But in reality it is a long dirge on 
 the suffering and vanity of human life. Heaven 
 comes in only as the foil to this. It is, in fact, a 
 picture of Baxter's own mind, when he was sick in 
 body and sicker still in soul. We are made 
 acquainted in it with the pains which racked him 
 and the weakness which made him toss on his bed, 
 wishing in the night-time that it was morning, and 
 in the day-time that it was evening. We hear in it 
 the murderous roar of civil strife, and see a man, 
 unfitted for the hardships of war, accompanying his 
 regiment from place to place, sickening at the sights 
 of blood and carnage, and torn with the wounds of 
 his native country. We hear the loud shrill voices 
 of religious fanatics rising in debate upon the tented 
 field or echoing in sacred edifices, and see a son of 
 peace, with a heart yearning for fellowship and love, 
 wandering lonely among the tents of Meshech. 
 Heaven is to be the place of deliverance from all 
 these evils. The young reader, across whose heart 
 the shadows of disappointment have never yet fallen, 
 opens the book and wonders where its charm can 
 lie. But those who labour and are heavy-laden, 
 who have accompanied their dearest to the gates of 
 the unknown country and said the bitter farewell, 
 those who have buried the impossible ambitions and 
 hopeless hopes of youth, those who have found out 
 
RICHARD BAXTER. 243 
 
 how difficult it is to know the most momentous 
 things and how trivial are the things we know, those 
 who have long endured the loathsome insistence of 
 temptation and besetting sin — all these feel in the 
 book the touch of a brother's hand and the throb 
 of a heart which understands them. As long as the 
 world is full of tears, and men still look for the star 
 of hope to rise above it, this book may perhaps 
 endure. 
 
 Many of us can remember where we first set eyes 
 on the Saints' Best. Perhaps it was on a little shelf 
 against a cottage wall, where it stood side by side 
 with such reverend companions as the Pilgrim's 
 Progress and the Holy War, the Fourfold State and 
 the Practical View. The bindings were of black 
 cloth, and the edges of the leaves were brown and 
 dingy ; but we shall never again look on any books 
 with the awful wonder with which we looked on 
 these; nor shall any other figures ever appear to us 
 so venerable and lovable as those which we saw 
 bending over their opened pages. 
 
 Puritanism did not die in the seventeenth century. 
 It passed indeed through a terrible eclipse. Earely 
 has it fallen to the lot of mortals to go through an 
 agony such as Baxter and the other representatives 
 of Puritanism had to endure after the Restoration. 
 It was not that they had in their own persons to 
 bear persecution and indignity, though these were 
 hard enough. But the cause of God, on which they 
 had staked their all, fell in ruins to the ground. 
 Two thousand ministers were ejected from their 
 
244 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 parishes ; and the inefficient and debauched, who had 
 been deprived on account of their unfitness for the 
 sacred office, trooped back to their places in hundreds. 
 To these hirelings were surrendered the souls for 
 which the ejected ministers would have given their 
 own. Under the patronage of a court in which sin 
 walked naked without shame, every form of vice 
 and irreligion grew rampant in the land. The gloom 
 deepened down from year to year, and through it 
 they walked forward to their unhonoured graves. 
 
 Yet Puritanism did not die. Even in England it 
 still lived on, though withdrawn from the public eye. 
 But on the other side of the Atlantic it had won a 
 spacious home, and was laying the foundations of a 
 new world. In Scotland, too, it found an asylum by 
 and by, and the guest brought gifts which enriched 
 the entertainer. As I think of the worthies of the 
 last generation who fed their minds on books like 
 the Saints' Best — the men and women of simple 
 worth, of shrewd mother- wit, of intelligence nourished 
 from the Bible, of sterling character and profound 
 Christian experience, whom many of us have known 
 in country villages ; the men and women in larger 
 centres of population who upheld the cause of Christ 
 with magnanimity, with princely liberality, with un- 
 flinching devotion to principle, with eloquence and 
 wisdom and manly force — as I recall their grave 
 yet cheerful faces, I sometimes imagine to myself a 
 scene in which these figures are seated ; and with 
 them sit other figures in the strange garb of the 
 seventeenth century ; Cromwell is there with some 
 of his expounding officers and troopers, and Bunyan 
 
RICHARD BAXTER. 245 
 
 with his laughing blue eyes, and those poor women 
 he heard talking in the sun one day in Bedford so 
 sweetly of a world of which he knew nothing that 
 he resolved to seek to find it too ; and Owen is 
 there; Goodwin too, and Baxter; and Milton with 
 his learned brow does not disdain the humble 
 gathering ; and it seems to me they all get on well 
 together, the difference of time makes no difference 
 at all ; and Cromwell's savoury talk of free grace, 
 and Bunyan's sallies of sober gaiety, and Goodwin's 
 quotations of Scripture, and Baxter's moving 
 harangue, ay, and Milton's difficult strain, are 
 equally native and intelligible to them all. 
 
 No, Puritanism did not die, and will not die. 
 The Restoration of the Stuarts rolled back the true 
 progress of England for more than a hundred 
 years. Perhaps the tide of the nation's life has not 
 yet, at the end of two hundred years, touched again 
 the high-water mark of the Puritan period. But, at 
 all events, the movements which, in the last hundred 
 years, have stirred the heart of the nation most 
 deeply and quickened most beneficially its vital 
 energy have been recurrences to portions of the 
 Puritan ideal. We shall not get back Puritanism 
 in its seventeenth-century form ; it is not desirable 
 that we should, for there were in it many elements 
 of human error, and England has since won many 
 precious possessions of which the Puritans never 
 dreamed, but which must be carried into the future 
 form of the nation's life. But the Puritan's clear 
 vision — that the real strength and greatness of a 
 nation are exactly in proportion to the number of 
 
246 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 true men it contains ; that the character of the 
 individual and the purity of the home are the 
 foundations of the common weal, all besides being 
 only paint and bunting in comparison ; and that 
 the individual can only realise and vindicate his 
 own worth when he knows himself as the child of 
 God and the heir of eternity, and the family keep 
 its purity when passion is held in check by the voice 
 of conscience and the law of God — this is the eternal 
 law of human progress ; and if this land, which has 
 been able in the past to inspire our heroes with love 
 so deep and hopes so noble, is in the future to be of 
 any worth to the world and worthy of the en- 
 thusiastic devotion of her sons, it will chiefly be 
 because God continues to raise up men filled in 
 some measure with the self-denial and awful zeal of 
 Baxter, to live for the salvation of the souls of their 
 brethren and lay the foundations of the domestic 
 and social life of the people deep in the principles 
 of that Gospel which is the wisdom and the power 
 of God. 
 
ZINZENDOBF. 
 
 By the Rev. Professor Binnie, D.D. 
 
ZINZENDORF.' 
 
 THERE are good reasons why the name of Count 
 Zinzenclorf should be mentioned with honour 
 in the Evangelical Succession. It would not be 
 going too far to affirm that he did more than any 
 other man to redeem the Eighteenth Century from 
 the reproach of barrenness, in relation to evangelical 
 teaching and work. 
 
 In the first place, he preached the gospel himself 
 with remarkable simplicity and power, to an age 
 which greatly needed it — an age which needed to 
 be called off from unprofitable controversies that 
 were wasting its vital energies, and to be roused to 
 open its heart to the message of reconciliation 
 through Christ. This evangelical message Zinzen- 
 dorf not only preached, in person, to men of all 
 ranks in half the countries of Europe, and amongst 
 the colonists, especially the German colonists, of 
 Georgia and Pennsylvania, but he sent it out to the 
 heathen also for whom no man cared, in the "West 
 Indies, in Greenland, at the Cape of Good Hope, in 
 Ceylon and Hindustan. This he would himself, I 
 believe, have reckoned the greatest service in which 
 
250 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 the Saviour employed him. He was a great Evan- 
 gelist and Missionary. 
 
 He was, moreover, in the best sense of the word, a 
 great Churchman. We see in him the same remark- 
 able combination of evangelistic and organising 
 power which the sixteenth century witnessed in 
 Calvin and Knox, and which, appearing again last 
 century in John Wesley, did so much to perpetuate 
 the benefits of the religious awakening which that 
 great Evangelist was enabled to bring about in the 
 English-speaking nations on either side of the 
 Atlantic. Zinzendorf and Wesley, you will bear in 
 mind, were contemporaries, the former having been 
 born in 1700, the latter in 1703. They both had 
 the sagacity to perceive that the age which they 
 were doing so much to bring back to God required 
 something more than the awakening word. They 
 deeply felt that — as Bunyan says — 
 
 Saints' fellowship, if it be managed well, 
 Keeps them awake. 
 
 They saw that provision must be made for this 
 fellowship — this communion of saints — as well as 
 for the preaching of the word, — that souls awakened 
 by the preaching must be gathered into well-ordered 
 societies, in the bosom of which the new life may be 
 cherished, and where its energies may have free play 
 in active Christian work. It was Zinzendorf who 
 showed the way in this direction, although Wesley 
 followed close in his steps. Others before them 
 had felt that the Lutheran and Anglican Churches 
 laboured under fatal defects in this respect. It 
 was they who, better than any of the men of their 
 
ZINZENDOEF. 251 
 
 age, succeeded in framing a polity fitted to supply 
 what was wanted. Wesley was the founder of 
 Methodism, Zinzendorf was the founder of the 
 modern Moravian Church ; and, as I said, it was 
 Zinzendorf who led the way. We shall afterwards 
 see that the service thus performed was one by 
 which all the churches, especially those of Great 
 Britain and America, have largely profited. 
 
 Let me try, then, to introduce to your acquaintance 
 the distinguished German to whom our Lord has 
 vouchsafed so eminent a place in the Evangelical 
 Succession. The facts of his life are by no means 
 so generally known in this country, as to render an 
 attempt of this sort unnecessary. 
 
 Nicholas Lewis, Count of Zinzendorf and Potten- 
 dorf, was born in Dresden on the 26th of May 1700. 
 The years of his life ran parallel with the first sixty 
 years of the century. He was of noble descent by 
 both parents. The Zinzendorfs belonged originally 
 to Austria, where they occupied a high place in the 
 aristocracy for many generations. When the 
 Reformation came, they took their stand among 
 those of the Austrian nobles who embraced the 
 Reformed faith. What was more ; they remained 
 faithful to the truth all through the evil times which 
 followed. When the majority of the Protestant nobles, 
 yielding to the pressure of the Imperial Court and 
 the Jesuits, fell away from the Gospel, the Zinzen- 
 dorfs not only cleaved to it, but, in the fourth 
 generation, became exiles from their native land for 
 its sake. It was the grandfather of our Count 
 Zinzendorf who, in this practical fashion, confessed 
 
252 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 the Lord Jesus Christ. Crossing over into Saxony 
 he settled at Berthelsdorf in Upper Lusatia, an 
 estate situated about thirty miles from Dresden as 
 the crow flies, and not far from the Bohemian 
 frontier. Among the influences which went to form 
 the mind of Zinzendorf one of the most powerful, 
 we need not doubt, was contributed by his descent 
 from men who chose to suffer the loss of all things 
 rather than deny Christ. It is certain that his 
 hereditary connection with Austrian Protestantism 
 predisposed him, when he came of age, to look with 
 sympathy on the Moravian refugees who threw 
 themselves on his protection, and made it matter of 
 conscience with him to interpose for their defence. 
 
 Influence of a more direct sort Zinzendorf's father 
 was not permitted to exercise upon him, for he 
 died when the child was only six months old. His 
 mother, who was also a Lusatian and of noble rank, 
 was a person of rare accomplishment and unfeigned 
 piety. She lived to a great age ; yet neither was 
 she permitted to do much in the way of moulding 
 her son's character. Having contracted a second 
 marriage, with a Prussian General, she removed to 
 Berlin, and the custody of the child devolved on 
 her mother, the Baroness Gersdorf. I do not know 
 that the child was so much a loser by this as one 
 might have feared. For the old baroness was an 
 all-accomplished lady, especially in music and poetry. 
 She was also a sincere and warm-hearted Christian, 
 rich in faith and good works. An attached member 
 of the Lutheran Church of Saxony, she belonged to 
 that party in the Church who, while cleaving 
 
ZINZENDORF. 253 
 
 affectionately to the doctrine of the Augsburg 
 Confession, desired to see the government of the 
 Church put into a more creditable condition, so that 
 it might more worthily answer to the idea of a 
 "community of the faithful." These "Pietists" 
 (as they were called) were, in the German Church, 
 very much what the Puritans were in the English 
 Church. Their most distinguished leader was 
 Spener of Berlin ; and Spener had no warmer 
 friends anywhere than the Zinzendorfs and Gersdorfs 
 of Lusatia. When our Count Zinzendorf was baptized , 
 Spener travelled all the way from Berlin to Dresden 
 to be godfather to the child, and as long as he lived 
 he was a welcome guest in the old baroness's mansion- 
 house of Great Hennersdorf, as often as he could 
 find time to pay a visit to Lusatia. The Pietists, as 
 I said, were the Puritans of Germany ; and Zinzen- 
 dorfs infancy was passed within a circle in which 
 Pietism of the strictest sort prevailed. 
 
 The child thus brought up in the nurture and 
 admonition of Christ gave early evidence of having 
 been accepted by Him. From his infancy he was 
 noted for tenderness of conscience, for the pleasure 
 he took in prayer and the Word of God, and for a 
 habit he had of speaking familiarly to Christ as a 
 companion very near although invisible. There can 
 be no doubt that the saving change in his heart 
 took place while he was yet in unconscious infancy. 
 This was a sort of experience for which certain of 
 his Pietist friends, when it came to their knowledge 
 some years afterwards, were so little prepared, that 
 they were offended at it. Finding conversion and 
 
254 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 repentance insisted upon in Scripture, they leaped 
 to the conclusion that, unless a man can remember to 
 have gone through a series of well-defined stages of 
 contrition and conversion, he cannot have entered 
 on the life of faith at all. Zinzendorf frankly 
 admitted that he had no recollection of having gone 
 through the stages described. As far back as his 
 memory reached, he had been conscious of loving 
 God and of fearing to sin; it had been pleasant to him 
 to think of Christ as near, and to pray to Him. So 
 they concluded, and were not afraid to affirm, that 
 in their judgment he was an unconverted man. 
 
 When the Count reached his tenth year, his uncle 
 Zinzendorf, who was his legal guardian, judged it 
 was time for the boy to quit the nursery. So he 
 was sent to Halle, to board with Professor Francke, 
 and to attend the Paedagogium. By this time 
 Spener was dead, and Francke was the most trusted 
 leader of the Pietists. Under the influence of this 
 distinguished Professor, Halle had become the seat 
 of an unprecedented and most wonderful activity in 
 every kind of Christian beneficence. In his famous 
 Orphan House, Francke had showed astonished 
 Christendom, for the first time, what faith could do 
 in the way of rearing and sustaining vast charitable 
 institutions by free-will offerings alone. In the 
 same spirit, his friend Baron Canstein had estab- 
 lished and set in motion at Halle the great Bible 
 Society which still flourishes and bears his name. 
 He had thus shown the way in the great enter- 
 prise of Bible circulation, which was to be taken up 
 and prosecuted on a still larger scale eighty years 
 
ZINZENDOBF. 255 
 
 later, by the British and Foreign Bible Society. 
 Nor were the necessities of the heathen forgotten. 
 It was amongst the Pietists of Halle that the Danish 
 government found the Missionaries whom it had 
 lately begun to send out to evangelise its heathen 
 subjects in Greenland and the East Indies. The 
 letters of the missionaries, and an occasional visit 
 from one or other of them, kept the brethren at 
 Halle acquainted with the progress of the work ; 
 and Francke was careful to see that the boys in the 
 Paedagogium had their share of the benefit. It is 
 known that a deep impression was thus made on 
 some of them. Our Zinzendorf and young de Watte- 
 ville — a fellow-pupil from Switzerland, with whom 
 he here contracted a friendship which lasted through 
 life — were so much affected by what they saw and 
 heard, that they entered into a covenant of some sort 
 before God, devoting themselves to the conversion of 
 the heathen, particularly the more degraded heathen 
 for whom no man cared. A man of the world, over- 
 hearing the vow of the two warm-hearted boys, 
 might probably have derided it as a passing fancy : 
 nevertheless it was registered in heaven, and bore 
 fruit in due time. In both cases the saying came 
 good, that the boy is father of the man. 
 
 To uncle Zinzendorf the rumours which reached 
 him from Halle regarding his young kinsman were 
 not altogether pleasing. He had no desire to see him 
 grow up a zealous Pietist. So when the Count was 
 sixteen, and it was determined that he should enter 
 the University, he was sent to Wittenberg, where, 
 at this time, Pietism was in bad odour, and the more 
 
256 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 rigid sort of Lutheran orthodoxy was dominant. 
 Here it was hoped that he would throw off the 
 tastes with which Halle had infected him. With 
 the same view an interdict was put on his desire to 
 study Theology, and he was enjoined to apply him- 
 self rather to the study of the Law, and the acquisi- 
 tion of the accomplishments deemed proper to his 
 rank. These commands of his uncle were to him 
 exceedingly unwelcome ; but he had a strong sense 
 of the submission due in such cases, and rendered 
 entire and punctilious obedience. 
 
 The college course ended, he set out on his tra- 
 vels to see the world, as every young noble was 
 expected to do. First he visited Holland, where he 
 resided for some months and perfected himself in 
 Dutch and English. French he had acquired before. 
 Passing forward to France, he resided for some time 
 in Paris, where he received a flattering reception at 
 the Court, and became acquainted with quite a large 
 number of the leading men of France, both among 
 the nobility and the higher clergy. One rather 
 unfortunate result of these travels stuck to him 
 through life, and is only too familiar to the readers 
 of his books. He made it a rule, he tells us, both 
 in speaking and writing, to use the word or phrase 
 which happened first to occur to him, whatever its 
 origin, if only it expressed his meaning exactly. In 
 many cases, a very good rule ; but in the case of 
 Zinzendorf, who knew and spoke familiarly so many 
 foreign languages, and had paid little attention to 
 his mother tongue, the result has been that his 
 sermons and books exhibit an unsightly conglomer- 
 
ZINZENDORF. 257 
 
 ate of French and English, and Dutch and Latin, in 
 a setting of very indifferent German. 
 
 In other and more important respects, the Count got 
 nothing but good from his travels. In every place — 
 at Paris ana Versailles as well as at Utrecht and 
 Amsterdam — he frankly confessed Christ and kept 
 himself unspotted from the world. Nothing that 
 he saw was able to shake the desire he still cherished 
 in his heart to serve Christ in the gospel ministry. 
 On his coming of age, which was shortly after his 
 return home, he signified this desire to his friends. 
 They protested against it, earnestly and with one 
 voice; — not only his uncle Zinzendorf and other 
 friends of a rather worldly temper, but his mother 
 also, his grandmother, his aunt, and indeed all whom 
 he had learned most deeply to love and reverence. 
 A Count of the German Empire turning parson ! such 
 a thing had never been heard of in all Germany ! It 
 would be an outrage on all the proprieties. The 
 thought of it was insufferable, and must be aban- 
 doned. The young Count must make up his mind 
 to settle at Dresden, and accept office under the 
 Saxon Government as his fathers had done before him. 
 It was a bitter disappointment, but, as we have seen, 
 he had a high conception of the obedience incumbent 
 on youth. So he waived his desire, accepted a 
 civil appointment of some kind at Dresden, and 
 married a lady of suitable rank. However, he was 
 careful to choose for his Countess one who was in 
 full sympathy with his religious views and aspira- 
 tions, and who, after their marriage, showed herself 
 as cordially intent as he was himself in doing all 
 
258 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION". 
 
 the good in their power, to the cause of Christ, both 
 in the Saxon capital and among the country people 
 on their estate in Upper Lusatia. 
 
 The marriage of the Count took place in the 
 autumn of 1722 — which you will remember was 
 the 23d year of his life. The year is a memorable 
 one for another reason. It was in the early summer 
 of this 1722 that certain strangers from the east 
 made their appearance at Berthelsdorf, whose arrival, 
 all unlooked for as it was, proved a turning-point 
 in the life of the Count, and deserves to be reckoned 
 an epoch in modern Church history. The strangers 
 were a company of Moravian Protestants, who had 
 just made their way across the Austrian frontier in 
 quest of some resting-place in Saxony, where they 
 might be beyond the reach of the Hapsburgs and 
 the Jesuits. The leader of the band was a man of 
 iron resolution, Christian David, a carpenter to trade, 
 and a native of Moravia. Unlike the generality of 
 the refugees, he had been brought up in the Church 
 of Rome; but, having travelled into Saxony as a 
 journeyman, he had chanced to hear a sermon by the 
 Lutheran pastor of Gorlitz, which was the means of 
 his conversion, at once to Protestantism and to God. 
 On his return home, he diligently taught his neigh- 
 bours the truth by which he had been saved. The 
 word thus preached led to an extensive awakening 
 in Moravia, especially among certain families who 
 were descended from the persecuted Protestants of 
 a former generation, and who still in secret rejected 
 the errors and spurned the tyranny of Rome. 
 
 I wish I had time to turn aside at this point and 
 
ZINZENDOKF. 259 
 
 tell the story of the ancient Slavonian Churches of 
 whom these Moravian Protestants were the relics. 
 It is an old story, going away back to the ninth 
 century and the evangelisation of Central Europe, 
 by missionaries belonging to the Greek Church of 
 those days. It is a story adorned with famous 
 names, like those of John Huss and Jerome of 
 Prague, and with brilliant exploits, like those of 
 blind Ziska and his Hussites in the century before 
 the Reformation. Notwithstanding the sea of 
 tribulations through which they and their country- 
 men had passed, certain evangelical churches of 
 Moravia and Bohemia, confederated under the title 
 of the Unity of the Brethren (Unitas Fratrum), sur- 
 vived till the sixteenth century and reckoned their 
 adherents by thousands; one can well understand 
 that it would be with a sense of unspeakable relief 
 that these churches, which had watched all through 
 the darkness of the papal night, hailed the dawn of the 
 brighter day" which arose on Europe in the sixteenth 
 century, and that they drank in with avidity the 
 tidings which began to reach them about 1520 
 regarding the great reformatory movement in the 
 West, under Luther and Calvin. The right hand 
 of fellowship which they eagerly held out to the 
 Reformers was, after some hesitation on Luther's 
 part, cordially grasped. This gleam of sunshine 
 was unhappily followed ere long by darker days than 
 the long-oppressed churches had ever seen before. 
 The Jesuits, now in the first ardour of their cruel 
 zeal, offered their service to the Imperial Government 
 for the suppression of the liberties of the Bohemian 
 
260 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 nation, and, at the same time, for the suppression of 
 the evangelical faith in Bohemia and Moravia. 
 After untold horrors,, protracted through several 
 generations, the hateful task was, to all appearance, 
 accomplished. At the dawn of the eighteenth 
 century, when Zinzendorf was in his cradle at Great 
 Hennersdorf, it seemed as if the triumph of the 
 Hapsburgs and of Eome was complete. The Church 
 of the United Brethren was no longer to be seen. 
 The ancient tree was utterly cast down and seemed 
 to have perished. Yet there was life in its root. 
 There were individuals and whole families, especially 
 in the remoter parts of Moravia, who still in secret 
 cherished the evangelical faith of their fathers, and 
 remembered the scriptural polity of the ancient 
 Unity. It was a band of these evangelical Moravians 
 whom Christian David led across the frontier in 
 1722, and who, hearing of the piety of the young 
 Lord of Berthelsdorf, begged permission to settle on 
 his domains. 
 
 At the time of their arrival Zinzendorf was in 
 Dresden. Besides, to tell the truth, he had been, 
 till this time, very much in the dark regarding the 
 history of his evangelical neighbours on the other 
 side of the border. However, Mr. Rothe, the 
 minister of the parish of Berthelsdorf, who was a 
 man after Zinzendorfs heart, thought well of the 
 strangers, warmly supported their proposal, and 
 induced the Count to suffer a tract of woodland to 
 be marked off for them to establish themselves upon. 
 This was the origin of Herrnhut, the first-born of all 
 the Moravian communities. A stone is pointed out 
 
ZINZENDORF. 261 
 
 which marks the spot where, on the 17th of June 
 1722, Christian David cut down the first tree on 
 what is now the site of the little town, and uttered as 
 he did so the prophetic words, " Here at length hath 
 the sparrow found a house, and the swallow a nest 
 for herself, even thine altars, Lord of hosts." An 
 adjoining eminence bore the name of the Hutberg, 
 The Watch Hill, — a name suggestive of old border 
 raids and of anxious watchers stationed to give 
 warning of the enemy's approach. (The eminence 
 is only six miles from the Bohemian frontier.) 
 Giving a new turn to the old name, the refugees 
 called their settlement Herrnhut, that is, The Lord's 
 Watch. "God grant," said they, " that on this hill, 
 which men call The Watch Hill, a town may be 
 reared which may not only abide under the Lord's 
 watch (unter des Herrn Hut), but be the habitation 
 of men who shall stand on the Lord's Watch (auf 
 des Herrn Hut), never keeping silence before him 
 day or night." The settlement was intended to 
 serve as a city of refuge, where fugitives from 
 Bohemia and Moravia might find shelter from the 
 persecutor, and where they might serve God without 
 fear, according to the customs of their fathers. How 
 attractive it was to the oppressed is proved by the 
 fact that, at the end of five years, Herrnhut had 
 already grown into a village of thirty houses, with 
 300 inhabitants, of whom as many as two-thirds 
 were refugees. 
 
 It has already been remarked that the settlement 
 of these Christian Confessors on his domain was a 
 turning-point in the life of Zinzendorf. From this 
 
262 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 time to the close of his life, he identified himself 
 with them so entirely that his biography is, in effect, 
 the history of Herrnhut and the Moravians. His 
 intention at first was sufficiently unambitious. He 
 meant to give to the settlers the protection and 
 guidance competent to him as lord of Berthelsdorf, 
 and also to labour among them in Christ as a sort 
 of lay-assistant to his friend Eothe, the minister of 
 the parish. Eothe and he were both cordia ly 
 attached to the national Lutheran Church, and nothing 
 was further from their thoughts than the setting up 
 of a rival church in the parish. John Wesley was not 
 more anxious to retain his people in the communion 
 of the Church of England, than Zinzendorf was to keep 
 the Herrnhuters within the Lutheran fold. It was his 
 intention and earnest desire that their relation to Mr. 
 Rothe and the parish church should in no respect 
 differ from that of the native parishioners. But 
 many months had not passed before he found that the 
 strangers were men with a mind of their own ; men 
 of strong convictions, hardened by the long discipline 
 through which they had passed, and not at all 
 disposed to let themselves be moulded like clay, 
 even by the hand of their generous protector. They 
 declined to be simply absorbed into the Lutheran 
 Church. The Unitas Fratrum had been famous in 
 Europe long before Luther was born, and to the 
 Unitas they were resolved still to adhere. To be 
 sure, their fathers had, at the time of the Reforma- 
 tion, declared their assent to the Lutheran doctrine ; 
 but this they had done with certain distinctly 
 expressed reservations relating to points of very 
 
ZINZENDORF. 263 
 
 considerable importance — the doctrine of the Lord's 
 Supper among the rest, respecting which they agreed 
 rather with Wyclif and the Eeformed Churches 
 than with Luther. Besides — and on this they laid 
 special stress — Luther, although he had so nobly 
 vindicated the doctrine of justification by grace 
 through faith, had been quite baffled in his endea- 
 vo ir to give to the evangelical Church a scriptural 
 poHty. The Lutheran Churches, that of Saxony not 
 les/, than the others, were an unsifted mass of 
 believers and open unbelievers. Church discipline 
 was unknown. To the Refugees this seemed strange 
 and indeed intolerable. The Bohemians had not 
 only practised church discipline, but had declared it 
 to be, in their judgment, one of the notes of a 
 true Church. 1 This was a matter which Zinzen- 
 dorf, of all men, could not deny to be of great 
 moment. He was a Pietist. And what was Pietism 
 but an attempt to supplement the work of Luther 
 by organising societies for prayer, Christian fel- 
 lowship, and mutual oversight within the na- 
 tional church 1 This object the Unitas Fratrum 
 had provided for, in a more scriptural and orderly 
 fashion, long before. Its scriptural polity was one 
 of its most valued possessions, and to that polity 
 its children felt themselves bound in conscience to 
 
 1 See the Confessio Bohemica of a.d. 1535, Art. xi. in Niemeyer's 
 Collectio Confessionum, p. 836 ; and compare the similar declara- 
 tion by onr own Reformers in the Scots Confession of 1560, chap. 
 18. The high place which both of these Confessions give to Church 
 Discipline is not the only point about which — to judge from the 
 Bohemian Confession— there was a remarkable coincidence of 
 opinion between the Scottish Church and the ancient Churches of 
 Moravia and Bohemia. 
 
 S 
 
264 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 adhere. They were willing to entertain any sugges- 
 tions which Zinzenclorf might offer for its improve- 
 ment. But they could not consent to abandon it. 
 
 Those arguments were unanswerable. Accord- 
 ingly, Zinzendorf set to work, along with the leading 
 Refugees, and gradually framed a Constitution, or 
 body of " Statutes," which may be described as the 
 ancient polity of the Bohemian and Moravian Unity, 
 modified to suit the altered circumstances of the 
 brethren at Herrnhut. The 1 2th of May is still 
 observed by the Moravians throughout the world, 
 as one of their solemn Memorial Days, in commemo- 
 ration of the adoption of the new code of Statutes 
 on May 12th, 1727. 
 
 This Moravian polity cannot be reckoned as 
 belonging to any one of the three leading forms of 
 church-government, while it has affinities with every 
 one of them. There is a remarkable absence of 
 clericalism; for, indeed, it was not till 1731 — four 
 years after the adoption of the Statutes — that the 
 brethren sought any kind of ordination for their 
 spiritual teachers. (The Sacraments were adminis- 
 tered to them by the Lutheran pastor of the parish.) 
 In this respect, they may perhaps be regarded as 
 in sympathy with ultra-Congregationalism. On the 
 other hand, they have, ever since 1735, had an 
 order of ministers called Bishops, who claim to 
 derive their orders from the ancient Slavonian 
 Church, and who alone are entitled to ordain to 
 the ministry. In this respect, they claim kindred 
 with the Episcopalians. However, a Moravian 
 bishop has, in that character, no jurisdiction what- 
 
ZINZENDOEF. 265 
 
 soever. He is subject to the authority of the 
 Elders' Conference like every other member of the 
 community. Even in imparting ordination he 
 must be guided by their instructions. He can only 
 ordain those who have been previously approved by 
 the Conference, and who are presented by them for 
 the purpose. This Elders' Conference is a body 
 elected triennially, and includes the workers who are 
 of chief note in the community, whether they happen 
 to be in the holy ministry or not. To this body, 
 under Christ, the supreme government of the Church 
 belongs. In this respect the polity approaches most 
 nearly to Presbyterianism. 
 
 I shall have to say something, afterwards, regard- 
 ing the share of work which fell to Zinzendorf in 
 this Church system, so long as he lived. For the 
 present, it is enough to remark that, after having 
 served the brethren for some years as a sort of lay 
 evangelist and pastor, he in 1734 applied for and 
 received from approved Lutheran divines an official 
 certificate of soundness in the faith, and thereupon 
 entered on the exercise of the holy ministry. Three 
 years later he was ordained Bishop of the Unitas 
 Fratrum. We have just seen that, in the ancient 
 Unity, there was a line of bishops who claimed suc- 
 cession from the Greek missionaries of the ninth 
 century. The last survivor of this line, in Moravia, 
 was the famous Comenius, who, after witnessing the 
 overthrow of the Church in 1620, died in exile. In 
 the hope that God might, one day, raise up again the 
 church of his fathers and suffer its ancient polity to 
 be re-established, he imparted Episcopal ordination 
 
266 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 to his son-in-law Jablonsky, and he in turn imparted 
 it to his son, the court chaplain of King Frederick I. 
 at Berlin. The thought occurred to Zinzendorf: 
 " Comenius's dream has come true. The ancient 
 Unity has been raised up again. The Moravians 
 are free to govern themselves by their own Statutes. 
 Why not restore to them the bishops they used to 
 have 1 There may be little need for bishops in Ger- 
 many : but in England and the English Colonies it is 
 otherwise. Many good people there fancy that with- 
 out Episcopal orders no man can be a true minister 
 of Christ." Accordingly, at the Count's request and 
 with the permission of the king of Prussia, Jablonsky 
 ordained first David Nitschmann and then Count 
 Zinzendorf himself Bishops of the Unitas Fratrum. 
 From this time to the end of his life, the Count con- 
 stantly subscribed himself the Ordinarius of the Unity. 
 The statement now submitted regarding the 
 Moravian polity requires to be supplemented at 
 more points than one, or justice will not be done 
 to Zinzendorf's views and feelings in the matter. 
 The Count knew well that the possession of the best 
 Church polity that ever was framed will not, by 
 itself, make the society which rejoices in it a true 
 Church of Christ. The essential thing is that it 
 should be a company of Christ's true people. If 
 Zinzendorf thought the adoption of the Statutes in 
 1727 worthy of commemoration, much more did he 
 judge worthy of such commemoration the remark- 
 able awakening with which the community was 
 visited that same year. The story of the Com- 
 munion at Berthelsdorf on the 13th of August 
 
ZINZENDORF 267 
 
 1727 reminds the Scottish reader of the story of the 
 Communion at the Kirk of Shotts in 1630; and 
 Zinzendorf was accustomed to regard it as the 
 spiritual birthday of the renovated Unity. 
 
 Another point at which our statement about the 
 Moravian polity requires to be supplemented relates 
 to the many singular Usages of one kind or another 
 — it might be too much to call them ordinances — 
 which were introduced at Herrnlmt, and have ever 
 since distinguished the Moravians. Zinzendorf 
 believed that the meagre services and usages of the 
 Lutheran Church might be supplemented, with great 
 advantage both to Christian fellowship and Christian 
 work. His labours in this field are worthy of 
 special attention. Of the usages set up by him at 
 Herrnhut, some were simply a revival of practices 
 belonging to the immemorial traditions of the 
 ancient Unity, others are due to the restless inge- 
 nuity of Zinzendorf. Several, of both kinds, have 
 failed to stand the test of time, and have been long 
 disused. I understand that the Moravians do not 
 now practise the sacred Washing of one another's 
 Feet, or the Kiss of Charity before the Communion 
 which prevailed among them at one time. Nor do 
 they now maintain in their communities the service 
 which (in allusion at once to Isaiah lxii. 6, 7, and 
 the dear name of their chief seat) they fondly called 
 des Herrn Hut, the Lord's Watch — an uninterrupted 
 ministration of prayer and praise, maintained, by 
 means of relays, night and day continually. In the 
 same category of obsolete customs we might perhaps 
 include also the sacred use of the Lot, which, coming 
 
2b8 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 down from the ancient Unity, was greatly favoured 
 by Zinzendorf. Whenever he himself, or the com- 
 munity under his oversight, were in doubt which of 
 two or three possible courses they ought to follow, 
 the matter was at once referred, with solemn prayer, 
 to the Divine decision by the Lot. I am aware that 
 this custom has never been formally set aside ; but 
 it is not now in vogue as it used to be. However, 
 if some of the original customs of Herrnhut have 
 been laid aside, the greater part remain in use to 
 this day; and of these quite a surprising number 
 have passed over, or are in process of passing over, 
 from the Moravians into the other Churches, espe- 
 cially in this country and America. It was the 
 Moravians who first compiled those calendars of 
 Daily Texts, or " Watchwords for every day in the 
 year," which are in such general use now every- 
 where. They took great delight in noting remark- 
 able coincidences between the events of every day 
 and the appointed Watchword for the day. The very 
 last piece of work Zinzendorf performed before he 
 died was the arrangement of the Watchwords for 
 1761. Praise Meetings, — "the Question Drawer," 
 — simultaneous "Silent Prayer," — I need not de- 
 scribe these to an Edinburgh auditory; I believe 
 they all come from Zinzendorf. To him also is due 
 the modern practice of making so much use of 
 hymn-singing in conducting evangelistic and other 
 religious meetings. This practice, inherited from 
 Bohemia, was carried by the Count to an objection- 
 able length ; for he not only wrote and delivered to 
 be sung in the congregation new hymns without 
 
ZINZENDOEF. 269 
 
 number, but he occasionally extemporised hymns 
 in the pulpit, giving them out to be sung verse by 
 verse as they were composed ! The pen of the 
 Countess also was enlisted in the same service. The 
 result, although not so disastrous as might have 
 been expected, was anything but satisfactory. A few 
 of Zinzendorf s hymns have been accepted by the 
 evangelical Churches, besides one at least (a very 
 fine one) by the Countess. The great majority of 
 them sank at once into oblivion. 
 
 There is yet another feature in the Moravian 
 polity to which I must ask your careful attention. 
 For, besides being new and characteristic, it has 
 moulded the whole life of the Moravian community. 
 I refer to the distribution of the people into Choirs 
 or Bands. The author of this arrangement also was 
 Zinzendorf; and in his judgment it was the back- 
 bone of the whole Moravian system. The design of 
 it was, in one word, Fellowship. He wanted the 
 Herrnhuters not only to "abide in the apostles' 
 doctrine," but also " in fellowship." The idea is a 
 thoroughly Scriptural one. It is undoubtedly the 
 will of Christ that his spiritual body, being fitly 
 framed and knit together through that which every 
 joint supplieth, according to the working in due 
 measure of each several part, should increase and 
 build itself up in love (Eph. iv. 16). Zinzendorf, 
 like his Pietist teachers, mourned over the want, 
 in the Lutheran Church, of anything reasonably 
 answering to this conception of Christian fellowship. 
 A Lutheran congregation was (and to this day is) 
 no more knit together than a heap of sand. In 
 
270 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 order to supply what was wanting, the Count dis- 
 tributed the community into what he called Choirs. 
 The girls, the young unmarried women, the married 
 women, the widows — each of these classes was 
 constituted into a separate choir, which was placed 
 under the oversight of a woman of approved 
 character, and, as nearly as might be, of the same 
 age and condition in Kfe as the members. The 
 males were, in like manner, divided into choirs of 
 boys, of unmarried men, of married men, and of 
 widowers. The several choirs held meetings by 
 themselves, several times every week. Even the 
 little children were gathered into a choir, and met 
 frequently for religious exercises suited to their age. 
 To this day the people, when they assemble for 
 public worship in the meeting-house at Herrnhut, 
 are arranged according to their several choirs, and 
 each is distinguished by some little variety of dress. 
 Even in the burial-ground on the Hutberg, the same 
 arrangement prevails. This choir-system, I repeat, 
 moulds the whole life of a Moravian community. 
 Excepting (I presume) the married people and their 
 young children, the Herrnhuters generally lodge 
 each in his or her respective choir-house, in a kind 
 of Christian Communism, — a Communism, however 
 in which no tolerance is given to idlers. The in- 
 dustry of the Herrnhuters is proverbial. 
 
 There is much in this system which we may safely 
 pass from without further notice. It is too artificial, 
 and interferes too seriously with God's own insti- 
 tution of the Family, to command or deserve imitation. 
 The one point in it which I would single out as deserv- 
 
ZINZENDORF. 271 
 
 ing your attention is this, namely, that every superin- 
 tendent of a Choir is expected to keep up a thorough 
 acquaintance with the character, conduct, and 
 varying experiences of every one of the members, 
 and the members on their part are expected to 
 edify one another continually. It is in this way 
 that provision is made for church discipline, as 
 well as for much else that belongs to Christian 
 fellowship. This feature of Zinzendorfs system, 
 strange as it may look at first, will be found to 
 have been influential far beyond the bounds of the 
 Moravian unity. Soon after John Wesley entered 
 on his apostolic course, he happened to hear of 
 Zinzendorfs work, and he travelled all the way to 
 Herrnhut to see it. His sagacious eye discerned 
 in the choirs a sort of institution which might be 
 turned to excellent account for supplying the wants 
 of his English converts. Immediately after his 
 return he began to gather his people into those 
 Class-meetings which have ever since been the char- 
 acteristic feature of the Methodist polity. There can 
 be no doubt that for this feature of his system, as well 
 as for his first clear knowledge of Justification by 
 Faith, the father of English Methodism was indebted 
 to Zinzendorf and his Moravians. There can be as 
 little doubt (I will add) that Wesley's Class-meetings 
 are a great improvement on the Moravian Choirs. 
 
 You are not to suppose that the movement 
 at Herrnhut, which I have been trying to de- 
 scribe, was suffered to go forward during all these 
 years without challenge. Such a movement never 
 yet failed to encounter opposition. The Austrian 
 
272 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 government was displeased to see an asylum opened, 
 at its very door, -where its oppressed subjects could 
 maintain themselves in honourable independence, 
 without forfeiting their religious liberties; and it 
 did not fail, you may be sure, to make its displeasure 
 known at the Saxon Court. The king of Saxony 
 was Augustus the Strong, a sensualist, who could not 
 be expected to have any liking for Zinzendorfs 
 work, or any disposition to resist the hostile 
 urgency of his powerful neighbour. So the Herrn- 
 huters saw themselves watched on every side, by 
 unfriendly eyes, anxious to discover anything that 
 might be made a handle of, for their destruction. 
 Royal Commissioners were sent out from Dresden, 
 at different times, to make inquisition into the on- 
 goings at Herrnhut. Little as his enemies thought 
 it, this was the very thing Zinzendorf desired. 
 The more light the better for him. So the king's 
 Commissioners were received with open arms. The 
 Count soon satisfied them that his people adhered 
 firmly to the doctrine of the Lutheran Church, and 
 that they were among the best subjects the king 
 had — a law-abiding people, industrious, peaceable, 
 prosperous. To uproot Herrnhut would be to im- 
 poverish the kingdom. The Commissioners were 
 faithful enough to report accordingly. In the face 
 of such reports, what could the king do ] Herrnhut 
 had to be left alone ; or at least the molestation 
 attempted had to confine itself to two points. New 
 hindrances were put in the way of refugees from 
 the Imperial states, the result being that within 
 twenty years, the stream of emigration ceased, and 
 
ZINZENDORF. 273 
 
 Herrnhut became less and less a community of 
 foreigners. The other piece of molestation was 
 directed against the person of Zinzendorf. In 1736 
 he was summarily banished from Saxony by royal 
 decree, and was never after permitted to reside in 
 it till near the close of his life. For twenty of his 
 best years he was an exile from his native country 
 for Christ's sake. 
 
 This vexatious banishment was meant to bind 
 Zinzendorf s hands, but it only set them free for 
 more extensive work. Meant for evil, it was over- 
 ruled for good. The Count, on his part, accepted 
 it without a murmur, regarding it as an intimation 
 from Christ that he must break up new ground in 
 some other place. Accordingly, setting out with 
 his family and a band of Christian workers, ha 
 established himself in the Wetterau, near Frankfort 
 on-the-Maine, in the midst of an ignorant and 
 lawless population. Here, with the sanction of the 
 local authorities, he proceeded to collect and organise 
 a new Moravian community, on the model of the 
 one he had left at Herrnhut. God so blessed the 
 enterprise that the neighbourhood began immediately 
 to wear a new face — moral reformation bringing 
 material prosperity in its train. But the fair pro- 
 spect was soon overcast. Those were the days in 
 which every petty prince in Germany was an 
 absolute sovereign in his little domain. The prince 
 of the domain in the Wetterau who had given the 
 new settlement its charter having died, his successor 
 thought to make money by imposing on it more 
 onerous conditions. His greed overreached itself; 
 
274 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 for Zinzendorf quietly transferred the establishment 
 to Neuwied on the Rhine, where it has flourished 
 now for more than 140 years — a source of much 
 blessing to Rhenish Prussia. As for the Count 
 himself, he never henceforth settled down anywhere. 
 In company with his itinerant band of workers, 
 sometimes as many as fifty in number, he moved 
 about continually. At one time they are seen in 
 Holland, at another time in the Baltic provinces of 
 Russia; now they are at work in Geneva and 
 Neuchatel, now in England, and again beyond the 
 Atlantic in Georgia and Pennsylvania. England in 
 particular offered attractions to the Count. He 
 visited it often, and so protracted were the sojourns 
 of the "Pilgrim Church" on this side of the 
 Channel, that a spacious old mansion-house in 
 London was purchased for their use, and for some 
 years London was the centre from which the opera- 
 tions of the Moravian Church throughout the 
 world were conducted. 
 
 In sketching the Moravian polity, I mentioned 
 that the supreme direction of affairs is vested in the 
 General Elders' Conference. I must now explain 
 that so long as Zinzendorf lived, this part of the 
 scheme was in abeyance. During the thirty-eight 
 years which elapsed from the midsummer day on 
 which the Refugees settled on his estate, till he fin- 
 ished his course in the midst of them and their chil- 
 dren at Herrnhut, the supreme direction of the affairs 
 of the Moravian Church devolved entirely on him. 
 His relation to the Moravians exhibited, in this re- 
 spect, a perfect parallel to the undivided government 
 
ZINZENDORF. 275 
 
 which Wesley exercised over the Methodist societies 
 so long as he lived — with this only difference, that 
 Zinzendorf was very restless under the heavy load 
 of responsibility thus laid upon him, and made many 
 attempts to have it transferred to the chosen repre- 
 sentatives of the community. These attempts were 
 all abortive. Zinzendorf had been the father of his 
 people from the beginning, and so long as they could 
 have him for their leader and counsellor they would 
 have no other. There were many reasons for this. 
 For one thing, he was the landlord and host of the 
 Church. The establishments at Herrnhut, in the 
 Wetterau, at London, were reared at great expense ; 
 the travelling charges of the brethren in their per- 
 petual journey ings by land and sea were necessarily 
 heavy ; and it was always the Count who had to find 
 the money. He was but a sorry financier himself; 
 but the Countess was skilful and exact in all money 
 matters ; and husband and wife were of one mind 
 in consecrating their patrimony to the service of 
 Christ. This could not fail to give great weight to 
 Zinzendorf in the counsels of the brethren. His un- 
 disputed sway among them rested chiefly, however, on 
 deeper and more strictly personal grounds. Like his 
 great contemporary, the Founder of Methodism, he 
 was a born leader of men. He had an inexhaustible 
 fertility of resource. His presence of mind never 
 failed him ; and he could guide the ship amidst the 
 most troubled waters. Above all, he was a dis- 
 cerner of spirits, quick to appreciate men's true 
 character and gifts, so as to be able to assign to each 
 the post in which he could be most useful. It is to be 
 
276 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 remembered, besides, that he was a great preacher. I 
 have spoken of the awkward and unattractive style 
 in which his books are written. It is plain that 
 nothing of the sort marred the effectiveness of his 
 spoken discourses. He was an eloquent and most 
 persuasive preacher, and spiritual power attended his 
 preaching everywhere. He was the spiritual father of 
 very many of those over whom his rule extended. 
 I need not say how much this must have fortified 
 his authority. 
 
 The effect of all other sources of influence was, in 
 Zinzendorfs case, greatly heightened by a certain 
 air of combined dignity and graciousness which 
 distinguished him. It has often been remarked of 
 John Wesley, that although there was not in 
 England a man more ready to stoop to the lowest 
 offices of kindness, he was at the same time so true 
 to himself as a gentleman, and as a Fellow of Oxford, 
 that no one could well use liberties with him. This 
 seems to have been still more remarkably true of 
 Zinzendorf. He too was ready to become the 
 servant of all men for Christ's sake. Yet there was 
 that about him which effectually repelled rudeness. 
 He conversed with kings and nobles without em- 
 barrassment. There was something so commanding 
 in his appearance, that when he walked the streets of 
 London or Amsterdam, passers-by would instinctively 
 give place to him, and would ask who the distin- 
 guished-looking stranger might be. At home amongst 
 his own people, strenuous assertions of his authority 
 were not needed. Men kept silence when he spoke, 
 and readily yielded obedience to his injunctions. 
 
ZINZENDORF. 277 
 
 Perhaps it would have been better for the Count 
 if the obedience yielded to him by his people had 
 been sometimes less unquestioning. For he was 
 not always wise. His warm and fertile imagination, 
 if it was of excellent service to him as the opener of 
 new paths, and as a sacred poet and preacher, 
 betrayed him occasionally into grave indiscretions. 
 A certain tinge of Antinomianism he inherited from 
 his Lutheran masters, and it lost nothing in his 
 hands. He had a fanciful theory about the relation 
 of the Divine Persons in the Trinity which led him 
 to look upon the Son alone as the proper object of 
 trust and prayer, to the exclusion of the Father. 
 An unhappy tendency in this direction has all along 
 existed in the Lutheran Church, and is seen in the 
 disproportionate number of the hymns that are 
 addressed directly and exclusively to Christ. The 
 evil found place in a very aggravated form in the 
 sermons and hymns and prayers of Zinzendorf. 
 These are grave faults ; and yet they are not, by 
 any means, the only points in which he laid himself 
 open to censure. It would not be difficult (if one 
 had a mind for it) to gather an unsavoury anthology 
 of citations from his writings. Certain of his 
 Lutheran contemporaries have done this sufficiently. 
 He is not to be justified. Yet it is only fair to 
 remember, on the other hand, — first, that many of 
 the objectionable utterances quoted from him were 
 no sooner pointed out than he perceived and acknow- 
 ledged the errors into which he had fallen, and took 
 steps to have them corrected; and, secondly, that 
 the general strain of his teaching was not only 
 
278 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 unobjectionable, but eminently scriptural. Like 
 Kichard Baxter — and even more than Baxter — he 
 liked to keep to the great central articles. The sinful 
 and lost state of all men, the Deity of Christ, the 
 expiation of sin by Christ's blood, justification by 
 grace through faith, regeneration by the Holy 
 Spirit — these were his favourite topics ; and he so 
 preached them that thousands were moved to 
 repent and believe. 
 
 I have left to the end that department of Zinzen- 
 dorf's work in which the dream of his boyhood was 
 fulfilled, and which has done more than anything 
 else to make his name known in all the Christian 
 Churches. I refer to his labours in relation to 
 Missions to the Heathen. 
 
 The circumstances which led him to embark in 
 this new enterprise are worth recording. In the 
 year 1731 — nine years after the founding of Herrn- 
 hut — the Count paid a visit to Copenhagen, where 
 he was received at Court by the pious king, Christian 
 VI., and was invested with the honourable order of 
 the Danebrog. It is believed that he had some 
 thoughts, at this time, of applying for some kind of 
 office under the Danish Government; for he was 
 still a layman. It is certain that he was thinking 
 of anything but beginning a mission to the heathen. 
 The Danes had, some years before, sent out a mission 
 to Greenland ; and at the time of the Count's visit, 
 the Christian people of Copenhagen were much cast 
 down by the unfavourable tidings they had been 
 receiving, which seemed to show that the self-denying 
 labours of Egede and his brethren were utterly 
 
ZINZENDORF. 279 
 
 fruitless, and that the Mission might as well be 
 given up. These faint-hearted counsels, coming to 
 the Count's ear, revived his early interest in the 
 conversion of the heathen. While his mind was 
 occupied with the subject, certain Herrnhuters who 
 had accompanied him to Copenhagen chanced to fall 
 in with a negro-servant from St. Thomas, who was 
 on a visit to Europe with his Danish master and 
 had some acquaintance with the truth. Speaking 
 to them of the cruel bondage to which his coloured 
 brethren were subject in the West Indies, he made 
 mention of a dear sister of his own, a slave in St. 
 Thomas, who greatly desired to hear the truth about 
 the Saviour, and would (he was assured) embrace it 
 gladly. This, thought Zinzendorf, ought to be re- 
 ported at Herrnhut. We have been considering 
 what we ought to do for the glory of Him who has 
 done so much for us. Possibly this negro's story 
 may be a finger-post indicating to us an open door. 
 Accordingly, the negro- servant, with his master's 
 consent, paid a visit to Herrnhut soon after Zinzen- 
 dorf's return home. On hearing his story, two of 
 the brethren, independently of each other, offered 
 themselves as missionaries to the negroes. The 
 stranger did not conceal from them the difficulties 
 and perils they might have to encounter. " The 
 poor negroes," he said, " are not only groaning under 
 hard bondage, but are living in heathen darkness 
 and abominable wickedness, having no knowledge 
 of God and Christ." He expressed his firm per- 
 suasion that many would turn to God, if only the 
 gospel were preached to them. At the same time, 
 
 T 
 
280 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 he thought it right to forewarn intending mission- 
 aries that the difficulty of gaining access to the 
 negroes was so great that it might be found insuper- 
 able, except by the missionaries becoming slaves them- 
 selves. Their toil was so unremitting that he feared 
 the only opportunity for teaching them might be 
 when they were at work in the fields. This dismal 
 prospect, far from deterring the two brethren, only 
 inflamed their desire to carry to fellow-creatures so 
 sorely oppressed the good tidings of the grace of 
 God. The unfavourable intelligence from Greenland 
 duly reported by the Count, had, in like manner, the 
 effect of moving other two of the Moravians to offer 
 themselves as missionaries to that inhospitable 
 region. 
 
 The brethren who, in such a spirit of self-denial, 
 offered themselves for the foreign field were un- 
 lettered and untravelled men — unable, it might be 
 presumed, to gauge with any accuracy the perils into 
 which they were throwing themselves; and Zinzen- 
 dorf clearly foresaw that, in the end, the responsi- 
 bility for sending them out, or suffering them to go 
 out, would be laid upon him. Accordingly he was 
 in no haste to accept their offer. The business was 
 hung up for more than a twelvemonth ; and in the 
 meanwhile he took care to have the brethren much 
 about him, so that he might get a perfect know- 
 ledge of their gifts and their faith. The result was 
 that at the year's end they were accepted. The 21st 
 of August is annually celebrated by the Moravians 
 in memory of the fact that, on that autumnal day, 
 in the year 1732, Leonard Dober and David Nitsch- 
 
ZINZENDORF. 281 
 
 mann set forth from Herrnhut for the island of St. 
 Thomas, the brave pioneers of the Moravian missions. 
 Five months afterwards they were followed by the 
 two brethren who had devoted themselves to the 
 Greenland mission. The kingdom of God cometh 
 not with observation ; and I am very sure that none 
 of the wayfarers who encountered them on the high- 
 way by which they travelled to Denmark saw any- 
 thing in their aspect to awaken a presentiment of 
 the great results which were to be brought about by 
 the labours of these Moravians in the heathen field. 
 The four pioneers were all plain labouring men, un- 
 lettered artisans. And their provision for the way 
 was of the scantiest. All that the brethren at 
 Herrnhut paid to the first two in sending them forth 
 was nine shillings a piece. Zinzendorf added some- 
 thing out of his private purse, but it was meant only 
 to carry them as far as Copenhagen. It was con- 
 fidently expected that Christian friends in that city 
 would procure for them a passage to St. Thomas. 
 Once landed there, the stout-hearted evangelists did 
 not doubt that they should be able to maintain 
 themselves ; for they were skilful artisans, able and 
 willing to work for their bread. Experience had 
 not yet taught the Moravians (what they, and all 
 the Churches, have learned since) that Europeans 
 cannot with impunity undertake manual labour 
 within the tropics, however well it may suit them 
 at home. 
 
 I must not forget that my subject is Count Zin- 
 zendorf, not the history of the Moravian missions. 
 Accordingly, I will not trace the history further, but 
 
282 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION 
 
 will simply add that other stations were soon 
 occupied, in addition to Greenland and St. Thomas 
 — some of them on conditions which were not at all 
 satisfactory to the Count. It was not long till 
 tidings began to come home of terrible sufferings 
 endured by the missionaries, issuing in sickness and 
 many deaths. And now the Count was made to 
 feel the weight of the responsibility he had under- 
 taken. He was loudly blamed. " He had sent out 
 to deadly climates simple men who did not know 
 the hazards they were running, but trusted implicitly 
 to his superior intelligence. It was a shame for a 
 man in his position, and with his knowledge of the 
 world, to thrust out poor men and women to certain 
 death. Would he touch with one of his own fingers 
 this grievous burden he was laying on the poor 
 people]" Zinzendorf was not the man to sit still 
 under such reproaches. For, in truth, there was not 
 in the whole community a braver or more self-deny- 
 ing spirit than himself. He made up his mind to 
 visit the West Indies in person, that he might both 
 ascertain for himself the circumstances of the 
 brethren, and might share their reproach and 
 danger. Setting sail from the Texel in December 
 of 1738, he landed at St. Thomas on the 29th of 
 January 1739. He was just in time. Meeting a 
 negro on the shore, he asked him " Where are the 
 missionaries]" "They are in the jail," was the 
 reply. " How long have they been there ] " "For 
 three months." " How have the negroes been doing 
 in their absence]" "Oh sir," said the negro, "they 
 are doing very well. There has been a great 
 
ZINZENDORF. 283 
 
 awakening among them. The missionaries are shut 
 up in jail, but their bonds are preaching." * 
 
 There was not a man living better fitted than 
 Zinzendorf for striking in to good purpose in an 
 emergency of this kind. Going straight to the 
 Governor, he made such representations to him 
 that the prison-doors were opened forthwith. With 
 the slave-owners he had a tougher battle to fight. 
 They had reasons of their own for regarding the 
 missionaries with mingled hatred and fear. But 
 they too discovered that it might be dangerous for 
 them to maltreat missionaries backed by a person 
 like Zinzendorf — a man of high rank, a shrewd 
 resolute man, who knew the world better than they 
 did, who could exercise great influence with the 
 home government, and had the ear of thousands in 
 all parts of Europe. So they were fain to curb their 
 malignity. On inquiring further into the progress 
 of the work, Zinzendorf found that the missionaries 
 had not been labouring in vain. Of the negroes, as 
 many as 900 — the greater number of them males — 
 could be already reckoned as earnest inquirers. 
 The Count remained in the island for about three 
 weeks, preaching to the slaves, advising with the 
 missionaries respecting the best methods for carry- 
 ing forward the work, and doing his best to secure 
 fair treatment in the time to come for the brethren 
 and the converts. He made provision also for the 
 purchase of a piece of ground and the erection of a 
 Mission House. 
 
 After the lapse of a few years, Zinzendorf crossed 
 1 Spangenberg : Leben Zinzendorfs, p. 1163. 
 
284 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 the ocean again. This time it was to Georgia, where 
 his people had been already at work for some years 
 under the superintendence of Spangenberg. I 
 cannot relate the story of this journey further than 
 to say that, so far as the Indians were concerned 
 (whom Zinzendorf had hoped to evangelise) it was 
 a failure. In other respects, however, it was emi- 
 nently successful. Institutions on the model of 
 Herrnhut were established in several places, for the 
 benefit especially of the German settlers in America, 
 already very numerous. The seed thus sown has 
 prospered remarkably ; insomuch that at the pre- 
 sent time the Moravians belonging to the United 
 States of America outnumber the total membership 
 of the Moravian communities in all the countries of 
 the European Continent. 
 
 Thus Zinzendorf s life passed away in a perpetual 
 round of toilsome labours. During many years 
 these were embittered by innumerable attacks to 
 which he was subjected from the most opposite 
 quarters. What was a still greater trial ; he saw 
 evils of various kinds springing up among his people 
 themselves — evils from which the members of his own 
 family were not exempt, and it cost him much toil 
 and the most careful exercise of his authority to 
 bring the people back to sobriety of mind. The 
 death of his son, after he had begun to be of 
 service in the work, was a heavy blow. It was 
 followed soon after by the death of the Countess ; 
 and no sooner was she gone than the finances of the 
 community got into confusion, involving him in 
 endless embarrassment. Here let me mention, in 
 
ZINZENDORF. 285 
 
 passing, as a proof of the high sense of duty which 
 animated the Moravians, that although at the Count's 
 death they found themselves in debt to the amount of 
 £200,000 — for which he had become security — they 
 never thought of repudiating the debt. Enormous 
 as it was in proportion to their ability, they bravely 
 resolved to clear it off. It cost them a forty years' 
 struggle, but the debt was paid at length to the 
 last penny. It is no marvel that under so great a 
 burden of labour and conflict Zinzendorf's health, 
 never very robust, began to give way ; and frequent 
 attacks of illness gave warning to his friends that he 
 might very soon be called away. 
 
 It was in the year 1760 that his call at length 
 came. The circumstances were just such as we may 
 suppose he would have desired had he allowed him- 
 self to have a wish on the subject. Although for 
 some little time confined to bed, he was able to 
 attend to the most pressing business of the Church 
 to the end. He had the pleasure of seeing at his 
 bedside several of his oldest and dearest friends. 
 Chief among these was Frederick de Watteville, 
 who has been mentioned already as having been his 
 bosom friend ever since they met as boys in the 
 Paedagogium at Halle, and entered into the Covenant 
 together to serve Christ in the gospel. There were 
 present, besides, some aged survivors of the band of 
 refugees who were the original settlers at Herrnhut. 
 To them he poured out his heart with peculiar 
 affection. " Oh brethren ! " he said, " did it ever 
 enter into your minds in those first days that the 
 Lord would do for us such great things as our eyes 
 
286 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 have seen — so many communities of our people 
 established ; so many children boi n to God in the 
 several Christian denominations ; so many converted 
 from among the heathen ! As regards these last, I 
 looked only for a few first-fruits, and already the 
 converts are reckoned by thousands." His own 
 family too was about him — his daughters and their 
 step-mother, the excellent Moravian Helper whom 
 Zinzendorf had married after their mother's death. 
 The Countess (I ought to have explained before) 
 belonged to the noble house of the Reusses — a family 
 which continues to befriend Herrnhut to the present 
 day. The Count Reuss of Zinzendorfs later life 
 was Henry xxviii. He too was present in the 
 sick- chamber. So also was John de WattevUle, 
 Zinzendorfs son-in-law, a young relative of the life- 
 long friend before mentioned ; and to him he said, 
 " I am going away to the Saviour. I am ready. I 
 give myself up to my Lord's will, and He is content 
 with me. If it is not His pleasure to make use of 
 me further, I am ready to depart. Nothing else 
 stands in my way." 
 
 Having thus taken leave of his friends with com- 
 fortable words, Count Zinzendorf fell asleep, in their 
 presence, on the 9th of May 1760. His grave is 
 pointed out to visitors in the burying-ground of the 
 Brethren on the Watch Hill of Herrnhut, where it 
 is surrounded by the graves of his people, in their 
 several choirs. 
 
 Note. — Zinzendorf has been remarkably fortunate 
 in his Biographers. Two of his most intimate 
 
ZINZENDORF. 28? 
 
 friends wrote copious and accurate accounts of his 
 life and labours, viz. : — 
 
 Spangenberg : Leben des Herrn Nicolaus Ludwig 
 Graf en von Zinzendorf und Pottendorf ; 1773„ 
 (8 volumes.) 
 
 Von Schrautenbach : der Graf von Zinzendorf und 
 die Briidergemeine seiner Zeit. 2d Ed. 1871. 
 (Pp. 404.) 
 
 Spangenberg was, for many years, the Count's 
 principal coadjutor, and succeeded to much of his 
 commanding influence in the community. He had 
 free access to the Count's private papers and the 
 denominational archives. His book (which fills 
 2257 pages) is therefore the most authoritative, as 
 it is certainly the most copious, repertory of infor- 
 mation. (There is an English abridgement, in one 
 volume, by Latrobe ; but it is quite unsatisfactory.) 
 — Baron Schrautenbach was educated among the 
 Moravians, arid, although much younger than the 
 Count, enjoyed much of his intimacy. There is a 
 vein of original reflection in his work that reminds 
 one of Isaac Taylor. It is to him that we owe the 
 most vivid portraits extant of the Count and his 
 friends. 
 
 I fear it must be admitted that these Biographies 
 do not make up in liveliness of style for their for 
 midable bulk, and that they are not likely to attract 
 any save patient students of church history. All 
 other readers may pass at once to a more recent 
 work by an accomplished Swiss author, of Neuchatel, 
 Le Comte de Zinzendorf par Felix Bovet. (3d Ed. 
 Paris, 1865. Pp. 508.) This is, in every respect, 
 
288 THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 an admirable Biography, full of matter, imbued with 
 a fine Christian spirit, and sparkling all over with a 
 rare felicity of style. 
 
 Those who want a trustworthy notice of the Count 
 and his work, in shorter compass, will find the 
 Article Zinzendorf in Herzog's Encyclopedia full 
 and valuable. 
 
 EDINBURGH '. T. AND A. CONSTABLE, 
 PRINTERS TO THE QUEEN, AND TO THE UNIVER3ITT. 
 
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