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 Graham, William, 1839-1911 
 Essays historical and 
 biographical 
 
3n dbemoriam. 
 
 PROFESSOR WILLIAM GRAHAM, D.D. 
 
Sans, Glasgow; Jiomalitaoaja^lyJcilmJfegus, Largs. 
 
 -1_ 
 
Professor William Graham, d.d. 
 
 ESSAYS 
 
 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 Edited by His BROTHER 
 
 WITH 
 
 PERSONAL REMINISCENCES 
 
 BY THE 
 
 KEY. WILLIAM M. TAYLOR, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 OF NEW YORK 
 
 LONDON 
 JAMES NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET 
 
 MDCCCLXXXVIII. 
 
TO 
 
 THE MINISTERIAL CLUB, 
 
 OF WHICH THE LATE 
 
 PROFESSOR GRAHAM, D.D., of London, 
 
 WAS A MEMBER, AND AT WHOSE MONTHLY MEETINGS HE SPENT SOME 
 OF THE HAFPIEST HOURS OF HIS LATTER TEARS, 
 
 THIS VOLUME OF HIS SKETCHES 
 
 is 
 
 H>eMcateD 
 
 BY 
 
 HIS BROTHER, 
 
 IN TEE BELIEF THAT NOTHING COULD BE MORE GRATIFYING TO HIM 
 
 THAN THAT HIS NAME SHOULD BE PUBLICLY ASSOCIATED 
 
 WITH THEIRS, 
 
 JAMES GRAHAM. 
 
MEMBERS OF MINISTERIAL CLUB. 
 
 Rev. Dr. BOYD, late of Forest Hill. 
 
 , GAVIN CARLYLE, M.A., Ealing. 
 
 , JAMES CUNNINGHAM, M.A., Wandsworth. 
 
 , Dr. THAIN DAVIDSON, Islington 
 
 , Professor G1BB, The College. 
 
 , Dr. MUNRO GIBSON, St. John's Wood. 
 
 , Dr. FOTHEPJNGHAM, Tottenham. 
 
 , Dr. M'EWAN, Clapham. 
 
 , Dr. M'LEOD, Belgravia. 
 
 , JOHN MAUCHLEN, Richmond. 
 
 , HENRY MILLER, Hammersmith. 
 
 , Dr. SINCLAIR PATERSON, Notting Hill. 
 
 , Dr. RAITT, Woolwich. 
 
 , ROBERT TAYLOR, Upper Norwood. 
 
 , H. C. WILSON, M.A., Eastbourne. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 No sooner had the news of my brother's death spread 
 last November than several requests were made that 
 a selection of his sermons should be published. One 
 friend, however, suggested that, as he had in a pre- 
 eminent degree the gift of sketching character and 
 setting it forth with its surroundings, a volume of 
 sketches should be issued first. 
 
 The following have been selected from among many 
 more. From the time when he studied in Berlin 
 under Neander till his latest days he cultivated this 
 gift. He lived among the heroes of the past, and yet 
 no man ever took a deeper interest in the men around 
 him. 
 
 Goethe said of Shakespeare's characters, " that they 
 are like watches with transparent faces." You not 
 only see the hands pointing to the dial, but you see 
 the working of the machinery inside. Much of the 
 same nature are the sketches in this volume. We have 
 included sketches of reformers, of missionaries, of poets, 
 and of cotemporaries. 
 
viii PREFA CE. 
 
 Some of his best are withheld, as their subjects are 
 not so widely known, and many are in his lectures to 
 his students, which, on account of the illegibility of his 
 handwriting, will require great labour to bring to light. 
 Should this volume meet with a favourable reception, 
 these may be dug up and published along with a 
 volume of sermons. I have only included three of his 
 cotemporaries among the sketches — Dr. Crichton was 
 his colleague for years, and the relationship was close 
 and cordial as father and son ; Dr. Eobertson was his 
 inseparable friend, and their souls were knit to each 
 other as the souls of Jonathan and David ; and Dr. 
 Cairns was his life-long companion since the days they 
 met as students in the Divinity Hall till his death. 
 Sketches of other dear friends are withheld from want 
 of space. 
 
 At the service preceding the funeral, a telegram 
 was read from Dr. Taylor of New York, who by reason 
 of distance was absent. It expressed what the loss 
 was to many besides him : — 
 
 " A great light for me has gone out in Graham ; 
 one of my oldest, closest, truest friends. His mirth 
 to me was medicine, his talk inspiration, and his 
 prayers wings." 
 
 It was a great gratification to the widow and family, 
 as well as others, when Dr. Taylor undertook to write 
 reminiscences of his friend. 
 
 Those who knew Dr. Graham best feel that the 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 likeness drawn by Dr. Taylor is a genuine photograph 
 of his many-sided character, both grave and gay. To 
 those who did not know Dr. Graham, it will perpetuate 
 a memory of rare gifts and worth and industry. 
 The thanks of the friends are also due for highly 
 appreciative sketches by Drs. Muir, Cairns, M'Leod, 
 Elmslie, and an anonymous writer in the Liverpool 
 papers. 
 
 The Dedication to the Ministers' Club is made by 
 their permission. His friends were many, and his 
 enjoyment of their society intense, and specially 
 ministerial friends whose tastes and studies were as 
 his own and in whose midst he could unbend himself 
 freely. 
 
 The likeness placed at the beginning has been 
 selected by his brother-in-law, who has generously 
 Undertaken all the expense connected with it. 
 
 It will be gratifying should the readers of this 
 volume be as enthusiastic in their appreciation of 
 these sketches as the one who has selected them. 
 
 JAMES GRAHAM. 
 
 U.P. Manse, Beoughty Ferry, 
 8th September 1888. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 M 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Reminiscences of Prof. William Gkaham, d.d. . i 
 
 SKETCHES. 
 I. Reformers : 
 
 JOHN wiclif 45 
 
 LUTHER — THE MAN 6/ 
 
 CALVIN AND CALVINISM 87 
 
 JOHN KNOX Ill 
 
 II. Missionaries : 
 
 ST. COLUMBA 1 80 
 
 FRANCIS XAVIER 1 96 
 
 DAVID BRAINERD . . , . . . .212 
 
 III. Poets : 
 
 JOHN MILTON 137 
 
 ROBERT BURNS 227 
 
 IV. COTEMPORARIES I 
 
 REV. HUGH CRICHTON, D.D. . , . . . 29 1 
 
 W. B. ROBERTSON, D.D 263 
 
 REV. PRINCIPAL CAIRNS, D.D., EDINBURGH . . 282 
 
I. 
 
 REMINISCENCES OF PROFESSOR WILLIAM 
 GRAHAM, D.D. 
 
 By WILLIAM M. TAYLOK, D.D., New York. 
 
 William Graham was born May 5, 1823, in Paisley. 
 He was one of a family which consisted of three daugh- 
 ters and five sons, three of whom were educated for the 
 ministry, and only one of whom, Bev. James Graham, 
 of Broughty-Ferry, still survives. His parents were 
 both Seceders of the fine old type — intelligent, ear- 
 nest, and devout. His father, the son of a sheep- 
 farmer near Longridge, was brought up under the 
 ministry of John Brown, son of the Haddington pro- 
 fessor, and father of the Edinburgh commentator. 
 His mother was a woman of marked characteristics, 
 and great natural ability. Her predominating qualities 
 were shrewd common-sense, genuine piety, intellectual 
 vigour, firmness of purpose, and kindliness of heart. 
 After her husband was stricken with palsy she regu- 
 larly conducted family worship in his stead ; and one 
 of William's earliest recollections was that of being 
 taken by her into her room, where she prayed with him, 
 while the warm tears from her eyes fell upon his cheek. 
 He used to say that he had forgotten the prayer, but 
 
 A 
 
2 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 not the tears. That was a baptism which had in it 
 a forecast of much that he afterwards became. His 
 mother was regarded by him always with the deepest 
 veneration, and those who saw them together in his 
 mature life, as it was our privilege to do, could easily 
 discover in the nature of their intercourse with each 
 other that she had done much to mould his character 
 in the earliest stages of its development. 
 
 In his boyhood he attended with his parents on the 
 ministrations of the Eev. "William Nisbet, pastor of the 
 Abbey Close Church, a preacher of mark among his 
 brethren, whom Mr. Graham long after described as 
 " a man of strong mind and strong affections, whose 
 sympathy and help at a time of need I shall never 
 cease to remember with a warmth that years will not 
 chill." 
 
 From the pulpit, therefore, as well as in the home, 
 he learned the first principles of the oracles of God, 
 and was indoctrinated in that evangelical theology 
 which to the last he held with a firmness that was not 
 shaken by any modern assaults upon it, though he was 
 familiar with them all. 
 
 He was educated at the Grammar School of his 
 birthplace, and was so proficient as a scholar there, 
 that when he went to the University of Glasgow at 
 the early age of thirteen or fourteen, he obtained the 
 Blackstone Medal for the entrance examination. But 
 though, as that betokens, he was a diligent student of 
 the ancient classics, he was not insensible to the in- 
 fluence of the scenery surrounding the locality in which 
 his boyhood was spent. Throughout his life he was a 
 loyal son of Paisley. In his lighter moods, indeed, 
 he cracked many a joke and told many a humorous 
 
PROFESSOR W. GRAHAM, D.D. 3 
 
 story at its expense ; but in the depths of bis heart he 
 was always proud of his connection with it, and few 
 things moved him more than any reference to the 
 landscape round about it, or the doings of those who 
 had been born within its borders. In his sermon at 
 the jubilee of St. James's Street Church in 1875, he 
 says — " What unspeakable loss, to look around this 
 spot, would it be to our dear old town, and to the 
 hearts and memories of those who have been brought 
 up in its lanes, and wandered around its fields, to miss 
 the hourly, and for the most part unconsciously felt in- 
 fluences that come from the noble sweep of the western 
 mountains, with Ben Lomond enthroned over all ; and 
 on the east, from the soft-lying and darkly wooded 
 slopes of the Gleniffer Braes, with their fresh dewy 
 mornings, or solemn gloamings, their flushing spring 
 greenness, or their full-laden autumn gold." His 
 teachers, therefore, were not alone the masters of the 
 Grammar School, but also the " woods and rills " of 
 the neighbourhood ; the memories of the old abbey, 
 and the " genius " of the town itself, renowned as it 
 had been for the intelligence, the public spirit, and 
 the piety of its inhabitants. 
 
 After the usual course of study at the Glasgow 
 University, he passed in 1840 to the Divinity Hall of 
 the United Secession Church, where he had for fellow- 
 students his townsman Alexander Wallace, and his 
 friend John Cairns. The sessions of the Hall were 
 then held in the months of August and September, 
 leaving the rest of the year free for other engagements, 
 and these long vacations he improved by attending the 
 classes of Sir William Hamilton and Professor John 
 Wilson in the University of Edinburgh. He went 
 
4 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 also for a year to Germany, where he sat at the feet 
 of Neander in Berlin, and had strengthened in him 
 that love for historical research and character-analysis 
 which were such marked features in his later work. 
 After this he spent some time in continental travel, 
 going down alone into Italy, and spending his twenty- 
 first birthday in Rome. 
 
 Shortly after his return he was licensed to preach 
 by the United Secession Presbytery of Paisley. The 
 denomination was at that time labouring in the after- 
 swell of the Atonement Controversy, and as an illus- 
 tration of the state of feeling then existing in some 
 quarters, we may mention that some of the hyper- 
 Calvinistic members of the presbytery succeeded in 
 delaying his license for a time on the ground of some 
 suspicion of his orthodoxy. He did not care in later 
 life to refer to this matter, which had evidently left 
 some painful memories, and it is to these, I imagine,- 
 that he alludes in the reference to Mr. Nisbet which 
 we have quoted above ; but now and again his love of 
 humour moved him to tell how, on coming out of the 
 place where the presbytery met on the occasion of the 
 postponement, he overheard an interested weaver, who 
 had been unable to gain admission into the crowded 
 room, ask a neighbour who had just emerged from it, 
 " What hae they dune wi' that laddie Graham ? " and 
 receive for answer the words, " Ou, jist hung him up to 
 dry for ither sax weeks." It would have taken more 
 than six weeks to "dry" William Graham. Sixty years 
 were not enough for that ! But the whole experience, 
 painful as it was, is interesting as serving to show his 
 firm adherence to that scriptural theology which has 
 now found a place in the Declaratory Statement of the 
 
PROFESSOR W. GRAHAM, D.D. 5 
 
 United Presbyterian Church, and which makes as much 
 of the universal aspect of the atonement as of the pur- 
 pose of God in election. Young as he was, even then, 
 where truth was concerned he was unyielding. He 
 did not make much noise about it indeed, for that is 
 made by the breakers, not by the rock. But, " having 
 done all," he stood. 
 
 He was called to Mount Pleasant Church, Liverpool, 
 some time near the end of 1845, an( ^ on the 4^h of 
 March 1846 he was ordained there as colleague and 
 successor to the Kev. Dr. Hugh Crichton. In this 
 relation he served the church for eleven or twelve years, 
 when the sole pastorate devolved on him in conse- 
 quence of the retirement of his venerable and beloved 
 associate. After that he laboured on in Liverpool 
 until 1880, when he was chosen to the Professorship 
 of Church History by the Presbyterian Church of Eng- 
 land, an office which he held until his lamented death 
 on 26th November 1887. 
 
 But turning now from dates and details, let me 
 speak of my friend of more than thirty years as I 
 knew him in the close intimacy of a fellowship which 
 later absence did not weaken, and the width of the 
 Atlantic Ocean could not destroy. The first time I 
 saw him was at the meeting of the United Presbyterian 
 Synod in May 1854, which was held in the old Gordon 
 Street Church, Glasgow. It was my first experience 
 as " a member of court," and many things about that 
 meeting are remembered by me with unusual distinct- 
 ness, but none of them more vividly than the impres- 
 sion which was made upon me by him. He was then 
 in the full flush of early manhood ; and like David, 
 
6 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 " he was ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, 
 and goodly to look to." The glitter of the constantly 
 worn glasses somewhat concealed the brightness and 
 frequent twinkle of his eyes ; and the habit he had 
 acquired of looking up, in order that he might get the 
 full benefit of the help afforded by his spectacles, gave 
 a curious " set " to his head, which made him parti- 
 cularly recognisable. Young as he was, he did not 
 look even the thirty-one years to which he had attained, 
 and when he rose to address the great missionary meet- 
 ing on the Wednesday evening, it was difficult to 
 believe that he had been already eight years in the 
 ministry. The other speakers on that occasion were 
 even younger in the pastorate than he, and both of 
 them ultimately rose to places of influence and im- 
 portance in the Church, but his address was the most 
 remarkable of the three. He sank a deeper shaft than 
 either of them, and soared, too, at times, into a region 
 which they never approached. I remember yet the 
 thrill I felt, and the start I gave, when I heard the 
 Michael Angelo story, with its " Amplius " and its 
 beautiful application. And now as I look back, I am 
 impressed with the fact that the characteristics of his 
 speech on that occasion were not wit and humour, but 
 rather ethereal elevation, illustrative power, and per- 
 vasive spirituality. 
 
 The next time I saw him was in far other circum- 
 stances. In the July of that same year, a party of us, 
 consisting of three young ministers, and a student of 
 theology now considerably past his semi-jubilee, while 
 rusticating in the Island of Arran, had set out from 
 Brodick to ascend Goatfell. When we were about a 
 fourth part of the way up we came upon another com- 
 
PROFESSOR W. GRAHAM, D.D. 
 
 pany, among whom we recognised the orator of the 
 recent meeting of Synod. We speedily introduced 
 ourselves to each other, and with that better than free- 
 masonry which subsists between brethren in the pas- 
 torate of the same denomination, we were at once 
 friends. He was in a rollicking mood. Away from 
 labour and responsibility, he was bent on enjoying 
 himself, and in seeking to do that he ministered vastly 
 to the enjoyment of others. He was the life of the 
 party, and with quip, and pun, and joke, and anecdote, 
 and ridiculously apt quotation, he kept us all in mirth. 
 His fancy for a while was in the finding of likenesses 
 between each of the members of the company and some 
 character in the " Pilgrim's Progress," suggested by 
 some one's allusion to the Hill Difficulty ; and to all 
 the " pilgrims " of that happy day, I am sure that 
 the medicine of his mirth was most stimulating and 
 beneficial. 
 
 The next time I met him was in Liverpool in July 
 1855, when I first preached in Bootle. I spent then 
 two weeks in his immediate neighbourhood, and we 
 had long walks and talks together. Then we were 
 only two, and our fellowship was delightful. It was 
 " close communion " in the best sense of that phrase. 
 Our converse was of personal experience, of our work 
 in the ministry, of our difficulties, and of our joys. 
 We spoke of texts and sermons, and hammered out to- 
 gether " plans " of discourses. We compared notes on 
 our recent reading, on our favourite poets, our most help- 
 ful books, and our common friends. I have still, on the 
 closet shelf here in my study, a copy of the smallest 
 edition of " The Christian Year," which he gave to me 
 on that occasion, and which bears his autograph, but 
 
8 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 in a beauty and distinctness of penmanship which 
 strikingly contrasts with his more recent performances 
 in that line.* 
 
 I have specified these three earliest impressions made 
 by my friend upon me, not only because they stand out 
 from all others with peculiar freshness, but also because 
 my later intercourse with him served only to deepen 
 and confirm them. 
 
 In October of 1855, I was settled over the new 
 congregation of Bootle, and from that time on till my 
 departure for New York, we wrought side by side, 
 sharing each other's deepest and most sacred experi- 
 ences. No cloud ever dimmed the brightness of our 
 friendship. We differed often, and on such occasions 
 
 * In this matter of penmanship Dr. Graham was latterly deplorable. 
 When he wrote to me he sometimes filled sixteen pages of note-paper, 
 and it was almost a forenoon's work to decipher them. His friend, Dr. 
 W. B. Robertson, once said that Dr. Graham, Mr. Samuel Stitt, and 
 himself, might be admitted into some society, I forget what, on the 
 ground of mutual illegibility. Those who remember how much talk 
 there was at the end of the Union negotiations about mutual eligi- 
 bility will appreciate the joke. At one of the meetings of the English 
 Synod of the U.P. Church held in Manchester, Dr. Graham made a 
 brilliant address, which was somewhat marred in delivery by the diffi- 
 culty he had in reading his own writing. The reporter asked him for 
 his MS., but when he looked at it his face assumed an expression of 
 despair, and he said he could do nothing with that, for it would take a 
 week to set it up. Graham came to me and told me the story with a kind 
 of comic sadness. But I got him to go with ine into the vestry, and 
 sat down and wrote to his dictation from his MS., so that, if possible, the 
 address might be printed. As we were going on Dr. Howat came in 
 and readily joined us, so he dictated to both of us from different parts of 
 the address, and we had a copy made in time for the reporters. After 
 we got through, I took it upon me to read him a small lecture on the 
 subject, and he made many expressions of penitence, and many resolu- 
 tions of amendment, but — the habit was too inveterate. 
 
PROFESSOR W. GRAHAM, D.D. 9 
 
 each argued stoutly for his own opinion, but we loved 
 the same all through ; and in the end, perhaps, though 
 neither might acknowledge it at the time, the views of 
 both were modified in some degree. I know not if I 
 was ever of much service to him, for he always seemed 
 to me so richly furnished that, in conference, I could 
 add nothing to him. But I do know that he was of 
 immense service to me, for — 
 
 " He was rich where I was poor, 
 And he supplied my want the more 
 As his imlikeness fitted mine." 
 
 What struck me earliest in our fellowship, was the 
 vast extent of his reading, coupled with the firm grasp 
 with which he retained the substance of what he had 
 read. One often meets a mere helluo librorum, who 
 can enumerate by the dozen the books which he has 
 read, but can give little or no idea of their contents. 
 Sometimes, again, one comes on another who has made 
 a thorough study of some limited field of literature, 
 and can speak exhaustively of that, but knows little 
 bevond. But Graham was remarkable for the com- 
 bination of thoroughness with extent and variety in 
 his reading. Almost before von knew that a new 
 book was out he had read it and could give you an 
 idea of its drift and an estimate of its value. He had 
 so won over by his smiles, or by his wiles, the libra- 
 rian of the Lyceum, that he could get from him any 
 book — I had almost said any quantity of books — new 
 or old, which he wanted, and keep it as long as he 
 chose, without fear of the fines which that functionary 
 usually exacted, without abatement or relenting, from 
 
io REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 others. And if a new book which he had not yet 
 seen were lying on your table, it was dangerous to 
 draw his attention to it ; for if you did, it was sure to 
 be borrowed by him, and its return postponed sine die. 
 He intermeddled almost with all knowledge. Philo- 
 sophy was read as carefully, if not perhaps with as 
 much relish, as poetry. He delighted in literary 
 criticism, and was at home in all things relating to 
 Biblical study. But the field of his choice was history, 
 with its allied departments of biography and antiqui- 
 ties. He did not care from what quarter information 
 came, if it was only true ; and he was as catholic in 
 his range of authors as he was in that of subjects. 
 He did not confine himself to any party or school, 
 and was as well up in Newman as he was in Trench, 
 or Kingsley, or Mozley. He read as rapidly as he 
 read extensively. He brought so much to the book 
 that was in his hand, that he could easily lay hold of 
 what was new in it. George Lawson said about John 
 Brown, his favourite pupil, that " he had a way of 
 getting at the kernel of a text without breaking his 
 teeth upon the shell,'' and something of the same sort 
 might be said of Graham in his treatment of a book. 
 He retained of it all that he needed or wanted, and 
 threw the rest away. Thus the extent of his reading 
 did not interfere with his independence. He did not 
 implicitly follow any one. He might have taken for 
 his motto in that regard, " Nullius addictus jurare in 
 verba magistri" An idea was not any more authori- 
 tative for him, by reason of its having been put into 
 print ; and though he kept up with the newest issues 
 from the press, he did not adopt any notion simply 
 because of its novel tv. But he " took stock " of each 
 
PROFESSOR W. GRAHAM, D.D. n 
 
 work he read, and could give you an excellent sum- 
 mary of its contents. If you wanted to know the 
 literature of any subject, you had only to apply to 
 him, and even on the spur of the moment he would 
 enumerate to you the best works upon it, and give you 
 a brief description of the peculiarities of each, with a 
 fair estimate of its value. In this way he was almost 
 as good as an encyclopedia to his friends, — at least 
 he was often so to me, and I believe that most of the 
 brethren who were on a footing of intimacy with him 
 would bear similar testimony regarding him. 
 
 But while no one could be long in his company 
 without discovering the extent and variety of his 
 reading, that for which by most he will be remem- 
 bered was his wit. When he was with three or four 
 friends in the study, or in the compartment of a rail- 
 way carriage on the way to the Synod, or at the table 
 of a brother, he was positively irrepressible. He would 
 play with a word until he seemed to have exhausted 
 all the possibilities in the case, and then at the last 
 come out with something so beautiful that .you were 
 lost in admiration of it, or something so execrably bad 
 that even its badness provoked the wildest laughter. 
 His humour came mostly in series, one joke suggesting 
 another, and that a third, until the line was ended. 
 It was like the going off of a Roman candle. First 
 was launched one fire-ball, which exploded into a 
 shower of sparks, then another, and another, until the 
 last shot up and burst with a particularly loud report 
 which told that for a time there was an end. It would 
 be vain to attempt to give illustrations of it, for often 
 the humour was so connected with the time and place 
 that it would evaporate in its repetition. But to his 
 
12 REMINISCENCES OE 
 
 honour be it said, that he never used his wit to wound 
 another, or with any waspish, or malicious intent. 
 He was not one who would rather lose his friend than 
 his joke, and if unintentionally he gave a wound, he 
 was unhappy until it was completely healed. 
 
 While, however, we give prominence to his wit, it 
 may surprise some to learn that it was not his deepest 
 or most characteristic feature. When he was in com- 
 pany you could hardly see anything else because of the 
 dazzlement it made ; but when you were alone with him 
 it was quite different. Then it was not so much wit as 
 wisdom ; not so much mirth as musing, that came from 
 him. This was not because he kept his wit for display, 
 for nothing was ever farther from his mind than the 
 desire to display anything of his, but it was because he 
 used it mostly for defence. Dr. Macleod has said in 
 his delightful sketch, that he employed it for the pur- 
 pose of keeping off those who for some reason or other 
 were not agreeable to him. And doubtless there is 
 truth in that representation of the matter. Like 
 Abraham. Lincoln, he could " bluff" off an impertinent 
 inquiry, or turn the edge of an unreasonable complaint, 
 by a funny story or a smart witticism, thus saving 
 himself without giving offence, and when there was 
 need he did not hesitate to take such a course. But 
 my belief is, that his main purpose in giving rein to 
 his wit was to fight off, for the time, deep inner de- 
 pression, which he desired to conceal, and, if possible, 
 to destroy. I cannot explain the psychology of the 
 matter, but it is no uncommon thing to find that those 
 who are the greatest sources of mirth for others are 
 themselves afflicted with besetting sadness. It was so 
 with Graham. From an earl)'- period in his life he was 
 
PROFESSOR W. GRAHAM, D.D. 13 
 
 subject to times of depression, during which he was in 
 the depths of despondency ; and while he could and 
 did speak to his closest friends about these, he covered 
 them over in general society by his fun. When I knew 
 him first there was not much of this depression about 
 him, but when Dr. Crichton retired, and the sole pas- 
 torate of Mount Pleasant Church devolved upon him, 
 the heavier responsibility and greater labour so told 
 upon him that he became terribly depressed. After 
 he removed his residence to Birkenhead there was a 
 great improvement, but when he ente/ed on his pro- 
 fessorial duties the strain caused by the preparation of 
 his lectures was so great that he was thrown back into 
 the depths. It is impossible to say what the cause of 
 this depression was, though, since his death, I have 
 thought that it might be the beginnings of that disease 
 in the liver which carried him off at last. But a 
 glimpse into its reality, as well as a specimen of the 
 kind of fight he maintained against it, may be fur- 
 nished by the following sentences, which I take from a 
 letter to me dated December 29, 1882, written in 
 his Birkenhead study, and, characteristically enough 
 also, in pencil : — 
 
 " Well, I am down here once more, in my old study, 
 the place of many thoughts and dreams and converse 
 with the dead spirits, and, I trust also, deep communion 
 with my own spirit, and yearnings for and yieldings 
 unto the blessed Spirit of God and of Christ, the Coun- 
 sellor and the Comforter. I have had some fight and 
 friction since I saw you. The devil in the pit of my 
 stomach is chained so far, but he has considerable 
 length and range of tether. But God is cheering me, 
 and there are times when Satan is bruised under my 
 
14 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 feet, however feeble and braised themselves be, and all 
 through His power. So, sursum corda, in this heart- 
 ening I go to cross the threshold of the New Year." 
 These words will illustrate what I mean when I say- 
 that he used his wit as much to defend himself from 
 this tendency to depression and to keep himself from 
 revealing its existence to others, as to ward off the 
 darts of " unreasonable and foolish men." 
 
 They will furnish an excuse, too, if any be required, 
 for the occasionally excessive indulgence in fun for 
 which our friend was sometimes blamed. For when 
 one is trying to hide a secret he is sometimes apt to 
 overdo the acting. They will enable us also to under- 
 stand how he could so often, so easily, and so quickly 
 make the transition from the merriest laughter to the 
 loftiest devotion. The fun was only on the surface, 
 but the man himself dwelt in the deepest seriousness. 
 His wit was thus like the phosphorescence on the top 
 of an Atlantic wave, sparkling up out of the darkness, 
 but having a great depth beneath. The depth is the 
 ocean ; and in like manner the true man was the man 
 below the surface, confronting ever more those mys- 
 teries of being which throw the soul back upon God in 
 Christ. That under-depth of unfaltering trust in the 
 blessed Redeemer was the constant element in the 
 character of my friend ; and so, when I have heard 
 those who knew him only slightly express their sur- 
 prise that so soon after the extravagance of his mirth 
 he could talk serenely on the holiest things, or lead 
 his friends in a prayer which took them up to the 
 very step of the throne of grace, I have been reminded 
 of the story told concerning Guthrie of Fenwick and 
 his friend Durham, author of the once famous treatise 
 
PROFESSOR W. GRAHAM, D.D. 15 
 
 on the Apocalypse, to the following effect : " On one 
 occasion, at a meeting of his brethren, Mr. Guthrie, 
 who had been more than ordinarily gay and cheerful, 
 was asked to pray, which he did in such a solemn and 
 affecting manner that the grave Mr. Durham could not 
 help expressing his amazement, telling him that if he 
 had laughed half so much, he could not have prayed 
 for a long time after. Mr. Guthrie replied, that were 
 it not for his laughing, his disease would soon make 
 him sad enough."* With a change of names we could 
 truthfully tell the same story concerning Graham, and 
 more than one of his clerical neighbours. 
 
 But I pass on to speak of his tender sympathy with 
 the suffering and sorrowful, which also, unless I 
 greatly err, had its root in the personal affliction to 
 which we have been alluding. You could not know 
 Graham thoroughly until you were in trial, and he had 
 knelt with you in prayer at the mercy-seat. More 
 than once or twice that privilege was mine, and his 
 supplications then offered are among the holiest memo- 
 ries of my life. I cannot recall now any of the words 
 he used, but I never can forget the feeling of strength 
 and encouragement which, by the grace of God, was 
 given to me through them at the time. It was like 
 that which Trench describes in words which I adapt 
 and appropriate — 
 
 " We knelt, and all around us seemed to lower ; 
 We rose, and all the distant and the near 
 Stood forth in shining outline brave and clear. 
 We knelt, how weak ! we rose, how full of power !" 
 
 Nor was it only in seasons of bereavement (as it was 
 
 * M'Crie's " Sketches of Scottish Church History," vol. ii. p. 106. 
 
16 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 with me) that his tenderness of sympathy was mani- 
 fested ; it was shown by him also in times of mis- 
 fortune, adversity, and even backsliding. He drew 
 closer to a man when he was down than ever he had 
 done before when he was prosperous. He was no 
 " swallow " friend, twittering round you in the sum- 
 mer of your gladness, but forsaking you for a sunnier 
 atmosphere in the winter of your need. You could 
 always count on him. If he were in your neighbour- 
 hood, he would be sure to put himself by your side ; 
 and if he were far away, a letter assuring you that he 
 had been praying for you would come soon from his 
 hand ; and so fully would it enter into your experience 
 that you could hardly read it for your tears. Very 
 loving too he was in his dealing with the erring. He 
 never made light of the evil that had been done, and 
 was always faithful in his expostulation with him who 
 had done it, but he would not give him up. He clung 
 to him even to the last, and frequently he had his 
 reward in restoring the offender to his Saviour, to 
 himself, and to the Church. Eepeated instances of 
 this kind, told me in the sacred confidence of pastoral 
 fellowship, come to my remembrance as I write, but 
 none of them may be specified here. I allude to them 
 only to illustrate a side of the character of my friend 
 which many never knew, and by reason of their igno- 
 rance of which not a few miserably misjudged him. 
 He was a true Barnabas — the son of consolation — be- 
 cause " the Lord God had given him," not as a ready- 
 made accomplishment, for that is not His usual way 
 of giving, but as the result of his own deep expe- 
 rience of conflict with recurring seasons of depres- 
 sion, Sl the tongue of the learned, that he should 
 
PROFESSOR W. GRAHAM, D.D. 17 
 
 know how to speak a word in season to him that is 
 weary." 
 
 In his pastoral relationships our brother had great 
 happiness and honour. His venerable colleague, whose 
 working days were almost over before I went to Liver- 
 pool, regarded him with affection, mingled with pride, 
 and to the last they were true yoke-fellows, ever 
 anxious to promote each other's comfort and usefulness. 
 A contrast to each other in many respects, they were 
 yet one in seeking constantly the prosperity and effi- 
 ciency of the Mount Pleasant Church. Dr. Crichton 
 was a preacher of the old-fashioned sort. One of the 
 last survivors of the Selkirk students who had sat at 
 the feet of George Lawson, his discourses, rich in scrip- 
 tural exposition and quotation, were constructed on 
 the old systematic lines of doctrinal instruction, and 
 were delivered with a singular unction that was greatly 
 helped by a rich melodious voice. He had a tender 
 heart and a gracious manner, and possessed in fuller 
 combination than is often found, either in the ministry 
 or out of it, the qualities of the gentleman and the 
 Christian. The warmth of his nature, in his social 
 moments, sometimes exploded into an outburst of in- 
 dignation at things which provoked his antagonism, 
 and on such occasions he could be vehement in his 
 invective, and often strikingly original in his epithets. 
 But these out-flashes were but rare ; and when they 
 were over, which they soon were, no one could laugh 
 more heartily at them than he did himself. At such 
 times, like Carlyle, he said far more than he meant, 
 and was carried away by his love of humour — for he, 
 too, had a rich vein of that ore in him — to such 
 lengths that the whole affair became at last a veritable 
 
1 8 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 reductio ad absurdum, ending commonly in uproarious 
 merriment. These occasions, unlike geysers in the 
 fact that they had no periodicity, were like them in 
 the suddenness of their up-shooting and in the brevity 
 of their duration, and when they were over, they were 
 over and left no bad results. So far from that indeed, 
 they were like the escape of steam from a safety-valve, 
 and probably prevented the occurrence o£ something 
 worse. He was beloved by all the younger brethren 
 in the ministry around him, for he took them to his 
 heart, entertained them in his home — greatly assisted 
 therein by his noble wife — rejoiced with them in their 
 joys, and wept with them in their sorrows. He had 
 not, perhaps, the massive weight and intellectual grasp 
 of his predecessor Dr. Stewart, and he certainly lacked 
 the sparkling genius of his youthful colleague, but his 
 ministry was rich in evangelical fervour and spiritual 
 results. The very unlikeness of the one to the other 
 ministered to the harmony of their fellowship with each 
 other, and in the declining years of Dr. Crichton, after 
 his retirement from active service, it was touching to 
 see the thoughtful care which Mr. Graham took of 
 him, and the tender solicitude which he invariably 
 manifested for his welfare. He was indeed the staff in 
 the hand of his colleague's old age, and to the honour 
 of both be it recorded, that he had, to the last, no 
 warmer or more devoted friends than the members of 
 Dr. Crichton's family. 
 
 In his own home Graham was singularly blessed. 
 It would be an intrusion into a circle of sacred con- 
 fidence to say all that might, in other circumstances, be 
 truthfully recorded in this regard. Let it suffice that 
 in his wife he had the rich treasure of a true help- 
 
PROFESSOR W. GRAHAM, D.D. 19 
 
 meet, in whom his heart did safely trust, and that 
 his children ever gladdened him by their consistent 
 conduct, their happy cheerfulness, and their devoted 
 love. He had no domestic cares and few household 
 sorrows. Only once during the long season of our 
 fellowship did the dark angel cross his threshold ; and 
 everything in his family surroundings was helpful to 
 him in his work. But enough : his latest words to 
 her who had shared with him so long the vicissitudes 
 of life, " All right, Annie, I will, thank God, soon be 
 better," are more eloquent than any statement of mine 
 could be, as a revelation of the oneness, the tenderness, 
 and the affectionateness that subsisted between the 
 heads of that happy household. 
 
 In the congregation generally he was like a son to 
 the elder members of his church, while he was the 
 elder brother, the leader, and the inspirer of the 
 younger. When I knew it first, Mount Pleasant con- 
 gregation was rich in the possession of some venerable 
 and noble men, who had made their way into promi- 
 nence in commercial life, while at the same time they 
 had maintained " without fear and without reproach " 
 an honourable Christian character. Naturally enough, 
 such a youth as Graham was, at the time of his ordina- 
 tion, could not all at once be all to them that their 
 senior pastor had become. But they did not, because 
 they could not, despise his youth. They received him 
 as a son, and in the course of time — as so often 
 happens in the domestic circle — the son grew up into 
 the companion, the friend, and ultimately the trusted 
 counsellor, whose advice was preferred to that of all 
 others. Not all at once, indeed, was this result secured, 
 and perhaps now and then there were differences and 
 
2 o REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 discussions more or less serious, for they were all 
 human, and moreover, they were all Scotchmen ; but 
 before long these venerable Nesfcors, with Dr. Ferguson 
 at their head, were as proud of their young minister 
 as they were of their church and of its history. 
 
 With the young people, however, from the first Mr. 
 Graham was a special favourite ; and for that many 
 reasons might be given. He was young himself, and 
 so could enter heartily into their feelings and experi- 
 ence. He knew their dangers and temptations, and 
 was not afraid to speak plainly and faithfully as well as 
 lovingly concerning them. He was besides eminently 
 approachable. There was no stand-offishness about 
 him. He was not like a cold statue raised on a 
 pedestal and surrounded by an iron railing ; but he 
 was a living and loving brother. Every one of them 
 felt that he could go to him, and no one of them was 
 ever chilled by the reception which he gave him. 
 Then his large literary resources enabled him to be a 
 guide to them in the prosecution of self-culture. He 
 knew just what would meet their need, and he could 
 direct them where to find' it. He was never too busy 
 to attend to their wants, or too indifferent to think ot 
 their perplexities. Hence the Young Men's Literary 
 Society of Mount Pleasant became one of the most 
 successful and efficient in the whole district. I do 
 not know whether or not that society was originated 
 at his suggestion, but it was certainly stimulated to 
 its highest excellence by his inspiration. For it, 
 primarily, he wrote some of his best lectures. He 
 took a warm interest in its discussions. He was always 
 the great attraction at its annual meetings. He was 
 often consulted by its members as to the particular 
 
PROFESSOR W. GRAHAM, D.D. 21 
 
 subjects on which they were to write or speak at its 
 gatherings, and I do not believe that there is any- 
 where to-day a single individual who was privileged 
 to be connected with it, who will not say that he was 
 immensely indebted for intellectual stimulus to its dis- 
 cussions, and for much of the best that is in him to the 
 influence of Mr. Graham upon him through its instru- 
 mentalitv. From among those connected with it at 
 one time or another there have come at least one 
 member of Parliament, and one mayor of Liverpool, 
 and not a few of those who have been leaders in public 
 affairs in the great seaport graduated from its ranks. 
 
 But coming to more strictly personal experiences, 
 I must not forget to speak of the bearing of Mr. 
 Graham towards the members and ministers of what 
 I may call the daughter-churches of Mount Pleasant. 
 During his pastorate no fewer than three churches were 
 formed by direct colonisation from his congregation, 
 and he was called to part with not a few members 
 who became connected with other churches that had 
 sprung up in their neighbourhood, and belonged to the 
 English Presbyterian denomination. Grange Lane, 
 Birkenhead, was already a flourishing church when I 
 first knew it in 1855; but at the time of its forma- 
 tion, in 1846, some of its most active members had 
 been drawn from Mount Pleasant. Of the forty mem- 
 bers over whom I was settled in Bootle the majority 
 had brought certificates from the same congregation. 
 The church at Egremont was largely recruited from 
 its ranks, and that of Queen's Road, Everton, was at 
 first all but entirely composed of those who had sat in 
 its pews. The same was true of Prince's Eoad. Al] 
 these belonged to what was then the United Presby- 
 
22 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 terian Church, but the English Presb3~terian congrega- 
 tions of Fairfield and Sefton Park had each a few men 
 of influence who had been long identified with Mount 
 Pleasant. The formation of these churches was re- 
 quired by the extension of the city, and by the opera- 
 tion of that centrifugal force which in all large towns 
 causes the removal to residences in the suburbs of 
 those who have grown in material prosperity. None 
 the less, however, the parting with so many members 
 could not but be a trial, and doubtless it was often 
 felt as such by our brother. But Mount Pleasant held 
 its place of prominence and influence in spite of all 
 these " hivings," and that it did so was owing not 
 only to the excellence of his ministrations, but also to 
 the spirit which he manifested toward the new con- 
 gregations and their pastors. However much he felt 
 the changes as they came, he spoke these feelings, for 
 the most part, only in his closet, and on his knees. 
 He became the intimate friend of all the new pastors. 
 His advice was always at their service. His help was 
 never denied to them. He became almost a member 
 of each of their families, and on all their great occasions 
 he was in the place of honour. He was ever ready 
 for an exchange of pulpits with them. No one was 
 more welcome at their Friday evening pre-communion 
 services. At the annual social meetings of their 
 churches he was almost invariably present, and de- 
 livered one of those indescribable addresses, in which 
 wit and pathos, mirth and seriousness, cordial con- 
 gratulations and kindly criticism, playful banter and 
 earnest, elevating, ennobling spirituality were so mar- 
 vellously interblended. He had no jealousy of them or 
 of their success. He delighted always to hear them do 
 
PROFESSOR )V. GRAHAM, D.D. 23 
 
 their best, and helped them to do it. If, on any occa- 
 sion, they rose to a higher level than usual, he was sure 
 to congratulate theru, while again, if they fell into any 
 serious mistake, he would seek in the kindliest manner 
 to prevent its repetition. His coming into their homes 
 was felt by them to be a benediction, and their children 
 delighted in his mirth. If they knew that he was in 
 the house these little folks would contrive somehow 
 to get into his presence, and they enjoyed his humour 
 almost as much as their parents did. A ludicrous 
 though genuine illustration of this was given me a few 
 years ago by a friend, who told me that Dr. Graham (for 
 the thing happened after he had obtained his degree) 
 had been with him for some days on the occasion of 
 preaching anniversary sermons in his church. At his 
 departure, his place in the guest-chamber was to be 
 taken by another minister who was coming to attend a 
 meeting of Synod in the neighbourhood, and on the 
 morning of the day on which the new arrival was ex- 
 pected, one of the little boys of the family, kneeling by 
 his mother, spontaneously added to his usual prayer 
 
 these two petitions : " Please God, bring Mr. 
 
 safely here, and may he be as funny as the Doctor ! " 
 
 During the years of his pastorate, from about 1857 
 to the time of the removal of his residence to Birken- 
 head, he was a weekly visitor in my house at Bootle. 
 Our usual course on such occasions was to have a quiet 
 tete-a-tete in the study, which, however our talk began, 
 or through whatever course it might ramble, came at 
 last to some reference to his malady, whereupon I 
 would start up and say, " Now that won't do ! no more 
 of that ; come and let us take a stroll." Then we 
 would sally forth for a long walk along the Bootle 
 
24 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 sands, in the teeth of the keen sea-breeze, and back 
 again inland by the lanes in Litherland, or some- 
 times up through Orrell as far as Aintree, and round 
 by Walton. All this while, as much to keep him from 
 thinking of himself as for my own information, I was 
 continually posing him with question after question, in 
 response to which he poured forth his rich stores of 
 information ; or I would beguile him into an argument, 
 in which his keen subtlety, sharp in its edge and swift 
 in its stroke as a Damascus blade in the hand of 
 Saladin, would come out ; or I would set him on a 
 description of the speech of some great orator whom he 
 had recently been hearing, or on the criticism of some 
 author whom we had both been reading. After a 
 couple of hours of such physical and mental exercise we 
 returned, with all the mists removed and in high spirits, 
 to a joyous tea. Thence he rose and returned to Er- 
 skine Street, and after giving him a " Scotch convoy " 
 up Stanley Road, I came back to my study, not mourn- 
 ing over lost time, but rejoicing in the stimulus which 
 I had received, and which always made my work better 
 than it would otherwise have been. It was not different 
 with Mr. Thompson, then of Birkenhead, Dr. Howat, 
 Dr. Grosart, and Dr. Muir ; and though Mr. Towers 
 and Dr. Macleod were older brethren, there was the 
 same cordial feHowship between him and them. Thus 
 the perfect understanding between him and their pas- 
 tors took away to a large extent the pain of parting 
 with those who had gone from him for the formation 
 of these new churches. 
 
 Of what sort his pulpit discourses were at this time 
 the few sermons which he published will make mani- 
 fest. I often thought that the years of his collegiate 
 
PROFESSOR IV. GRAHAM, D.D. 25 
 
 pastorate, though advantageous to hiui in other re- 
 spects, notably in that of health, were attended with 
 this serious disadvantage, that they rather interfered, 
 owing to the alternation of services between him and 
 Dr. Crichton, with his entrance upon and prosecution 
 of a connected course of instruction from the pulpit, 
 such as the exposition of a gospel or an epistle, would 
 have been. Possibly I am at fault here, but I cannot 
 remember that he ever engaged in any pulpit work of 
 that kind. His liking was for isolated texts, and in 
 his later ministry he had a special fancy for the com- 
 bination of two or more texts, such as the " wist nots" 
 in the histories of Moses and Samson, the " three 
 sleeps of Peter," and the like. As we have already 
 indicated, he was always at his best in his analysis of 
 character and motive, and his practical sermons were 
 often very excellent. Dr. Ormiston told me, the other 
 day, that his discourse in Hamilton, during his first visit 
 to America, from the words, " Let every man abide in the 
 same calling wherein he was called," lifted him and his 
 people up to the third heaven; and that on " Influence," 
 preached at the jubilee of St. James's Church, Paisley, 
 and afterwards published in the memorial of that occa- 
 sion, is an admirable specimen of his best work. His 
 sermons always held doctrine in solution, but they were 
 rarely, if ever, what one would call doctrinal, and 
 though he did not indulge much in exposition, he 
 never overlooked exegesis, but could always give a 
 reason for the view which he took of the passage from 
 which he was speaking. His style was vivid and 
 electric, abounding in brief epigrammatic sentences, 
 and so was rather abrupt and broken than climactic. 
 His illustrations, often exceedingly apt, were not loaded 
 
26 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 with elaboration, but rather given as they first struck 
 him, and so resembled the original sketches of an 
 artist, which are often more powerful than the finished 
 paintings which are made from them. He did not 
 deal much in argument, and when he did his mind 
 moved so rapidly — leaping at one bound over inter- 
 mediate steps — that many were unable to keep up 
 with him, and were apt to think that his conclusions 
 were intuitions rather than inferences. But the truth 
 was, the logical connection was clear to himself, but he 
 was impatient of the process of showing it in full, and 
 rushed on to it, as a buoyant youth will often vault up- 
 stairs three or more steps at a time. But he seldom 
 argued. His strength lay in dealing with experience, 
 and he had been constrained so to study his own heart- 
 history that the inner life of every man became to him 
 an object of engrossing interest. In dealing with 
 character he did not confine himself to the men of the 
 Bible. His sermons on Thomas Guthrie and David 
 Livingstone, and his noble paper on his friend, Dr. 
 Wm. B. Robertson, all indicate his power in this direc- 
 tion ; while his funeral discourses on his co-presbyters, 
 Dr. Skinner and Dr. M'Kerrow, will be read with 
 interest even by those who did not know these men 
 themselves, just as we are attracted to one of Rem- 
 brandt's portraits, the Guilder for example, not because 
 we knew the original, but because we are impressed 
 with the individuality which he has put into his 
 delineation, and the skill with which he has done so. 
 Sometimes, too, his antiquarian leanings guided him 
 in his selection, for when everybody was talking some 
 years ago of the transit of Venus, he dug up an almost 
 forgotten chapter of Liverpool history, and preached a 
 
PROFESSOR W. GRAHAM, D.D. 27 
 
 discourse on Jeremiah Horrocks, of the ancient cliapel 
 of Toxteth, who had observed a similar transit in his 
 days, and who as an astronomer had anticipated much 
 that has been developed since he lived and wrote. 
 Indeed, such was his liking for this sort of discourse, 
 that the death of any man of great distinction was sure 
 to evoke from him a sermon on his character and work. 
 Nor was it only in his pulpit that his love for character- 
 sketching appeared. It showed itself in almost every- 
 thing he did, and his biography of Dr. John Macfarlane, 
 over and above its excellence in the portrayal of its 
 subject, is remarkable for the number of verbal vignettes 
 which it contains, and which, though they are only 
 miniatures, are so truthful as to be at once recognised 
 by all who knew the originals. 
 
 In the preparation of his discourses for the pulpit he 
 was far from being either dilatory or perfunctory. He 
 begau early in the week, and was generally able to 
 give a large part of Saturday to exercise in the open 
 air. He spent the first days in thoroughly reading up 
 for his subject, then after a time of meditation carried 
 on not in the study only, but wherever he went, he sat 
 down when he was ready, and wrote off his sermon at 
 a heat. This plan he followed also in his professorial 
 days in the preparation of his lectures, and the follow- 
 ing extract from a letter to me dated Nov. 8, 188 I, 
 will show how he worked it out. " I am quite hard at 
 work. This session is in one sense harder than the 
 last, though it was the first. For I am now busy with 
 the Nicene Creed, the Pelagian and Augustinian contro- 
 versies, the growth of the Papacy, &c. Last week I 
 read hours and hours Augustine's works, and I feel as 
 if one week's steady, plodding, interested reading of 
 
28 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 the original documents had put me inside of the real 
 source as well as course of the Church History of these 
 days, and days they were when centuries were moulded." 
 These words are characteristic. He read himself into 
 the inside of men and movements, and then depicted 
 what he saw from that place of vantage. That was 
 the secret of the vivid presentation which he gave of 
 characters and events, — so that as one of his students 
 said, "You saw saints and heroes move before you 
 each with the light of life in his face." His paper on 
 " Calvin," and his lecture on " Luther," were prepared 
 in the same way ; and the course he followed was 
 attended with this advantage, that he acquired much 
 more than he could use at the time, so that a great 
 store of material remained which might be turned to 
 profitable account another day. The chips from his 
 chisel were often more valuable than the finished 
 statues of other men. 
 
 In pastoral visitation, though he did not prosecute 
 it with methodical or systematic regularity, — indeed, 
 I question if he did or could do much very methodi- 
 cally — Graham was always natural and successful. 
 He had a home in the hearts of all his people. He 
 knew their circumstances, and could always deal truly 
 and tenderly with them. The humour which he 
 rigidly, I could almost say inexorably, excluded from 
 the pulpit, was permitted to play about his talk in the 
 home ; but he could always, without any constraint, 
 introduce the one thing which he had come to say ; 
 and in times of sorrow he was a true consoler, for he 
 could comfort others " with the comfort wherewith 
 he himself was comforted of God." He had the 
 enviable ability to recognise and name all his people 
 
PROFESSOR W. GRAHAM, D.D. 29 
 
 as he met them, and often as he and I walked to- 
 gether through the streets of Liverpool, our progress 
 was retarded by his repeated meetings with Mount 
 Pleasant people, with whom he insisted on stopping a 
 few moments to ask them of their welfare. On such 
 occasions, as he parted from his parishioner to rejoin 
 me, it was usually with a benediction on his lips such 
 as " Every comfort be with you," and both went on 
 their way, each with a brighter face and a lighter step 
 because of the greeting. Often, too, he would " drop 
 in " on some of his people unannounced and unex- 
 pected, to partake of their hospitality ; but that which 
 would have been an unwarranted liberty in others, 
 was relished in him, for he was regarded as virtually 
 a member of their families ; and though they fre- 
 quently smiled at his little eccentricities, they always 
 felt that he had left a brightness and a blessing 
 behind him. 
 
 In the Presbytery, on the meetings of which he was 
 a regular attendant, he did not take any very weighty 
 or sustained part in the transaction of business, at 
 least until the Union question came to the front, and 
 that was discussed mainly after I had left for America. 
 But he was a kind of free-lance, always on the alert, 
 now interjecting his witty " asides " or his irrepressible 
 jokes, and then subsiding again into silence. I can- 
 not recall, in all the years during which I sat beside 
 him in the U.P. Presbytery of Lancashire, a single 
 instance — apart from the Union question — of his 
 making anything like a sustained speech there. But 
 though his humour was always exuberant on such 
 occasions, it was often made by him to serve a serious 
 and wholesome purpose. Whenever he saw that a 
 
30 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 discussion was becoming personal, and that there was 
 danger of brethren being estranged from each other, 
 he became a peace-maker by his wit ; for when the 
 laugh which he had raised was over, the fighting spirit 
 was for the time exorcised. So again, when a great 
 deal of time was being wasted on a matter of infini- 
 tesimal importance, the folly was cured by him homceo- 
 pathically by a sally of his fan, and when things were 
 approaching an exaggeration of the pathetic, he dis- 
 solved the tear- cloud into laughter. Once when a 
 long time seemed likely to be spent over the settle- 
 ment of the hour for dinner, each man who spoke 
 thinking mainly of his own convenience, he brought 
 matters to a point by saying, " Moderator, what's the 
 use of talking so long about a mere provisional 
 arrangement ? I move that we adjourn for dinner at 
 two o'clock," and the thing was settled. Another 
 time, when a call had come to a co -presbyter from a 
 Glasgow church, and the pleadings on both sides had 
 been particularly tender — verging, indeed, on the 
 sentimental — a poor sooty sparrow came fluttering 
 down the chimney into the grate of the school-room 
 in which we were assembled, and Graham, quick as a 
 flash, convulsed us all with the quotation, " As a bird 
 that wandereth from her nest, so is a man that 
 wandereth from his place." There was an end to the 
 sentimental for a season after that. Thus his wit was 
 not always given forth for its own sake, but was often 
 turned by him to good and profitable account. 
 
 In those days the U.P. Presbytery of Lancashire 
 extended far beyond the boundaries of that county, 
 and had congregations as far north as Kendal, as far 
 east as Bradford, and as far south as Birmingham, 
 
PROFESSOR IV. GRAHAM, D.D. 31 
 
 and, for a time, Bristol. The travelling expenses of 
 the members were paid from a common Presbytery 
 Fund, to which every congregation contributed in a 
 certain proportion, and the meetings were held with 
 each church consecutively. Usually after the Presby- 
 tery business had been finished there was a social 
 meeting with the members of the congregation in the 
 evening, and in this way all the ministers became 
 acquainted with all the churches, a kind of Presby- 
 terial visitation of each church was secured, and much 
 good was done in the way of guiding and stimulating 
 the members in them all. At such meetings — tea 
 meetings they commonly were — Mr. Graham was 
 always a prime favourite, and his speech on the 
 ci building of the wall," or some kindred subject, 
 would be so varied for each place as to give pro- 
 minence to the lesson which most of all was needed 
 there. He was invariably the minister's friend ; — some- 
 times I thought he was blindly or unwisely so — but if 
 that was a failing, it was one leaning to the side of 
 the brotherhood, most of whom could say he " hath 
 been a succourer of many and of myself also." After 
 such a meeting the members of the Presbytery were 
 entertained in the homes of such brethren in the con- 
 gregation as volunteered to receive them, and it was a 
 great treat to be billeted, as I often was, in the same 
 house with Graham. He was then in his richest 
 mood. The excitement of meeting the brethren, the 
 afterglow of the social gathering, and the warmth of 
 hospitality with which he was received, all combined to 
 raise his spirits to the highest cheerfulness, and it was 
 often far past midnight when we retired. Sometimes, 
 however, things would take another turn, and he would 
 
32 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 fall into a pensive frame, and occasionally, foregoing 
 the evening meeting altogether, he would go off for 
 an excursion into the neighbourhood. Once I remem- 
 ber, after a Presbytery in Kendal, he hurried me off 
 with him to Windermere, whence we walked by Amble- 
 side and Eydal Mount to Grasmere, where we spent 
 the night, and where nature 
 
 " Poured over us her soft influences, 
 Her sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets, 
 Her melodies of woods, and winds, and waters." 
 
 What talk we had of Wordsworth, and Hartley Cole- 
 ridge, and Arnold, and Stanley, and John Wilson, and 
 De Quincey ! and what silent musings in the Gras- 
 mere churchyard beside that plain headstone ! Truly 
 the name of the place that summer night was Peace ; 
 and when, on the following day, retracing our steps 
 to Windermere and going by train to Liverpool, we 
 found ourselves once more in the midst of the bustling 
 life of the town in which our lots were cast, we felt 
 new energy for the prosecution of our work in the 
 service of God and of our generation there. 
 
 But Graham was much more than a Presbyterian. 
 Nobly loyal to the church of his fathers, he did not 
 think that his being so was incompatible with close 
 fellowship with men of other denominations. He was 
 as genial with the clergy of the National Church as 
 they would let him, but with the brethren of the 
 Evangelical Nonconformist denominations he was as 
 much at home as he was with those of his own church. 
 And a remarkable body of men the non- conforming 
 ministers of Liverpool at that time were. Foremost 
 among them in age and reputation was the venerable 
 
PROFESSOR W. GRAHAM, D.D. 33 
 
 Dr. Baffles. Large of body, placid and benignant in 
 countenance, and cordial in manner, tie was never, as 
 lie himself once said, ten minutes in the company of 
 any one without seeking to make him the happier for 
 his presence. With an ample store of anecdotes, 
 which he told with wonderful dramatic power, he was 
 the best of company, and to the younger brethren 
 around him he was as affectionate as a father to his 
 sons. Next to him in age, and not even second to 
 him in influence, was John Kelly, a man of unbend- 
 ing integrity and noble courage, with eyes that flashed 
 a fiery earnestness, and at the same time a voice that 
 shook, especially in prayer, with the quaver of tender- 
 ness. Then came Charles M. Birrell, precise and 
 somewhat stately in appearance and manner, but with 
 a heart as true as steel, and as tender as it was true. 
 Not very approachable at first, his friendship was 
 rather difficult to gain, but when it was gained it 
 was abiding. He had cultivated his taste without 
 sacrificing his power, and combined the utmost gen- 
 tleness of demeanour with the greatest firmness of 
 character. He proved how true it is that the strongest 
 natures, when cultured, take the finest polish, and his 
 genuineness as a man was equalled only by his wisdom 
 as a counsellor. There, too, was Hugh Stowell Brown, 
 blunt, honest, rough, who always called a spade a 
 spade, and who by his lectures to the working-men of 
 Liverpool had shown himself a man of power. Nor 
 must I forget Joseph Welsh, the recluse of Canning 
 Street, who moved in his own eccentric orbit, but had 
 for his ruling passion the salvation of men, and with 
 all his peculiarities succeeded above many in the attain- 
 ment of the end which he always held before him. 
 
 C 
 
34 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 Among these and others Graham held a place that was 
 distinctively his own. Different from them all, as they 
 were different from each other — for as one has well 
 said, every true man is a a7raj~ Xeyojuevov — he sustained 
 a peculiar relationship to each. With Dr. Raffles he 
 was especially affectionate. He delighted to do him 
 honour, enjoyed his stories, and listened eagerly to his 
 numerous accounts of the preachers of a former genera- 
 tion, and the tales he told of adventures and experiences 
 in travel in the days when as yet railways were un- 
 heard of in England and on the Continent. It was 
 amusing to be with them both at one of Raffles's 
 breakfast parties, and to mark how Graham, who tho- 
 roughly believed that " the excellence in conversation 
 is to furnish the occasion," and who knew most of his 
 stories well, would gently lead the talk in such a direc- 
 tion as to suggest the telling of the best of them ; or 
 how, after an adjournment into the study, he would 
 ask to see this autograph or that, and get the good 
 old man to tell how he had come into the possession of 
 some of his richest treasures, or to exhibit some of the 
 wonderful feats of memory for which he was renowned. 
 One morning of that sort I remember well, when Dr. 
 Eadie of Glasgow, and Dr. Edmond of London, were 
 of the party, which did not break up until the early 
 afternoon. For Mr. Kelly Graham had a profound 
 admiration, as a man whose watchword was duty 
 (which he always pronounced " dooty "), and who had 
 in him many of the qualities of the old Puritans ; and 
 it was a constant source of pleasure to him and to us 
 all to see how the influence of time was clothing the 
 rock with lichens and covering with mossy softness the 
 hard edges which had been bare before. The vcner- 
 
PROFESSOR W. GRAHAM, D.D. 35 
 
 able man was always noble, but in his latest years the 
 fulness of his experience had mellowed his character 
 to such a degree that he drew to himself the hearts of 
 us all. To Birrell, Graham was especially drawn, and 
 perhaps, at the date of my leaving Liverpool, Graham 
 would have called him his closest friend. They had 
 been much together, and had many tastes in common, 
 though in some things they were exceedingly unlike. 
 Thus, Birrell was great on the proprieties, but Graham 
 left these very much to take care of themselves ; and 
 while the former was always scrupulous in his attire, 
 the latter was careless to a fault in the matter of his 
 personal appearance. But each had found out the 
 treasure that was in the other, and they valued each 
 other for that. With Brown, Graham was, in the days 
 of their earliest intercourse, more frequently in the 
 bantering mood than with the others, and his sallies in 
 that line were always returned with interest. Many 
 a duel of that sort have I heard between these two ; 
 but when they were both older men, and the shadows 
 had fallen deep and dark over the home of Brown, it 
 was seen that there had been tender love all through 
 on both sides, for Brown had no comforter who was 
 more frequently at his side, or more warmly appre- 
 ciated by him, than Graham. 
 
 When I went first to Liverpool, the Nonconformist 
 brethren were accustomed to have a monthly meeting 
 with each other, which was a sort of prelude to a Union 
 prayer meeting that was held in the church of him 
 who was the host for the night. But owing to the 
 changed circumstances of the city the prayer meeting 
 was given up, and for a time we had no rallying centre. 
 After a while, however, a monthly dinner was inaugu- 
 
35 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 rated by some ten or twelve of us. There were no papers 
 read and no discussions carried on, but though now 
 and then we talked of how we were to act on some 
 great public question, the object we set before us was 
 simply the enjoyment of two or three hours of social 
 fellowship, and these occasions were greatly relished by 
 us all. By this time, too, others had come into our 
 circle. Baffles had gone, but Mellor, bright, buoyant, 
 bold, was in his place ; and after him came Pearson, no 
 unworthy successor of two such men. Hasson of 
 Wavertree, the most genial and lovable of companions, 
 Robarts of Everton, ever the same in his calm, evenly- 
 honest kindliness, and others, were among our regular 
 attendants. It was a rare treat to be a member of such 
 a band, and I never knew how much it was to me until 
 the Atlantic rolled between us. But now most of them 
 are separated from me by another ocean, and have 
 passed to another land ; and of those who remain 
 unto this present only two or three continue in Liver- 
 pool. We had no specially spiritual exercises (so- 
 called) at these meetings, and yet, over and above 
 the pleasantness of our intercourse, they resulted in 
 much good. They widened our hearts, we forgot that 
 we belonged to different denominations, and realised 
 that we were all members of the one Church of Christ. 
 Above all, we got so to know, and understand, and love 
 each other, that controversies between the Noncon- 
 formists in Liverpool were almost unknown, and minis- 
 terial jealousies, heart-burnings, rivalries, and the like, 
 were things of which we had no experience. 
 
 After I left Liverpool for New York in 1872, my 
 intercourse with Mr. Graham was, of course, less fre- 
 quent than it had been during the happy years of our 
 
PROFESSOR W. GRAHAM, D.D. 37 
 
 common connection with that city. We exchanged 
 letters, indeed, but neither of ns was a very good cor- 
 respondent, and so we depended mainly on our personal 
 communion during my frequent visits to u the old 
 country." On these occasions we were always together, 
 except when imperative duties, either on the one side 
 or the other, interfered. Especially delightful were our 
 seasons of travel in each other's society. The " thorn 
 in the flesh," to which I have alluded, was always 
 aggravated by sustained, close, and long continued 
 labour, so he was compelled to seek frequent change of 
 scene, and to take many journeys for relaxation. lie 
 had, besides, a great taste for travel, and his extensive 
 reading fitted him for getting the greatest amount of 
 enjoyment out of it. He commonly sought to go with 
 a genial companion, and those who accompanied him 
 at such times have the sunniest memories of their experi- 
 ences. Indeed, so rich and rare was his fellowship, that the 
 scenes in which they were with him are now haloed for 
 them with a glory that is not of earth. They cannot 
 think of them but in connection with him, and as they 
 look back upon their travels with him they are con- 
 strained to say that for much of what they saw they 
 were indebted to him. As Dr. Macleod has said, " All 
 who have had the great privilege of travelling with our 
 friend in scenes which history has made famous, will 
 recall the eager interest with which he visited the 
 memorable places, and the wonderful touches in con- 
 versation by which he illuminated the past, and made 
 it live again for his companion." 
 
 Of the many occasions on which during my visits to 
 Europe I went off with him for a season of travel, I remem- 
 ber best that in the summer of 1 879, when by appoint- 
 
38 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 ment we met at Vienna and spent a fortnight with each 
 other on the Continent. It was the year of his Modera- 
 torship of the Presbyterian Church in England, the 
 year, too, of the somewhat tardy recognition of his 
 merits by the Glasgow University in the conferring on 
 him of the degree of D.D., and he had been sent along 
 with others to the Austrian capital to adjust some 
 difficulty which had arisen in the Jewish mission of 
 the English Presbyterians there. I recall with vivid- 
 ness his artistic skill and taste as manifested by his 
 criticisms on many of the paintings in the Lichten- 
 stein and Belvedere galleries ; his historical knowledge, 
 as evinced by the frequency with which he alluded to 
 events in the far past which were associated with 
 some of the places which we visited ; and his singular 
 liking for seeking out and directing attention to things 
 of which no guide-book made any mention. But the 
 most Graham-like incident of our brief sojourn at 
 Vienna was connected with our visit to the Votif 
 Kirche, and though the story is at my own expense, 
 I must tell it here, because of the glimpse of him 
 which it furnishes. This church, built by the present 
 Emperor of Austria in commemoration of his escape 
 from assassination in 1853, and consecrated only a 
 few months or perhaps weeks before our visit, is a 
 noble Gothic structure, in the erection and decoration 
 of which everything that art could design, and skill 
 could execute, and money could command, has been 
 combined. Naturally, therefore, we were eager to see 
 it ; but when we entered it, we found that a large 
 congregation was assembled, and the Mass was being 
 celebrated. In the choir gallery, immediately above 
 the entrance, a company of musicians with instruments 
 
PROFESSOR W. GRAHAM, D.D. 39 
 
 of brass were sending forth most exquisite music. 
 This produced on all three of us (for one of my sons 
 was of the party) a marvellous effect. We stood as if 
 rooted to the spot, every nerve within us tingling 
 with emotion, and ere long the tears were flowing un- 
 bidden from our eyes. We remained until the music 
 ceased, but we could not think of disturbing the con- 
 gregation by making a tour of inspection through the 
 building then, and we quietly left. When we got out- 
 side, just as we were descending the steps at the front 
 entrance, Graham, with one of those sudden transitions 
 from grave to gay which were so characteristic of him, 
 turned upon me and said, " Well, Taylor, I'll never 
 say another word against wind instruments as long as 
 I live, not even against you ! " The fun of the impli- 
 cation in the last words, and the queer appearance 
 which he presented, as with the tear-channels still 
 wet upon his cheeks he laughed one of his merriest 
 laughs, were irresistible, and may easily be imagined 
 by those who knew him well. 
 
 Another fancy which he indulged was that of search- 
 ing for, and looking upon, the graves of those who had 
 risen to eminence either in art, or literature, or reli- 
 gious life. It seemed somehow as if he knew them 
 better after he had looked upon their sepulchres ; or 
 was it that some influence came upon him there akin 
 to that which once came from the grave of Elisha ? I 
 cannot tell. But so it was, that wherever we went he 
 had to visit some one's grave. He spent a long after- 
 noon with Joseffi — the father of the pianist — in hunt- 
 ing for the grave of Mozart, and he came back to 
 the hotel, weary of foot, but light of heart, shouting 
 u Heureka ! Heureka ! I have found it ; I have found 
 
40 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 it." At Saltzburg, nothing could keep him from going 
 to see Mozart's birth-place, and visiting the tomb 
 of that half- philosopher, half-quack, Paracelsus. At 
 Kapperschwyl, in Switzerland, he would have taken a 
 boat, even in the twilight, and rowed out to the island 
 in the Lake of Zurich on which Ulrich von Hiitten is 
 buried ; but when the landlord at the hotel assured 
 him that it was quite impossible to identify the spot, 
 he was dissuaded from his purpose. At Basel, not 
 content with looking at the grave and monument of 
 Erasmus in the cathedral, nothing would do but he 
 must visit the house in which he lived, and stand in 
 the chamber in which he died ; and he looked on me 
 with mingled pity and contempt because I could not 
 get up enthusiasm enough to follow him into the 
 house, but remained patiently outside. During his 
 second visit to America in 1880, the same trait was 
 noticeable in him. At Philadelphia, he found the 
 grave of his townsman Alexander Wilson, the ornitho- 
 logist, and as the result of diligent inquiry and skilful 
 negotiation, he secured an autograph copy of that 
 author's humorous poem " Watty and Meg," which he 
 presented to the Coats' Library of Paisley, where it 
 is now preserved. During the same sojourn in 
 America he made an interesting- visit to New England, 
 and having occasion to write a postal to my son, who 
 had been with us at Vienna, and had often rallied him 
 on being " Old Mortality " the younger, he added this 
 characteristic postscript : — " P.S. — I have seen since I 
 left you some very interesting graves." 
 
 But I must return to our Continental tour. At 
 Zurich he somewhat surprised the keeper of the 
 public library by asking to see certain things which he 
 
PROFESSOR W. GRAHAM, D.D. 41 
 
 knew were there, but which without his persistency 
 we should never have seen at all. The portrait of 
 Zwingle and his study Bible, covered with manuscript 
 annotations ; autograph letters of Lady Jane Grey, 
 Archbishop Cranmer, and others to Bullinger, and 
 other similar subjects of interest, were thus brought 
 under our inspection by him. At Lucerne, in the 
 Koman Catholic Church of Maria Hilf, in which the 
 Presbyterian services were held, he acted as precentor, 
 and Mr. Stalker, then of Kirkcaldy, now of Glasgow, 
 preached ; and when we came to Paris he showed us 
 more of the old city on the other side of the Seine, 
 and told us more about many of its queer places, than 
 any handbook which we could have purchased would 
 have done. 
 
 But though his interest in places was greatly in- 
 tensified by their associations with men, and especially 
 with men who had become famous in the world's 
 history, it must not be supposed that he was unmoved 
 by scenery for its own sake. On the contrary, he had 
 an intense delight in it, and seemed sometimes to lose 
 himself in it altogether. As we journeyed from Kagatz 
 to Rapperschwyl we came along the side of Lake Wal- 
 lenstadt, just after the sun had gone done behind the 
 mountains, and while the evening shadows were fall- 
 ing on the mirror-like surface of the water. He 
 seemed for the moment to be absorbed in its contem- 
 plation. Everything else was forgotten. There was 
 no talk, no fun, no wit, just then. He stretched him- 
 self far out of the window until I was almost afraid 
 that he would fall out ; and when at length the darkness 
 came, he sank back into his seat exclaiming, " Dim 
 and dimmer, and the glory done." He was similarly 
 
42 REMINISCENCES OF 
 
 moved a few days afterwards while we sailed up the 
 Lake of Lucerne. He had often seen it before, but he 
 said it had always the same effect upon him, and he 
 sat in silence as if transfixed, while he let the beauty 
 of the lake and the grandeur of the mountains fill his 
 soul. It reminded me of the poet's words — 
 
 " In such access of mind, in such high hour 
 Of visitation from the living God, 
 Thought was not ; in enjoyment it expired." 
 
 I have said that he was particularly fond of prying 
 into out-of-the-way places in large cities, and of that 
 an interesting illustration may be given in a little 
 episode of his life in London, for which I am indebted 
 to my friend and his, Dr. Walter Morison, who thus 
 writes to me : " One of my latest walks with him was 
 interesting. In the course of a restful stroll in Lon- 
 don, such as he sometimes took, we got into Holborn. 
 1 Brook Street ' caught our eye, and Graham told how 
 Chatterton had lodged there on coming to London. 
 Then we saw ' Ely Place,' and a painted direction told 
 us of ' St. Ethelreda's Church ' being near. Follow- 
 ing the direction, we came upon the building, which 
 we found to be picturesque and ancient. It had 
 somehow got into the hands of the Eoman Catholics. 
 Passing inside to look round, we saw an intellectual 
 looking elderly priest in his biretta. By and by we 
 spoke, the father proving courteous. The priest easily 
 enough knew us to be Scotch, and when we told him 
 we were Presbyterian ministers, he said he had been 
 'taking stock of us, and thought so.' Graham, of 
 course, took the lead in the conversation, and drew out 
 the fact that it was Father Lockhart we had encoun- 
 
PROFESSOR W. GRAHAM, D.D. 43 
 
 tered, of the family of the Lockharts of Lee. He had 
 been in the Oxford movement, and was now in charge 
 of St. Ethelreda's. We were invited into the house, 
 and finally had tea, and talk about history, theology, 
 and philosophy, Graham characteristically carrying off 
 with him in the end a gift of a work of the father's, a 
 philosophical treatise from the Italian, edited by him." 
 
 But now these reminiscences must come to an end. 
 The last time I saw my friend was in the month of 
 July 1887. I arrived in London on Saturday evening, 
 the ninth of that month, intending to proceed early 
 the next week to Hombnrg. Before I had been ten 
 minutes in the hotel, Graham was in my room. He 
 stayed with me till nearly ten o'clock ; and arranged 
 to meet me early next day and accompany me to 
 morning service in the Metropolitan Tabernacle, that 
 we might hear Mr. Spurgeon — which we did. The 
 sermon of the great preacher that day was peculiarly 
 tender. His text was Jacob's blessing of the sons of 
 Joseph ; and as he had himself been during the week 
 in the Essex pulpit that used to be occupied by his 
 venerable grandfather, his discourse was redolent of 
 the experience through which there he had passed. 
 It touched us both very deeply, and at the close we 
 went in to shake hands with the preacher. After a 
 brief but cordial greeting we went down with him to 
 the communion service, at which Mr. Spurgeon seated 
 us with the elders on the platform. He asked me to 
 cl give thanks " over the bread, and Dr. Graham to 
 " give thanks " over the cup — and at the close of all 
 offered a brief prayer himself. We had a delightful 
 season; and after it was over, Graham came with 
 
44 REMINISCENCES, ETC. 
 
 me to the hotel, dined, and spent an hour or two. 
 Then I saw him take the omnibus to go to his friend 
 Dr. Edmond, for whom, in the absence of his colleague, 
 he was to preach that evening, and I went to worship 
 in the Westbourne Church with my friend Dr. Morison. 
 We hoped to see each other after my return from a 
 three weeks' trip on the Continent, but our plans were 
 frustrated, and so that was our farewell. We had 
 spoken our last word to each other — 
 
 " Ah ! little thought we 'twas our last." 
 
 But it is pleasant to think that the table of the Lord 
 was almost the last place at which we were together 
 on earth. May we meet at the table of celestial com- 
 munion, to be for ever with the Lord ! 
 
 I cannot think of him as dead ; and in the highest 
 sense he is not dead, for to quote from the first book 
 he gave me — 
 
 "Saints that seem to die in earth's rude strife, 
 Only win double life ; 
 They have but left our weary ways 
 To live in memory here, in heaven by love and praise." 
 
( 45 ) 
 
 II. 
 
 JOHN WICLIF. 
 
 There are four supreme names in English history. 
 These are — Wiclif, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton. 
 They touched very different points in our national 
 growth. While each stands alone in the depth aud 
 breadth of his influence, Chaucer and Shakespeare 
 curiously resemble each other, while Wiclif and Milton 
 as singularly complete the other half of the intellectual 
 circle. Coming down to the interesting occasion of 
 this evening, the opening of another session of our 
 Theological College, it would show an ungrateful want 
 of memory did we, as Presbyterians, forget Wiclif on 
 his fifth centenary, to whom primarily we owe the first 
 outbreak in England of our Scriptural freedom and 
 work. I do not wonder that Archbishop Trench 
 says : " We members of the Anglican Church may be 
 thankful that the Reformation was not in his time, 
 nor of his doing. From a Church reformed under 
 the auspices of Wiclif — of one who was properly the 
 spiritual ancestor of the Puritans — the Catholic ele- 
 ment would in good part, perhaps altogether, have 
 disappeared." But I as little wonder that John 
 Milton, breathing the same keen air of liberty, speaks 
 thus : " If the stiifnecked obstinacy of our prelates 
 
46 JOHN WICLIF. 
 
 had not obstructed Wiclif s sublime and exalted spirit, 
 the names of the Bohemians, Huss and Hieronymus, 
 and even of Luther and Calvin, would at this day have 
 been buried in obscurity, and the glory of having re- 
 formed our neighbours would have been ours alone." 
 Such is the just place which the great Puritan poet 
 gave to the first of Puritans in England, and the first 
 of reformers in Europe. Great and surpassing, how- 
 ever, as his services were, there is not in him the 
 personal charm, the irresistible suction felt by all last 
 year during the third centenary of Luther. A few 
 vivid touches of the man himself, of what we had in 
 the immediate passions and humours of Luther, as well 
 as in his stern, heroic conflicts, and in his noble spiri- 
 tual victories would have given a warmth to the life 
 of Wiclif, which, even with all the reverence and 
 gratitude it wins, seems remote and unsympathetic. 
 We miss, we crave for the living features of the man 
 to light up the massive energy of the Reformer. Mel- 
 chisedek-like he rises in the genesis of our Reformed 
 Church, bringing costly and needed gifts in his hands, 
 but with a solitude all around himself. Still, in that 
 man we have one of our greatest patriots, our greatest 
 Reformer, the one founder of that English prose litera- 
 ture that now educates the world, the first translator 
 of that Divine Book which gave in care God's greatest 
 thoughts to a rude dialect of Englishmen, and conse- 
 crated the English tongue for ever into a channel of 
 that river of God that has made glad our whole 
 history. 
 
 But from this year Wiclif will be known as he has 
 never been since he taught in Oxford and died at 
 Lutterworth. Every manuscript in which he lies 
 
JOHN WICLIF. 47 
 
 buried five hundred years in many libraries will be 
 printed for the first time, and there will be a resur- 
 rection of our great spiritual leader and benefactor. 
 
 Another name, dear to us all, is linked in my heart 
 at this hour to that of Wiclif . Not the least of the 
 reasons that have led me to this subject to-night is 
 that our greatly-loved and ever-lamented principal, Dr. 
 Lorimer, gave his last labour to translate and illustrate 
 Decider's " Life of Wiclif," and would, I believe, have 
 done, had he lived, what I now attempt. 
 
 In the life of Wiclif there are two marked periods : 
 first, that of a preparation that covered two-thirds of 
 it ; and, second, that of a work that crowded its last 
 third. In these we have, with very few facts, yet a 
 full biography of the man — the force he was — a mind 
 and a force singularly compact and complete, and full 
 of aggressive vitality to the very last. 
 
 Of the first part of his life we know tryingly little, 
 but that little, like a small chink, lets us see the main 
 lines on which he moves. The year and even the 
 place of his birth are not quite settled. The year 
 generally given is 1324, and would, I believe, never 
 have been questioned, but that, dying, as we know cer- 
 tainly, in 1384, and at the age of sixty, it has been 
 felt that a canvas so comparatively small does not allow 
 space for his multifarious writings and deeds. This, 
 however, will hardly hold. Duns Scotus dies at thirty- 
 four, and leaves folios nearly equal in number and 
 fulness of thought to those of Thomas Aquinas, who 
 himself died when he was only forty-eight. And, 
 indeed, any man writing so many hours a day, or, 
 better still, talking so many hours a day, and fully 
 reported, will throw out as much matter as would fill 
 
48 JOHN WICLIF. 
 
 an alarming library of folios, mercifully, as a rule, 
 withheld from the public perusal: 1 324 may there- 
 fore remain undisputed. It is interesting, moreover, 
 as lying very nearly in the heart of a period in Euro- 
 pean, and especially Christian history, full of slow but 
 decisive movements that grew into changes in all de- 
 partments which sharply divide modern Europe from 
 its mediaeval phase. It was the commencement of 
 new national languages and literatures. Dante died 
 in 1 3 2 1 , and had, three years before Wiclif was born, 
 embodied scholastic theology in the immortal form of 
 his music and poetry ; and also opened in plainest 
 attacks the war against the papal supremacy. Fifty 
 years before Wiclif was born, Thomas Aquinas died, 
 in 1274. Place Dante and Aquinas clearly before 
 your mind, and you have the fullest strength of the 
 mediaeval and the mighty beginnings of the modern 
 periods. Carry your eye down to 1483, all but one 
 hundred years after the death of Wiclif in 1384, and 
 you have the birth of Luther. So definitely does 
 Wiclif's life lie between these two, Aquinas and 
 Luther, that at once you feel the atmosphere and the 
 conditions of his whole work. 
 
 Pass out of that sphere into another, and you come 
 upon two events — one the greatest in the history of 
 Scotland and the other the greatest in that of England. 
 The battle of Bannockburn was fought in 1 3 1 4, only 
 ten years before Wiclif was born. It was a time 
 when nations were fighting for freedom and indepen- 
 dence. Again, in the very midtime of Wiclif's life, 
 Cressy and Poitiers were fought, England's great 
 victories over France, which spread the fame and in- 
 tensified the independence of the country. It is not to 
 
JOHN WICLIF. 49 
 
 be wondered at that England, master of France, did 
 not yield to the Papal supremacy, but threw off the 
 right of the Pope over its temporal affairs. It was 
 the same sense of abounding life, as of a universal 
 spring, that woke up the genius of Chaucer as well as 
 the piety of Wiclif. Chaucer was junior of Wiclif by 
 twelve years, but died just twelve years after Wiclif, 
 and at exactly the same age of sixty. Chaucer has 
 the greatness of being the first to open up the well of 
 English undefiled, and to charm with his fresh pictures 
 the spirit of his countrymen. But Wiclif 's place is 
 greater still, for he opened up to his countrymen the 
 well of religion undefiled, and gave to them the New 
 Testament, with its unrivalled tales of Christ and His 
 apostles. Wiclif came, then, at a fulness of the times, 
 when a great reforming spirit was needed and was 
 sent. 
 
 The place of his birth is certainly Yorkshire, and 
 in it, near Wickliffe and Richmond, a part of Eng- 
 land which, as we know from Scott's " Rokeby," 
 bearing the name of the next parish, is one most 
 exquisite for stream, hill, and glen. But though some 
 have dwelt on this, it never coloured, much less 
 moulded, the genius of Wiclif; and for the reason 
 that he was Wiclif, meant for a special work — that of 
 a great spiritual reformer — and not Chaucer, all 
 instinct with the feeling of English landscape, and 
 therefore our first creative poet. In this Wiclif was 
 like Calvin, who resembled him in so many points of 
 doctrine, polity, and spirit. Calvin sat in a study 
 whence he gazed at Mont Blanc. But the sublime 
 mountain never made his nerves thrill, and so not a 
 single reference is given to it in his voluminous 
 
 D 
 
50 JOHN WICLIF. 
 
 writings. Herein is the full, flexible, irresistible 
 charm and superiority of Luther. A bird on its twig, 
 a golden ear of wheat, caught his eye and heart ; and 
 out of the one came a song of spiritual joy, and out 
 of the other a harvest of divine consolation. But God 
 gives to every man his own work ; that of Wiclif was 
 defined, and often it needed to be defiant thinking, put 
 in words that were barbed with the passion of convic- 
 tion, and which easily became scornful. The edge of 
 his sword was keenness itself — gleaming beauty or 
 brilliant polish would not have added to his blow. It 
 was, natural, therefore, that he was born in Yorkshire, 
 where to this day the Scotchmen of England are born. 
 
 As for his earliest training, schools were at that 
 time connected with every abbey and cathedral, and 
 the abbey of Eggleston was near the boy. There he 
 learned, as was the fashion, first the trivium, the three 
 trivial studies of grammar, logic, and rhetoric ; and 
 thence rose, either at school or college, to the quad- 
 rivium, where he encountered arithmetic, geometry, 
 astronomy, and music. These were the seven notes 
 that formed the sweep of learning in those days. And 
 in fact, if well taught, it does not so much matter what 
 is taught to a young mind as that first it learns that 
 it is a mind ; and that then every knowledge is one 
 that is not only itself to be brought out to the learner, 
 but specially one that is to bring out, and so educate 
 the learner more than teach the lesson. 
 
 We may easily take for granted that Wiclif would 
 be one of the best learners in his school ; and in token 
 thereof we see him in his fourteenth year sent across 
 the wild country, often without any path, to Oxford. 
 It was an early year, but it was a common one. 
 
JOHN WICLIF. 51 
 
 Luther, Calvin, Knox, went when mere boys to college. 
 It could not be otherwise when we are told that in the 
 generation before Wiclif there were 30,000 students 
 in Oxford, and earlier still 40,000 in Paris. Of 
 course, multitudes must have been boys, though, on the 
 other hand, men did not grudge twenty years to the 
 college, and thought these all too little for a perfect 
 training. 
 
 It could not well be otherwise in those days. Lads 
 had few, some of them hardly any books at all ; a 
 Latin psalter, or a few pages of Augustine, one or two 
 chronicles, and there you have a library that was 
 counted sufficient for a monastery. I have now and 
 again thought how many books had Paul left at Troas, 
 which he was so anxious to recover ? Not more, I 
 imagine, than could now be bought at some book- 
 stall for half-a-crown, or even less. These enormous 
 crowds of students could, however, all use their ears 
 with one professor, when they had not even one book 
 for their eyes. Melanchthon, in the village of Wittem- 
 berg, gave lectures on Greek exegesis to 2000 students. 
 Abelard, however, had 10,000 hearers, and those drawn 
 after him into an obscure village of France. 
 
 It was certainly a good time for the Docentes and 
 Kegentes — the men who are with us called only pro- 
 fessors. Now, however, a professor does one of the 
 very best parts of his work when he inspires students 
 to read thorough and living books in his department, 
 and more when, with illuminating spirit, he himself 
 goes before them into the heart of seminal thoughts 
 and creative eras. And as to the students, they gained 
 in depth what they lost in diffusion, as a professor of 
 enkindling enthusiasm, Thomas Chalmers, once said 
 
52 JOHN WICLIF. 
 
 in regard to another subject. To listen to Thomas 
 Aquinas was an education itself into a noble spirit 
 and a complete science. And then to discuss point by 
 point among the students, as was their fashion, raised 
 each man into an educator of himself and of his fellows. 
 After all, the most quickening education comes from 
 other young fervent spirits, or from a magnetic teacher 
 — a Thomas Chalmers, a Sir William Hamilton, an 
 August Neander — than from the million volumes of 
 the British Museum. 
 
 In Oxford Wiclif was engaged in this fruitful work 
 in Merton College. This college, one of the stateliest 
 in Oxford to this day, bore at that time among its 
 colleges to the students the relation Lincoln College 
 held four hundred years afterwards in 1740, as it 
 trained the new Reformers of England, the Wesleys 
 and Whitefield, and which Oriel College held in 1840, 
 when John Henry Newman dominated over it, and was 
 the living breath of a religious movement totally unlike 
 either that of Wesley or of Wiclif. 
 
 Merton had trained many of the foremost minds of 
 England, and it is interesting to mark how the spirit 
 of his predecessors came to life again in Wiclif. It 
 was the college of Grostete, the earliest of patriotic 
 churchmen, who championed England against Rome ; 
 of Roger Bacon, first of English physicists, who in- 
 spired Wiclif for all the physical science of the time ; 
 of Duns Scotus, next to Aquinas, the greatest of the 
 schoolmen ; of Occam, who, contemporary of our Re- 
 former for a few years, was the most vigorous opponent 
 of papal supremacy, and was well succeeded by Wiclif ; 
 but, above all, of Thomas Bradwardine, who might 
 possibly have been his teacher, and whose Augustinian 
 
JOHN WICLIF. 53 
 
 and Pauline doctrines of God's grace and sovereignty- 
 were the vital elements of his teaching, as well as 
 later the mighty instruments of his reformation. 
 
 But outside of the University, yet filling it with its 
 atmosphere, were the uneasy movements of the times 
 in political, social, and, above all, religious matters. 
 The mediaeval age had exhausted itself. v Instead of 
 Aquinas and Bonaventura among thinkers, Dominic 
 aud St. Francis among saints and founders of societies, 
 Hildebrande and Innocent III. among Popes, were men 
 who succeeded but did not replace them. The new 
 times required, and would make new men — new 
 thinkers, new saints, new reformers — all new and in 
 the true sense heads of the Church. 
 
 The next fact, among one or two statements that 
 are controverted, is that in 1360 we find him Master 
 of Balliol. He must have been well known and 
 sufficiently appreciated to reach this position. The 
 Balliols, moreover, lived in that region from which 
 Wiclif came, and it is interesting to visit Balliol 
 College, if only to see the original portrait of its 
 greatest master, as also the old muniment chest of 
 Devorgilla, the wife of Balliol, who founded this 
 college in his honour, as also founded at New Abbey, 
 near Dumfries, the Sweetheart — Dnlce Cor — Abbey to 
 the husband she loved — all the more, we can believe, 
 when Scotland preferred Robert Bruce before him to 
 be her king and leader. 
 
 What Wiclif did as Master of Balliol we do not 
 know. A man may be working hard, with noble 
 courage and with deepest success, though it is never 
 reported or telegraphed. A man, moreover, of thirty- 
 six is still growing, and may only be beginning to be 
 
54 JOHN WICL1F. 
 
 influential. Wiclif was slowly equipping himself in 
 silence, or rather his Master was, for a long, busy 
 future he little imagined. Such is the way of the 
 Supreme Master of those He makes under Him masters 
 of others, that He chooses those who themselves, in 
 His might, have chosen Divine ends and obscure pre- 
 parations, that, in His time, they may achieve them in 
 the sight of all. Moreover, as a teacher, he was 
 multiplying himself in other minds, who, when the 
 time came, would work by his side. 
 
 It was so, till the year 1366 summoned him forth. 
 At his thirty-eighth } T ear, we have said, Wiclif was 
 getting himself equipped. But before he enters on 
 his life-work, this is the place to mark the worker. 
 His equipment was on two opposite sides, and to rise 
 to the secret of the strong pulse that beat through all 
 his life and made it one, his equipment was one. 
 This lies in the name universally given to him, and to 
 him alone, of Doctor Evangelicus. His learning was 
 dyed deep in the Gospel. It was in his heart, for his 
 own life, in its intensity, simplicity, supremacy. And 
 hence, while a noted destroyer, a polemic, he was at 
 heart a constructor, and after the lines of Christ, a 
 theologian. This sent its life-blood to those depart- 
 ments of knowledge which fitted Wiclif for his peculiar 
 work. First he was deep in the Fathers and the 
 Schoolmen, and, indeed, was the last of the English, 
 some say of all the schoolmen. From Augustine to 
 Occam he knew the whole range of theological think- 
 ing, and compiled his own system of theology. Here 
 he was the student, the Latinist, full of massive 
 thoughts, as also of sharp distinctions, sapless aridities, 
 weary divisions, and development. This, however, 
 
JOHN WICLIF. 55 
 
 gave him a great place, according to the confession of 
 his enemies, among the learned and the thinkers. 
 
 But, second, he was equally a man of the people, of 
 plain words and of mother-wit, a tribune as a patriot, a 
 pamphleteer as a writer, a counsellor as a priest and 
 pastor. It was this gift that has secured him his 
 place in his lifetime as it has given him his lasting 
 power. Both of these served his high devoutness, as 
 well as his Scriptural doctrine. Both show him a 
 man of insight and foresight, and that other sight, 
 which is equally needed, the backsight, that knows 
 well the past that it may reform well the future. 
 Both gave him that weight of power, as well as that 
 keenness of insight that lifted him above the conten- 
 tions of the hour into the questions of the centuries ; 
 and hence there are in Wiclif seeds of truth and in- 
 fluence that are still reaching forward to fruit of which 
 Wiclif did not dream, nor the ages after him have as 
 yet gathered. 
 
 At length, when he was nearly forty-two years old, 
 Wiclif was called to the public work, which lasted, with 
 increasing and widening energy, till his life ended. 
 It was at the same age that John Knox, the likest to 
 him among all the reformers, was summoned to preach, 
 and not till he was fifty- four did he enter on the Re- 
 formation of Scotland. Men such as Wiclif and Knox 
 ripen slowly. They are in no hurry till God is ready, 
 and then they are ready for God. 
 
 We note now in the last twenty years of Wiclif s 
 life three distinct stages of work, and these rising 
 above each other till the whole was complete. The 
 first was ecclesiastical, the second moral, the third 
 theological ; and in these three he reverses the de- 
 
56 JOHN WICLIF. 
 
 cisions of the Papal Church — in the first setting aside 
 the Papal supremacy, in the second the principles of 
 monasticism, especially in the orders of Dominic and 
 Francis, and in the third the basis and aim of the 
 scholastic theology as represented by Thomas Aquinas. 
 It was a mighty and manifold task, and sometimes one 
 and again another part of it was encountered, but fre- 
 quently the three, forming one system, were attacked 
 all along the line. 
 
 The first appearance of Wiclif was as a patriotic 
 ecclesiastical politician, and was at the express com- 
 mand of Edward III. Times had greatly changed 
 since the noble saint and thinker, Anselm, had en- 
 countered William Rufus in support of the supremacy 
 of the Pope. There was no Anselm in England with 
 an intellectual and spiritual supremacy to ennoble any 
 cause, and happily there was no William Eufus ; so 
 when Edward and his barons, and the whole Common- 
 wealth, refused, after thirteen years' neglect, to refund 
 the tax which King John had ignominiously sworn to 
 pay the Pope in token of the Pope's temporal power, 
 the Pope had to retreat unrefunded. Wiclif was called 
 in as spokesman of all the orders in the country. He 
 was well skilled in canon law, and his skill had been 
 sharpened by his losing the wardenship of Canterbury 
 Hall on an appeal, which lasted for years, to the Pope. 
 For the first time he brought out those principles on what 
 he called " Divine Dominion," which became the second 
 Magna Charta, greater than the first, of English liberty 
 in Church and State. He maintained that God gives 
 dominion from Himself of His grace to the Pope in one 
 department, to the King in another. Neither King 
 nor Pope is supreme, but God only. Out of this grew 
 
JOHN WICLIF. 57 
 
 easily the independence of the individual conscience — 
 the first note of all liberty, as also the independence of 
 the State in relation to the Church, and, of course, of 
 the Church in relation to the State. Such principles 
 have room for large applications to this day. Wiclif 
 expressly condemned State endowments, and thought, 
 with Dante, that Constantino's giving a patrimony to the 
 Church was the beginning of all corruption. Wiclif 
 was one of those dangerous and uncomfortable men 
 who go wherever their logic carries them, and logic 
 will sometimes drive a man farther than a point where 
 he will find followers. 
 
 The House of Lords pronounced against the Papal 
 supremacy, especially in a form so obnoxious, which 
 drew upon their money. In this they were in perfect 
 harmony with the Government and the House of Com- 
 mons. The report given of seven of their reasons is 
 blunt and downright, and it is believed by many that 
 the first reporter of public speeches was Wiclif himself. 
 The contention afterwards took other forms against 
 provisors and prasmunire, that is, claims of the Papal 
 court to appoint bishops, and have English causes 
 appealed from England to Eome. One of the most 
 remarkable parts of Wiclif s life was connected with 
 this matter. Sent to Bruges, 1 371, to negotiate with 
 the representatives of Home on these matters touching 
 the honour and rights of England, he learned more of 
 the intrigues and mercenariness of the spiritual power 
 than even he had imagined, and with it he learned, as 
 Luther did, from Eome itself, to be its inexorable foe. 
 The Oxford student and professor thus became the 
 European statesman. At this time he was in the daily 
 company of John of Gaunt, brother of the King, and 
 
58 JOHN WICLIF. 
 
 being patron also of Chaucer, it is very probable that 
 Chaucer and Wiclif met together. The whole treat- 
 ment of the Papacy by both is exactly in the same 
 spirit ; the same also as prevailed in their famous con- 
 temporary, the author of the first English poem. Piers 
 the Ploughman. These three men represented the 
 peasantry, the court, and the Church. It is not at all 
 unlikely that Chaucer had Wiclif as his original when 
 he painted, in ever fresh and spiritual colours, the 
 portrait of the poor parson, which every minister and 
 student should hang up on the walls of the innermost 
 chamber of his memory and imagination. But the 
 sympathy of Chaucer, and also of John of Gaunt, went 
 no farther than the natural and social principles of 
 Wiclif's reform. Chaucer, with all his openness of 
 mind, was not inspired with the noblest emotions of 
 the Gospel, and as Wiclif went to the quick in his 
 attacks on Roman doctrine, specially that of Tran- 
 substantiation, John of Gaunt left him unprotected. I 
 know nothing so brave and heroic in W^iclif than his 
 delivering his soul of obnoxious truth, keeping his 
 conscience and his God, and losing his patron. Nor, 
 on the other hand, did he modify his principles when 
 the rebellion of John Ball and Wat Tyler raged with 
 murderous and socialistic violence. The noble might 
 leave him, and the mob too. It was the war of the 
 peasants, in England as in Germany, following the 
 proclamation of God's gift of freedom, and therefore 
 the limits of freedom, as well as its extent, had to be 
 adjusted. 
 
 We advance to the second part of Wiclif's work. It 
 grew in some measure out of the first, as is the law of 
 healthy, organic growth. This was his attack on the 
 
JOHN WICL1F. 59 
 
 Mendicant Orders, and especially those of St. Dominic 
 and St. Francis. It was only 150 years since these 
 two apostles of the Mediaeval Church had become its 
 reformers. Hating the immorality and ignorance on 
 all sides in Church and State, they went on the old 
 lines, shaped their treatment to the new situation, and 
 called into existence bodies of men who were to carry 
 out absolutely the poverty, purity, and obedience of 
 Jesus Christ. The one founded a preaching order to 
 meet the ignorance of the period, and especially what- 
 soever leant to heresy ; the other founded an order to 
 meet its immorality by holding up a literal copy of the 
 life of the Divine Lord. No one can help admiring 
 the splendid Spanish fire of St. Dominic, and who can 
 fail to love the celestial courage and disinterestedness 
 of St. Francis, when he binds up the wounds of lepers, 
 and visits the outcasts, and cries out in his divine 
 yearning, " My love is not love " ? {Amor mio non est 
 amatos). But such glorious aims were stifled, by the 
 bulk of their followers, and the corruption of the best 
 became the worst. St. Francis would have gone with 
 Wiclif for a new reform, and, I hope, might have 
 learned from him its true and lasting principles. Wiclif 
 scourged unsparingly the abuse, but he did better : he 
 opened up the Divine truths that would work their 
 cure. Luther only repeated in his day what Wiclif 
 now proclaimed. Eeligion is not a matter of external 
 separation by absolute vow from the world and its 
 God-ordained relationships in home and city ; it is the 
 very life of all redeemed and renewed souls, that turns 
 all secular things into things sacred when the con- 
 secration of a holy heart lies upon them ; therefore, 
 Christians are not of two classes, the secular and re- 
 
60 JOHN WICLIF. 
 
 ligious, but all Christians are of one class — servants of 
 Christ. He does not, indeed, even once use the word, 
 the universal priesthood of believers, by which Luther 
 stamped and demonstrated for ever his central truth, 
 but he denies the validity of sacraments administered 
 by wicked priests. He rises even to the Pope, and in 
 the view of the Schism during which two Popes ruled, 
 he denounced even the existence of a Pope as Supreme 
 Head of the Church. But his logic went farther, and 
 he did not shun to prove from Scripture that there was 
 no separate order of bishops. He put before the 
 English mind what is almost universally admitted now 
 even by Episcopalians, that the words bishop and elder 
 in the New Testament are interchangeable, and in one 
 sentence mark the same men and the same functions. He 
 chose, moreover, for his Order of Poor Priests, not only 
 ordained men, but pious laymen, and sent them abroad 
 to preach. By these priests Wiclif not only destroys 
 the validity of Popish orders, but becomes the prede- 
 cessor and parent of Presbyterianism, of Indepen- 
 dency, and of Wesley's Order of Lay Preachers. 
 
 So Wiclif reconstructs the Church of Christ by building 
 it on Christ Himself, and on His own great principle : 
 " One is your Master, and all ye are brethren." 
 
 There are only two sayings of Wiclif recorded, but 
 unfortunately neither is genuine. Both, however, bear 
 his image and superscription. The first occurs in his 
 battle with the Mendicants. One day certain friars 
 forced themselves on Wiclif, who lay in bed, seemingly 
 near death. As they called on him to recant his 
 errors, he was raised up and cried out as he looked 
 sternly at them, " I shall not die, but live and declare 
 the evil deeds of the friars." This was Scriptural, and 
 
JOHN WICLIF. 61 
 
 like Wiclif. It just wants the touch of humour that 
 draws us to John Knox when he said, as they would 
 compel him to kiss the image of the Virgin, and he 
 pitched it overboard, "Let her ladyship swim." But 
 like many other true stories, it is a story, but not a 
 true one. The other anecdote is in a higher strain. 
 When excommunicated and silenced he cried out, " I 
 trowe that in the end the truth will conquer." It is a 
 brave watchword, and is to be found in substance in 
 one of his pamphlets. It is like Luther's defiant and 
 humble cry at Worms in every point but one, that 
 there is no evidence that he said it. 
 
 Multitudes of his pamphlets, in Latin and also in 
 English, did their busy and sure work among all 
 classes. These still lie on the shelves of libraries in 
 Vienna, Prague, Oxford, and Dublin ; but we need 
 them at this hour, and editors, with the help of the 
 witchcraft of printing, will call up before England her 
 first judge and prophet, clothed in his mantle as in 
 past days. 
 
 This leads us easily to the third and last period of 
 Wiclif. By this time Oxford, his own University, 
 where for years he ruled supreme, excommunicated 
 him. This is the distinction of all greatly independent 
 and disinterested souls. But such conquer the long 
 centuries in losing the passing days. Generations call 
 those blessed whom their own generation rejected. 
 John of Gaunt had deserted him, the people had been 
 in some measure alienated by the fury of the Wat 
 Tyler insurrection, the nobles did not like the man 
 whom the mob quoted, and the Pope excommunicated, 
 and not for the first time. He went to spend his last 
 six years in the quiet retreat and obscure toils of his 
 
62 JOHN WICLIF. 
 
 Lutterworth, parish ; and God went with him, and 
 allowed no man to touch him. Priest of Lutterworth, 
 with his one or two hundred souls to watch, he never 
 ceased to be the patriot of England and the minister 
 of the Church Universal, and he felt that now he could 
 do for all work he never had time to do before. It is 
 the way of God to give His busiest and best servants 
 periods, especially when nearing the end of their life, 
 of enforced pause in their ordinary work, that by its 
 very absence they may accomplish some vaster service, 
 Moses in Midian and on Mount Sinai, Paul in Arabia 
 and in the Roman prison, John in Patmos, Luther in 
 Wartburg, Bunyan in Bedford gaol, Milton in the 
 narrower and darker prison of blindness, Thomas 
 Chalmers on his sick-bed for months — these and mul- 
 titudes more rose in depths of solitude, sorrow, and 
 disappointment, to heights of vision and communion 
 which made their hearts burn within them, and touched 
 their lips with fire that should kindle the world. 
 
 Along with more passing controversial work, Wiclif 
 set himself to do as his last works two things. The 
 first — and this I believe he deemed his most important 
 task — was to write out his " Sum of Theology " 
 (Sicmma Theologicv), and leave his fully- organised sys- 
 tem of religious thought as a legacy to the world. It 
 was a vast and minute edifice of thought, and has 
 been called the equal, while it is the predecessor of the 
 greatest English book of theology, " The Ecclesiastical 
 Polity " of Hooker. His Trialogus is the only sys- 
 tem atised portion of his theology which is as yet 
 printed, but his Summa will, at some early date, fill, 
 and for the first time, four large printed volumes. 
 
 Time is not left to enter on any of its details. It 
 
JOHN WICLIF. 63 
 
 is enough to say that it contains his final judgment on 
 the doctrine of Transubstantiation, in which he attacked 
 the alleged change of substance into accident, and 
 declared the bread, after consecration, to be bread still. 
 Herein he went far ahead of Luther, and is less con- 
 fusing than even the clear and conclusive Calvin. Still 
 he holds to some sort of real presence of the Lord in 
 the very elements. The most strenuous and honest 
 thinker is sure in some point to show his limits of in- 
 dependent thought, and to prove that he is still the 
 child of his time. On the great principle of justifica- 
 tion by faith, Wiclif, though he holds it as every 
 Christian — even Romanist Christian — mind implicitly 
 holds it for his hope and for his strength, had not 
 attained to the clearness of statement and supremacy 
 of importance it obtains in Luther. He taught very 
 much the doctrine of Augustine, as also, in the main, 
 that of Anselm, Bernard, and Aquinas. Possibly, not 
 having fought for his spiritual peace so sternly and so 
 long as Luther did, he had not forced upon him the 
 Gospel principle which alike saves and sanctifies sinners. 
 This was not given to him, and so, not striking at the 
 heart of the Reformation, as well as being a century 
 before its date, he missed the great honour of giving 
 the truth back, after the corruption of centuries, clear, 
 urgent, and creative, to the Church and the world. 
 
 Whatever "Wiclif might have thought of his " Sum 
 of Theology," and the gathering up at eventide of the 
 sheaves of the many fields of his thought into their 
 garner, Another was purposing some better thing for 
 him and from him. We are told in the first printed 
 edition of his translation of the New Testament that 
 he sent forth the first edition in or near 1380. It is 
 
64 JOHN WICLIF. 
 
 imperfect in many points, but it is perfect in this, 
 that for the first time the whole of the New Testament 
 was translated into English. Bede, Alfred, and others 
 had in the past done good work, but not such com- 
 plete work as Wiclif. The book was condemned time 
 after time by Synod and by Parliament. The whole 
 Bible — the Old as well as New Testament — was trans- 
 lated before he died, but the New Testament is believed 
 to be the work of Wiclif. Tradition assigns this 
 honour to him ; and it is full of his spirit and style. 
 Indeed, it is in brighter, more felicitous, fertile, flexible 
 English than any of his own English pamphlets. Love 
 had taught him the strength of fit, and the beauty 
 of fair clothing for God's thoughts. Ignorant both 
 of Hebrew and Greek, as most of the learned 
 were at that time, it is taken from Jerome's Vulgate 
 Version. Still he penetrates, with his keenness of 
 brain and heart, to the finer and fuller meanings of 
 the original, and as a piece of English prose, it worthily 
 preludes all its magnificent successors — remains itself 
 a masterpiece in idiom and inspiration, is the English 
 basis, along with the Greek original, which Tyndale 
 used, and on which he built up that translation of the 
 New Testament which, with the Old Testament touched 
 by others, is unequalled in the Authorised Version for 
 its homely tenderness, its graphic felicity, its heart- 
 wrung cries of joy and of grief, its august simplicity 
 and sublimity of human devotion and Divine per- 
 fection. So well selected by Wiclif is the diction, 
 that comparatively few of its words have become obso- 
 lete, and it has been affirmed that, read to an audience 
 of fellow- Yorkshiremen at this hour, it is almost 
 entirely intelligible. And what an unequalled contri- 
 
JOHN W1CL1P. 65 
 
 bution it lias been to the wealth of English thought 
 and life in their highest regions ! To be the first to 
 roll away the stone from the mouth of the Well of 
 Life is an honour that belongs only to the first who 
 achieved it ; and higher than all honours of genius, 
 courage, discovery, or invention, rises the honour of 
 putting into men's daily words, and into the hands 
 of the sinful and the sad, the saintly and the trium- 
 phant, the redeeming and everlasting truths and con- 
 solations of God. 
 
 Wiclif was now near the end of all his toils. The 
 long and wearing studies and struggles of his life 
 palsied him two years before his death. But the 
 spirit was left untouched, and he clung to his oar and 
 sped forward the great cause. Silently moving among 
 the fields and lanes of Lutterworth, he organised and 
 sent forth his missionaries, called Poor Priests. Ever 
 at his work, and in the midst of his people, he is 
 struck with the disease of which, in two days, and on 
 the last day of 1384, he died. It was the end of a 
 great life, but it was the beginning of a greater work. 
 The Lollards, above all John Huss and the Bohemian 
 Eeformation ; the noblest among the English Kefor- 
 mers, Bidley, Hooper, and Latimer, were the children 
 of his spirit ; and Luther caught, through Huss, sight 
 of his splendid heroism and Divine doctrine. Scot- 
 land's Eeformation grew both in Ayrshire and Gallo- 
 way, for here the Lollards had preached, and the 
 brave Covenanters were but Scottish Lollards of the 
 seventeenth century. 
 
 Let us conclude with two noble lessons. One is 
 that a work wrought in God and for Christ and souls 
 never dies. The handful of seed mcy be hidden, but 
 
 E 
 
66 JOHN WICLIF. 
 
 it will surely come forth in golden light, and shake 
 like Lebanon. God buries His workmen, said John 
 Wesley, but carries on His work. It was so even 
 with Him who worked unto death on the cross, and 
 lay in the grave. But this was but a momentary 
 hiding of His life of resurrection and pentecost. And 
 after the same likeness are all His servants shaped and 
 transfigured. 
 
 And the other lesson is that this is endless. The 
 man who, poor, palsied, and lonely, died in Lutter- 
 worth, now lives in the deepest heart of England, and 
 through England, of the world. The lonely and weak 
 thought that God gave to him is become the king of 
 innumerable souls. 
 
 Let us students and professors especially lay these 
 things to heart. Each has given him a work to do. 
 It may be a work public as that of Wiclif in Oxford, 
 or obscure as that in Lutterworth. It may in future 
 days be in a city or in a village; to tens or to hundreds 
 or to thousands : enough, and far more than enough. 
 With it strength will be given us to do it, and after 
 all weariness and failings, at length will come to us 
 the hearing of the " Well done," and the sight of the 
 Beatific vision. 
 
( 6 7 ) 
 
 III. 
 
 LUTHER— THE MAN. 
 
 There is, perhaps, I might almost say certainly, not 
 another man whose personality is, after four centuries, 
 so quick with life, and whose warm breath of influence 
 we feel as if he were still with us, as Martin Luther. 
 The unworn magnetism of his rich nature thrills across 
 these many years ; and thrills none more than such 
 young enthusiastic souls of students as are now before 
 me. This is the theme that lias fallen to my share on 
 this interesting occasion. 
 
 Of course we feel all the while that Luther stands 
 out in his greatness from the background of the most 
 memorable epoch in the history of Europe, or of the 
 world, since that of Christianity itself. For the Befor- 
 mation, reaching as it did confessedly to the deepest 
 spiritual life of men, thereby opened up a new and noble 
 life in all other departments ; literary, scientific, social, 
 commercial, and political. And this remains the same, 
 whether you regard the Keformation as part of the 
 Eenaissance tidal wave, or as taking its rise and force 
 from a higher and diviner source. It gathered spoils 
 indeed from all the other moral and intellectual influ- 
 ences of the time, but itself, like the original Christianity 
 of which it was the revival, owed its being, not to the 
 
68 LUTHER— THE MAN. 
 
 noblest thinking of Greece or Rome, to whose paganism 
 it stood in fact in opposition ; but to thoughts and 
 deeds that came from above. 
 
 And of this truth Luther is in his whole life a 
 crowning instance and evidence. We shall see this 
 clearly when we look at the Reformer himself, as at 
 once the inspiration and embodiment of this new 
 creative power. 
 
 Before coming close up to Luther you can measure 
 him, as the greatest of the Primates of the Refor- 
 mation, when compared with his illustrious compeers. 
 There he stands, a colossal figure, an inexhaustible 
 force at the doorway of the Reformation, and none 
 approaches him in native power and conspicuous deeds 
 till we reach the last in the Reformation history — 
 John Calvin. They were two totally opposite men ; 
 the one, like Napoleon, with his enormous mass and 
 momentum of passionate genius, ever moved himself, 
 and so ever moving others ; the other, coming later, 
 like Wellington, cool, comprehensive, patient, with 
 prodigious staying force, and thereby gathering up the 
 last spoils of victory at the close of the great spiritual 
 campaign. There is no second that can be named 
 along with them ; but still Calvin does not come so 
 close to and go so far in our hearts as Luther. Calvin 
 is like a remote snow-white peak, shooting far up into 
 the sky, severe, lofty, and alone. Luther is more like 
 a range of sunny or shaded mountain tops, shaping 
 valleys with rich meadows and sweet homes under its 
 brave and broad embrace. And when you put Luther 
 beside Melancthon, Zwingle, or Knox, you feel instinc- 
 tively that a certain aboriginal abundance and attraction 
 belongs to him, as to none of those three, however 
 
LUTHER— THE MAN. 69 
 
 noble men. Luther seen among the largest souls of 
 his time arrests the eye, as in the range of the Pyrenees 
 the Pic du Midi does among the lesser though lofty 
 mountains that are grouped around. 
 
 Drawing the lines closer to our own days and in his 
 own beloved country, there are reckoned among the 
 Germans only two supreme men — Luther and Goethe. 
 The placing of these two names beside each other, 
 with the opposite spiritual and intellectual movements 
 they severally represent, makes you feel that the Renais- 
 sance and the Reformation are as movements, contrasts, 
 rather than companions, to each other. Goethe had 
 in him, with fullest consciousness and endeavour, the 
 very soul, and that in its most finished and modern 
 form, of the Renaissance ; but it would be hard indeed 
 to show that Luther, and with him the Reformation, 
 were of the same spiritual lineage. The struggles of 
 intellectual passion in Goethe's " Faust " could indeed 
 be easily comprehended by the Luther of the Erfurt 
 Monastery; but the celestial liberty from doubt and 
 passion which was given to Luther is something 
 utterly unknown to the pagan and proudly passionate 
 Faust, and also to his creator, Goethe. And, much as 
 Germany admires the one as her intellectual Prime 
 Minister, to-day Germany remains loyal to her spiritual 
 Peasant Emperor. 
 
 But once again, to get the clear and full measure 
 of Luther, you must turn to the rare souls, the thinkers 
 and heroes, who date as well as create the three most 
 marked eras in the history of Christianity. I suppose 
 no fourth name could be added to the three mighties 
 of our Lord Christ — Paul, Augustine, and Luther. 
 Each cast in a distinct mould, they have two points 
 
7 o LUTHER— THE MAN. 
 
 in common, fitting them for being alike originating 
 and revolutionary souls ; namely, they came to their 
 final shape of thought and life through terrible storms, 
 and so shaped themselves, so overflowing with a new 
 energy, they were fitted to be the leaders through 
 black darkness and imminent crises, of many genera- 
 tions of souls. 
 
 Let us now, having determined thus far the place 
 of Luther among the grandest epochs and actors in 
 Christian, in universal history, look for a little more 
 closely at the man himself in those mental and moral 
 qualities which stamped themselves on his work, and 
 reproduced themselves in multitudes of other men. 
 
 We had almost asked you to look at the outer build 
 and bearing of the man. It interprets in much the 
 inner Luther. There is scarcely another face in his- 
 tory that we would more readily recognise were we to 
 meet it in the street, than that of Luther. There is 
 not an atom in that face of the lean-cheeked, furtive- 
 eyed, thin, suspecting nose, of Erasmus, next to Luther, 
 the greatest intellectual power in these years ; nor of 
 the worn, austere look and two-storied brow of Calvin. 
 Luther meets you with the round, firm-set bulk of 
 some Saxon peasant, with a half- defiant and uplifted 
 turn of the neck, revealing enormous animal force ; 
 and with the keen look of those piercing, half-black, 
 half-brown eyes, now like a lake rippling with careless 
 joy, now like a tarn dark with concentrated pathos. 
 That figure, that face of Luther has a curious likeness, 
 in some points, to that of another peasant, John Bun- 
 yan ; but suggests even more vividly that of another 
 peasant, whose native genius strangely and strongly 
 resembles his own — that of Eobert Burns. 
 
LUTHER— THE MAN. 71 
 
 But now looking deeper, what were the three features 
 of character that made and make him the unique, the in- 
 exhaustible object of interest and impression that he is ! 
 
 First and farthest down and off is what we would 
 call his human quality. He is emphatically a man ; 
 and his being also great in quantity as well as quality 
 made him a man of the people — a man belonging to 
 every other man. This quality traverses alike the 
 lines of Protestantism and Popery, and makes him the 
 brother, the master, the favourite of men the most 
 opposite, as Dollinger and Heine, Neander and Carlyle. 
 The broad, breezy humanity of Luther is akin, in 
 some of its moods, to the melancholy pathos of a 
 German forest, in others, to the rich joy of a German 
 meadow. He is rough, yet tender ; firm, yet flexible. 
 You have the refreshing sense of being in the open- 
 air with a companion ; not among the folios of a 
 library with a scholar, nor in the heated discussions of 
 a theologian. The scholar and theologian are absorbed 
 in the man. 
 
 And this rose from his beginning at nearly the 
 lowest stratum of social life ; doing a great deal of 
 starvation ; begging for bread ; using the voice that 
 charmed and conquered Europe, first as a poor singing 
 child in the streets of German towns. This he never 
 forgot. It gave him his insight, his forthright strokes 
 of rude energy, his melting movements of heart, his 
 idiom of spirit, speech, and bearing. This remained 
 with him in his temper of a lion, sometimes degenerat- 
 ing into that of a bear, in his stormy gusts of passion, 
 in his ungovernable, unmeasurable indignation and 
 invective, whether addressed to a haughty King Henry 
 VIIL, or to a noble Zwingle. 
 
72 LUTHER— THE MAN. 
 
 But besides this turbulent, unsinoothed nature, there 
 were the two things that draw all hearts, pathos and 
 humour. Tragedy and comedy were on the right and 
 left of his untamed, heavy-laden, or lightly-bounding 
 spirit ; and the spirit itself, the man, lay between, in 
 its deep, Divine largeness and might. His outflowing, 
 abounding love of his fellows made him the frank 
 boon companion, the tender husband, the playful or 
 sorrowing father, the man who could now, in the king- 
 ship of his genius, be a David in the music and hymns 
 of the Reformation, and again, in the consecration of 
 his apostleship, be a Paul in his unflinching grasp of 
 its principles and movements. And the man who has 
 much in him of two such contrasted natures as those 
 of David and Paul, has a large quantity of varied 
 being, and cannot but draw all men after him. Orator, 
 poet, seer of the Reformation, he rose far above the 
 lower regions of rhetoric, versification, and logic. This 
 threefold power sprung straight and unhewn out of the 
 man God had made and trained him to be. Therefore 
 his words were not only " half-battles," but whole 
 victories ; and his songs have in them the ring of 
 Burns' " A man's a man for a' that," and of " Scots 
 wha hae." Hence the spontaneity, the abundance, the 
 abandon, the unexpectedness, the simplicity with depth, 
 the speech rough as the bark of a fir-tree; sweet as 
 wild-flowers with the clay still on their roots ; the 
 elastic ease of his style ; the sense of having got only 
 a few cupfuls out of an unfathomable and inexhaustible 
 well. 
 
 But going deeper and farther up, this man of the 
 people was a man of genius. His severe scholastic 
 studies, his ardent discipline in music and poetry — 
 
LUTHER— THE MAN. 73 
 
 these were the culture in two directions of a genius 
 that compassed, and was " true to the kindred points 
 of heaven and home." 
 
 He had neither the refined learning of Melancthon 
 nor the inexorable logic of Calvin, but he had a learn- 
 ing that tingled with life and a logic that shot past 
 the steps of thought to smite at once the conclusion. 
 He had therefore the highest genius of a few fruitful 
 ideas, or, better still, ideals. Like Darwin's famous 
 five creative germs, so many were the germs of Luther, 
 and in either case all the world is their evolution. 
 
 He knew Aquinas well, Bernard better, Augustine 
 best of all. He loved Tauler the mystic ; and above 
 all the " Theologia Germanica." But these did not 
 modify, they only accentuated his original gifts. He 
 had the spiritual genius, that of inwardness. He was 
 one of that highest class of men called of old, homines 
 desideriorum — men known at once in all times as those 
 who follow hard after God, whose hearts break for long- 
 ing they have unto His commandments. But having 
 felt all the old thoughts, that very feeling made him 
 speak them in his own fresh words. And his peculi- 
 arity and power lay in this single point, that the richest 
 experiences of Divine truth and feeling came from him 
 and lived among men clad in homely garb and full of 
 artless gesture. 
 
 At last we have reached the highest point of his 
 growth and power. Luther was, above all, and through 
 all, a man of God — a soul saved and imbreathed by 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 That burly, plebeian peasant, that passionate, in- 
 tuitive genius, was transfigured by a Divine faith into 
 a man of Divine love and energy. These first two 
 
74 LUTHER— THE MAN. 
 
 made him popular and powerful on the human side. 
 This last and chiefest lifted him up, on the Divine 
 side, into a humanity full of God — into genius through 
 which Christ the Saviour walked among men in risen 
 and triumphant power. You know well the spiritual 
 drama of his conversion struggles — struggles which 
 gave a tragic colour to a nature that might otherwise 
 have been too boisterous — a noble elevation to a life 
 that might otherwise have been too coarse and tur- 
 bulent. Luther's reformation of himself was harder 
 to achieve than his reformation of Europe. Hence 
 the sad conflict — the anfechtungen all through his life ; 
 hence the grand victory-gleams that shed a touching 
 heroic halo round his memory. 
 
 Two days of conversion — two only — those of Paul 
 and Augustine, are celebrated every year in the festi- 
 vals of the Catholic Church. It would be well to add, 
 as the third conversion, that of Luther. Paul blind in 
 Damascus, Augustine weeping in Milan, may well have 
 hung up beside them Luther in agony at Erfurt. 
 Out of the broken clefts of these men's hearts have 
 flowed the blessed waters of a Divine Gospel through 
 all generations. Each discovered for their own time 
 the grace of God, the love of Christ, and the justifica- 
 tion before God, with which is twin-born sanctification 
 before men. The unspeakable generosity of God in 
 Christ to all sinners, His celestial breath of life in all 
 saints, had long passed, in their full Divine beauty and 
 sublimity, out of sight. These were in the Church ; 
 but the Church stood between them and the soul. 
 The noblest of Greek statues, the Venus Victrix of 
 Milo, was dug up after lying hidden centuries under 
 the earth. It was pieced together afresh, and, though 
 
. LUTHER— THE MAN. 75 
 
 not quite entire, it now stands before the gazer in its 
 consummate beauty, in its almost Christian touch of 
 feeling. And so the Gospel — the perfect image of 
 God — had long lain hidden ; but Luther discovered it, 
 pieced it together, and, though some parts were still 
 needed to complete its perfection, and some stains 
 through earthly contact still dimmed its beauty, yet 
 now again it stands before the eyes of penitence and 
 faith, the supreme likeness of the Incarnate Saviour, 
 the supreme attraction of the distant and yearning 
 soul. The discovery of Columbus, that had in these 
 years added a continent to the earth ; the discovery 
 of Copernicus, that added an immeasurable heaven 
 round which the earth moved ; these were little com- 
 pared to the discovery of Luther, in which he rose and 
 lifted others with him, from the German to the uni- 
 versal mind ; from the human heart unto the heart of 
 God. 
 
 In the wake of this great discovery followed man} 1 
 others. It brightened every page of the Bible, and 
 made it so precious that Luther must give it to the 
 German folk in their own German tongue. It swept 
 aside all other things between God and man, and gave 
 to each soul a priestly freedom to go into the holiest of 
 all ; a kingly freedom from all other dominion of Pope 
 or Prince ; a prophetic liberty of speech and thought 
 that none might limit or suppress. Specially, it made 
 Luther a great preacher ; great, not in polish, but in 
 passion, in electric force, in overwhelming insistance, 
 in tender persuasiveness. 
 
 But I must not linger. Here once more in Luther, 
 looked at all round, you have repeated the record of 
 the creation of man. " And God formed man of the 
 
76 LUTHER— THE MAN. 
 
 dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the 
 breath of life — so man became a living soul." So God 
 made Luther. The dust of the ground — the native 
 rough clay, not transfigured into marble or porcelain, 
 is all there in Luther, but in it is the breath of life ; 
 and this, the native, but noblest gift of a swift, strong, 
 pentecostal, rushing wind and breath of God. So 
 Luther became a living soul ; living itself and giving 
 life to others. " He indeed is a fruit-tree yielding fruit 
 after its kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth. 
 And it was so. God saw it was good," and many 
 generations have called it blessed. 
 
 There then Luther ever stands, as he stood of old at 
 Worms ; having done all, he stood — in his indomitable 
 courage and firmness ; and he could do no otherwise— ^ 
 and therefore he did what he did with all his might. 
 But deeper down, and mightier far, was the humility, 
 the self- surrender that cried, " God help me." And 
 helped he was of his God. And so he and we are 
 sure that nothing is denied to such courage and such 
 dependence. Amen, let it be, and it shall ever be. 
 All through these are his watchwords, his war-cries. 
 Raise therefore his monument, and write on it his 
 great fields of battle and victory ; on one side Erfurt, 
 where he won justification by faith ; and on another 
 Worms, where he championed truth against a whole 
 world ; on a third Wartburg, where he opened up 
 to the world the love of Christ in His own Word ; 
 and again, his Augustinian home at Wittenberg, 
 where he opened up all hearts to the dear, purifying love 
 of wife and children ; and finally, Eisleben, where he 
 entered first, into his sad, brave, glorious earthly life, and 
 last, into his glad, victorious, more glorious heavenly life. 
 
LUTHER— THE MAN. 77 
 
 Now let me gather up all and impress on our dear 
 students the threefold lesson which, like a threefold 
 cord, binding them, in future years, alike to Christ and 
 to souls, is not easily broken. Study to be men — men 
 among men, with large, open doors, from which affec- 
 tion will go forth, by which need will come in. Add 
 to that all the treasure of genius or gift, whatever it 
 be, which God has given you to be laid out to usury ; 
 first in your preparation, and last in your work. But 
 crown all by being men of God, who know the love of 
 God and of Christ through struggle of weary fighting, 
 through rest of blessed faith, through consecration of 
 the whole man and the whole life. 
 
 Then each of you will in your own day do a work 
 which He who measures work not by its bulk, but by 
 its spirit, will crown ; for to a Luther, however mighty, 
 no higher word can be spoken than, "Well done, good 
 and faithful servant ; enter thou into the joy of thy 
 Lord ; " and to each of you, however weak, no lower 
 word will come, from the same unspeakable love, and 
 all-forgiving pity of the Master and Joy of all. His 
 servants. 
 
 It is no genuine, much less generous, defence of the 
 Reformation to deny to the Church of Rome its own 
 place, and that one of immense importance, in the for- 
 mation of Christendom. The Church that fostered 
 the genius, industry, and piety of men like Anselm, 
 Aquinas, and Bernard ; that diffused new lessons, and 
 a new spirit of mercy and equality among men ; that 
 
78 LUTHER. 
 
 even in a Hildebrand confronted and mastered the 
 rude and reckless tyranny of the civil power ; that 
 reared the glorious cathedrals of the Middle Ages, and 
 provided in many an institution a retreat for penitence, 
 sorrow, and wisdom amidst the storms of war and the 
 evils of society — the Church that either originated 
 or fostered these merciful and beneficent influences 
 cannot be deprived of its rightful place in the provi- 
 dential order of the world. 
 
 Still, at the close of its thousand years it had 
 immensely altered, and in many points greatly for the 
 worse. A Leo X. sat in the chair of the truly apos- 
 tolic Leo I. ; a Julius II. succeeded to a Gregory I., 
 justly called the Great. Enormous wealth — much of 
 it wrongly got ; irresponsible power, extending from 
 this world to the next ; corruptions in life, and what 
 is always twin-born, corruptions in doctrine, had done 
 their work, and it was a work that all thoughtful as 
 well as religious men felt to be one that demanded 
 reformation. In the course of the two centuries before 
 the Eeformation, General Councils met to remove, and 
 with no sparing hand, the acknowledged and great 
 abuses. Devout, heavenly spirits — a Tauler, a Thomas 
 a Kempis — cultivated their solitary yearnings in a 
 hidden mystical fellowship with Christ, little depen- 
 dent on the rites of the Church. Precursors of the 
 Reformation — Wiclif, Huss, Savonarola — the last 
 preached in 1498 Reformation truth in the years of 
 Luther's boyhood — these men in England, Bohemia, 
 Italy, wrestled and died for a mighty change. The 
 Atlantic wave travels far and long before it dashes in 
 full force on the shore, and makes its slow-gathering 
 force felt and heard decisively. The air was becoming 
 
LUTHER. 79 
 
 electric ; light was streaking the dark clouds ; seeds 
 of new truth and influence were scattered everywhere 
 by men who knew not whereunto they would grow. 
 " The time of figs was not yet." The many intel- 
 lectual, social, political, religious movements, all point- 
 ing in the direction of change, need not be gone over. 
 But none of them was the movement. None of them 
 had power to breathe a new life and create a new 
 Church and a new Europe. 
 
 Such crises come at long intervals in history. Men 
 wait in suspense. Two things are always needed in such 
 critical periods — a new principle embodying itself in 
 a new man. 
 
 These were needed in the great exodus of the 
 Church out of Egypt. God laid open and brightened 
 His old revelation ; and He created and trained the 
 new leader, Moses. The man fully equipped to be 
 head, and heart, and tongue of a crisis so great must 
 be himself correspondingly great in every way, in 
 mind, character, and sympathy, with his work. The 
 entrance of Christianity into the world was the greatest 
 of all such movements. The Lord Jesus Christ was 
 both the principle and the power, but there was need 
 of a human, a revolutionary spirit with complete self- 
 surrender to the Master, and sympathy with his fel- 
 lows ; and Paul carried the fire that was kindled in 
 him on the Damascus road, on to his last day in the 
 Eoman prison. 
 
 And now a new principle was needed. It was the 
 simple, original, essential principle of the Gospel, that 
 man, the sinner, is free through faith in Christ to go 
 into the holiest of all ; and through the same faith 
 that frees him before God, is free in God's Church 
 
8o LUTHER. 
 
 and in God's world. This principle is in the old 
 Pauline phrase called justification by faith ; but call it 
 what you will, it is the primal condition of a new 
 Divine peace and power. 
 
 And this principle was embodied in Luther. This 
 most memorable man was the last word of the old, as 
 certainly he was the first word of the new, movement. 
 
 One is curious, to say the least, to learn what it 
 was in this man which made him, and no other, the 
 supreme power in fairly opening up a new spiritual 
 path to the Church and the world. We shall see this 
 in some measure if we mark the other men of the 
 same day, whose names and reputation seemed at one 
 time to point them out as the leaders of Israel. There 
 was Ulrich von Hiitten, with his keen hatred of the 
 Roman power, and his gift of vehement invective and 
 satire. Far more, there was Erasmus, with his 
 thorough perception of the abuses of the Romish 
 system, expressed in the most fascinating and sharp- 
 cutting style, so as to rouse the dullest and enrage the 
 most bigoted, with his insatiable industry as editor of 
 the Classics and of the " Church Fathers ; " and, above 
 all, his invaluable skill and care in editing his Greek 
 New Testament of I 5 1 6, only one year before Luther's 
 " Theses." But it was neither to Hiitten nor Erasmus 
 that the Reformation work was committed. Hiitten 
 had not the high spiritual nature — the aliquid Divine, 
 either in genius or in grace, that were imperatively 
 needed. Erasmus also, with all his marvellous wit, 
 his keen Voltaire-like irony, his unquenchable enthu- 
 siasm for learning, even for Christian learning, did 
 indeed his own work — a needed, and a noble work : 
 but it was not the work God and man required. A 
 
LUTHER. 8 1 
 
 learning deeper than even his in its almost universal 
 range — a learning gained by passionate life-and-deatli 
 struggles, which it was not in his fine but thin and 
 timid nature to attain — that was gained by Luther, 
 through long, terrible upheavals in the very depths of 
 his whole nature. From the aboriginal fires and fusion 
 of Luther's whole being were thrown up before the 
 Church and the world the fresh, lofty ranges of truth 
 and life that had long been submerged. The Reforma- 
 tion passed first through the furnaces of Luther's 
 experience : there it was molten and moulded ; there- 
 fore, when it came forth, it melted and moulded souls 
 into its own image. 
 
 All the books, principles, forces that have made new 
 eras in human history, have first made a new era in 
 the history of the heart from which they are poured 
 out. So it was with Moses, with Paul, with Augus- 
 tine, with Dante — with an Italian intensity and white 
 heat of passionate genius, equal to those of the German 
 Luther : so it was with many more. One only I shall 
 mention. Thomas Chalmers had in him much of the 
 look, speech, bearing of Luther ; and he did a Luther 
 work in his own day, because he had gained the truth 
 that made him a new man, in the same way in which 
 Luther had gained it before him. 
 
 It was this that made all the difference in Luther 
 from the Humanists, whether Pagan or Christian, a 
 Rabelais or an Erasmus. And this gave to Luther, 
 far less gifted than Erasmus in many things, the quality 
 that alone can create and sway the religions and nations. 
 Luther was not only original — he was aboriginal. 
 There is about him the freshness, the flavour, the wild- 
 ness of the old Teutonic — the old Thuringian forests, 
 
 F 
 
82 LUTHER. 
 
 with their profound eeriuess and melancholy. He is a 
 man lofty and mighty as its most towering pines, that 
 moan sadly when the blast of passion or struggle bends 
 them and draws out their strong arms ; or again laugh 
 all over with irrepressible gleams of joy when they are 
 struck by the full sunshine. Luther was a piece of 
 hard granite, that needed hewing and polishing, but 
 never could take on the delicate lines and the fine 
 gleams of Erasmus, who was a bit of fine-grained and 
 carefully chiselled marble. He had rough work to do, 
 and he needed broad shoulders and passionate will 
 with which to do it. He had to cut through deep- 
 tangled roots ; and he was a wedge, not too fine to 
 defeat its purpose. Take him as a creation of genius 
 and grace, and he was full of the first impressions of 
 God in both departments ; and, best of all, he did not 
 know his own greatness. Gunpowder does not know 
 its exploding power ; it thinks it is like the common 
 dust around. Nor did Luther. What conscience 
 compelled, he did; and his deed, therefore, carried with 
 it all the power and purpose of God. Like all men 
 who have gone through searching inward crises, and 
 who reproduce them in the souls of others, Luther 
 could not escape wounds, — and these the deepest, — 
 even on the fields of his noblest victories ; and hence 
 came long fits of profound depression. His calm 
 steadfastness of faith had to stand the onrush of fierce 
 temptations from Erfurt all through to Eisleben. The 
 devil he encountered was no shadow, but a solid palpable 
 fiend. With what a width of experience Luther could 
 sympathise — gambols with little children — conflicts 
 with the prince of darkness ; all through his life the 
 sunny light of his central life has round it, dim and 
 
LUTHER. S3 
 
 dark, the shadows cast both from this world and the 
 next. This man was not an island, he was a continent. 
 What Edward Irving, himself a Luther-like soul, said 
 of David, King of Israel, is true of Luther, " The 
 heart of a hundred men strove and struggled together 
 within the narrow continent of his single heart." It 
 is this mixture of child and hero — of man of God and 
 man of the soil, fused and welded together into one 
 Luther, through great surges of passionate storm and 
 as great upliftings of passionate triumph, that makes 
 him stand out alone among the men of his time ; that 
 gives him his own place among men of all time, and 
 put into his hands, and those of none other, the key 
 and the sceptre of the Reformation. 
 
 Among the other Reformers he stands a king, with 
 a sort of native uncrowned pre-eminence. Melancthon 
 looks beside him, with his curved sweep of brow and 
 thoughtful eye, as if he had taken years to grow into 
 this perfection of refined and cultured aspect ; while 
 Luther looks, in his broad massiveness, his untamed 
 power, as if he had sprung an hour ago fresh and 
 unhewn from the dust of the earth. Zwingle and 
 Knox have both the same brave, defiant look, but it is 
 not painted, as in Luther, on the background of a 
 certain simplicity and pathos as well as strength, 
 which made the child and the peasant, the sinner and 
 the saint, feel that in Luther — so high otherwise above 
 them — there was a brother close to their hearts. 
 Calvin, who completed with a genius all his own the 
 work which Luther had commenced, looks like a saint 
 of the Roman Calendar — so thin, ascetic, solitary is 
 he ; while Luther stands before us like a tribune of the 
 people, plus the genius and the apostle. 
 
84 .LUTHER. 
 
 Passing into another department, that we may see 
 and measure Luther from a totally different point of 
 view : the two men of highest original genius in the 
 history of Germany are Luther and Goethe — and these 
 are almost exact opposites. I do not think Luther 
 would have regarded with special sympathy the Hel- 
 lenism — the Greek perfection — the artistic and aesthetic 
 ideals which begat the unwearied self-culture of 
 Goethe, and which he placed at the summit of all 
 human endeavours. And Goethe, we know, amidst 
 all his compelled admiration, complained of Luther as 
 having by his Reformation hindered for centuries the 
 progress of humanity, which the Renaissance had 
 initiated and promoted. Nevertheless they are two 
 grand, however distinct, figures. Goethe understood, 
 at least as an artist, the process by which Luther be- 
 came what he was, as his " Confessions of a Fair Soul," 
 in " Wilhelm Meister " show ; and the one book that 
 gives the most inner revelation of Goethe's real 
 character, and that at its own critical turning-point, 
 his (t Faust," paints depths of human passion — weari- 
 ness, sin, dissatisfaction — in fact, a change, a conversion 
 of a soul, but one without grace or holiness — altogether 
 in the lines of Mephistopheles, and therefore of proud 
 knowledge and passionate sensuality; the upper and 
 celestial counterpart of which is contained in the story 
 of Luther's own tragic spiritual struggles and at last 
 divinely completed victory. So far their paths lay 
 together, till at the point of a Divine conversion they 
 parted. In their views of religion and humanity, in 
 the mould and rhythm of their essential thinking and 
 style, in their look and gesture and accent, in their 
 whole influence, Goethe is a supreme instance of the 
 
LUTHER. 85 
 
 Eenaissance, Luther of the Eeformation. He who 
 knows both will never in the least confound either the 
 men or their movements. 
 
 It is impossible for us to enter at all on the life, 
 growth, and work of Luther. It is interesting to mark 
 that the two most eminent types of the Eenaissance and 
 the Eeformation were both — the one in Italy, the other 
 in Germany — born in the same year, 1483 ; Eaffaelle 
 in April, Luther in November. Much meaning we 
 have not space to develop lies in the mere placing 
 together of these two illustrious names. In 1520 
 Eaffaelle lay dead in Eome, his last painting, " The 
 Transfiguration," placed at the head of his bier. In 
 the same year Luther was burning the Pope's Bull in 
 Wittenberg, and painting his Transfiguration of the 
 Divine Christ to be seen of all. In 1546 Luther was 
 the first of the Primates of the Eeformation to die, 
 Zwingle excepted, who, however, died in battle in 1 5 3 1, 
 not worn out, like Luther, in a continual lifelong con- 
 flict. Luther's great historical appearances ended in 
 his forty-second year : in his writing of the ninety-fifth 
 Theses in 1 5 1 7 ; in his burning the Pope's Bull in 
 1520; his appearance at the Diet of Worms in 1 5 2 1 ; 
 his translation of the New Testament in the Wartburg 
 in I 5 2 I ; its publication in I 5 2 2 ; with his defeat of 
 Carlstadt and Anabaptism in 1522. Others took up 
 either his work or work of like sort, but he had fought 
 his Trafalgars and Waterloos before he was forty-two, 
 and though his figure rises higher than that of any 
 other in the succeeding years, yet the historical Luther 
 was completed. 
 
 But he was ever influential — ever industrious. Year 
 after year brought fresh victories, but fresh cares and 
 
86 LUTHER. 
 
 sorrows and effort. None of the great Reformers were 
 long-lived. Knox lived longest of all, to his sixty- 
 seventh year. Calvin died in his fifty-fifth ; while 
 Luther and Melancthon departed from their scene of 
 wearing work and anxiety in their sixty- third. 
 
 The Council of Trent met in 1545. Luther died in 
 Eisleben, where he was born, in 1546. The death of 
 Luther closed the first great chapter of the Reforma- 
 tion. The Council of Trent opened a new chapter for 
 the Roman Church, in which the work and doctrines 
 of Luther left deep and indelible traces. But the 
 work Luther besfan still lives, and shall live. The 
 saying of John Wesley, who owed his conversion to 
 Luther, is pathetically and nobly true : " God buries 
 His workmen, but carries on His work." And the 
 words of Paul, to whom Luther owed his conversion, 
 are, amidst the disappearance even of the greatest men, 
 full of an interesting strength and hope : " Jesus 
 Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." 
 
( 87 ) 
 
 IV. 
 
 CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 
 
 However men may differ about the merits of the great 
 Reformation, it has- its place in the history of Europe 
 as the real turning-point between the old and the new ; 
 and among those who look upon it as a religious 
 movement, it is truly regarded as second in the history 
 of Christianity only to its introduction, in the resur- 
 rection of old truths, and the outpouring of new in- 
 fluences among men. 
 
 And as in the first Reformers of the world — the 
 Apostles — we have four distinct types of mind, so here, 
 in these true successors of the Apostles, Luther is the 
 Peter, the primate of the group — fresh, passionate, 
 homely, and outspoken ; Zwingle comes close to James 
 in practical emphasis and direct manliness of character ; 
 Melancthon is a true younger brother of John, not so 
 lofty, nor, in his moderation so decisive in his accent, 
 but full of the same contemplative love and deep 
 fountain thoughts ; and certainly Calvin may well take 
 the place of Paul — for, while differing by nature and 
 grace, as every marked man does from another, in the 
 amazing flexibility of mental movement and winning 
 tenderness of personal affection, springing up amidst 
 the strictest and widest logical processes, yet kindred 
 
88 CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 
 
 in a certain continuity of absorbing purpose, a love of 
 clear-cut definition in statement of truth, and unswerv- 
 ing consistency in its development, and, above all, the 
 central predominance of the same high land-marks of 
 grace and predestination, the two men look out towards 
 each other from the distance of sixteen centuries, and 
 are felt to be essentially the same. 
 
 I have been asked to speak to you on this important 
 occasion on Calvin and Calvinism. I have not been 
 limited to any particular phase of a subject so 
 suggestive on many sides. I shall therefore try to 
 gather up as various and vital impressions about him, 
 his work, and its relation to present circumstances, as 
 I can. I shall take for granted your possession of details 
 which there is no space to include, and I am encouraged, 
 as I advance, by the assurance that there is no theme 
 that comes so close to the principles and history of this 
 assembly. 
 
 What is of greatest value in any man is the work 
 which he himself is, through the providence of God and 
 the course of his life. And to any thoughtful Christian 
 nothing so unfolds or verifies the meaning and power of 
 Christianity as a great life that has been inspired and 
 governed by it. The beginnings of Calvin were small. 
 Of parents one stage above the mechanic class, in 
 Noyon, a small town in Picardy — of an able, aspiring 
 father, and an earnest, anxious mother — he was born 
 in the year 1509. Luther was already twenty-six 
 years, Melancthon twelve, Zwingle twenty-five, and 
 Knox four years old at this time. Herein, too, he is 
 like Paul, the last of the Apostles — the one who was 
 to sum up their labours, to bind up their varied 
 sheaves, and to garner them in strong storehouses for 
 
CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 89 
 
 the use of many generations. His death took place in 
 1564, so that he lived only to his fifty-fifth year. 
 None of the Eeformers lived to the threescore and ten. 
 Luther and Melancthon died at the same age, sixty- 
 three ; Zwingle was struck down in battle when forty- 
 seven ; Calvin wore out his life wearily and bravely in 
 long years of a lonely sentinel's watching, and a lonely 
 commander's burden of a wide and hard battle. Our 
 John Knox lived eight years longer, and the last words 
 read to him were from his friend Calvin's " Commen- 
 tary on the Ephesians." 
 
 Calvin was, " from certain vital signs/' as Milton 
 says of himself in another relation, destined for the 
 Church. He began his training at an early hour, and 
 the stuff out of which God moulded the Reformer we 
 discern already in the boy of ten, whom from his 
 strictness of conduct and bold reproofs, his school- 
 fellows, as is the manner of boys, nicknamed the 
 Accusative. Calvin was a man not accustomed to 
 speak of himself. Luther is always Luther. Calvin 
 is, for the most part, Calvinism ;. but in his preface to 
 his " Commentary to the Psalms," he gives, in rapid 
 outline, his own rendering of the way in which God 
 had led him. Strange to say, it is in David that 
 Calvin saw most of himself and his history. David 
 and Calvin — how opposite ! Yet it is always the 
 contraries that clasp in the closest affinity. And so 
 he writes : — " But as David was taken from the sheep- 
 fold and elevated to the rank of supreme authority, so 
 God, having originally taken me from my obscure and 
 humble condition, has reckoned me worthy of being 
 invested with the honourable office of a preacher and 
 minister of the Gospel." 
 
9o CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 
 
 Calvin could not help feeling he was a king, though 
 the king was hidden under a Geneva cloak ; and none 
 ever felt more than he did that he was so emphatically 
 by the grace of God. He was thoroughly trained at 
 Orleans, Paris, and Bourges. His first stage was as a 
 scholar ; the old Latin classics became his masters, 
 models, and companions. Moreover, with the new- 
 born zeal of the times, he added to these monuments 
 of genius — among which Cicero remained his favourite 
 to the end, and gave him the style that has floated 
 down his masses of thought to onr days — the know- 
 ledge of the Greek classics. More than the discovery 
 of the Nineveh marbles in our time, as much as the 
 reading of the old foot-prints on the geological strata, 
 was this exhuming of the old Greek thought and life. 
 It created the Eenaissance with its humanists — men 
 who turned from the Church, and in many instances 
 from Christianity, and gave themselves up to letters 
 and pagan philosophy. Rabelais and Montaigne in 
 France, Mirandola and Bembo in Italy, were the 
 fathers of our modern literature. 
 
 But, in another direction, what loosened from the 
 Church turned many to the Bible, and especially 
 the Greek Testament, by his edition of which, in 
 I 516, Erasmus, a sort of well- clad John the Baptist, 
 with irony, instead of denunciation — a man as much 
 humanist as Christian — prepared the way for the Re- 
 formation. At the time when Calvin was at college — 
 the period of life when the young and empty mind is 
 open for all impressions, and especially the latest and 
 most living — the air was full of the stir of new ideas, 
 charged with the sap and promise of a glorious spring- 
 time. Cicero, on the one hand, and Paul on the other ; 
 
CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 91 
 
 Plato, with his glorious old Greek ideals, and John, with 
 his celestial ever-young revelations — these stood over 
 against the Church, and claimed the supremacy of the 
 fresh and enthusiastic spirits. Calvin was graciously, 
 and after a sharp but comparatively short struggle, led 
 to choose Paul and John, and through them Christ. 
 With that instancy and thoroughness, which are Calvin 
 all through, he renounced the Church of Rome, and 
 surrendered absolutely to the almighty grace of God. 
 
 Like himself, Luther lets us into the whole secret 
 of his long struggle ere the battle was won. Justifi- 
 cation through faith in Christ was his living experi- 
 ence and doctrine. So in the story of his conversion 
 the phases are most vivid and touching. But Calvin, 
 here consistent with himself, only gives hints, brief 
 but burning, of a history in which God was the great 
 agent ; and so he summed up his experience, and 
 shaped his doctrine on the master-theme of grace. 
 This inward change was taking place from his 
 eighteenth to his twenty-second year; and in 1 5 3 1, 
 when he was twenty-four, Calvin renounced definitely 
 all his old allegiance to the Roman Church, and to 
 more than the Roman Church — to all influence of 
 any decisive sort of his humanist studies. Luther 
 was pushing out of the Church, and was in his 
 thirty-fourth year when, as was congenial with his 
 poetic and sympathetic nature, he broke off, though 
 with much of the old adhering to him. Zwingle 
 and Melancthon came clean out of Rome, but leant 
 in much to the Greek masters. In Calvin there was, 
 rightly or wrongly, a thoroughness which marks the 
 man and made him the Reformer he became. I cannot 
 help thinking of him as the young Napoleon, coming 
 
92 CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 
 
 late in the day of revolution, and, with new methods, 
 changing the whole situation ; or rather, afterwards, he 
 reminds us of Wellington in the coolness and patience 
 of his courage, as well as his minuteness of organisa- 
 tion, waiting in his corner, in Geneva, and ruling great 
 portions of Europe from his camp on the entrenched 
 heights of truth. But, besides this thoroughness of 
 conviction, Calvin had gained in his training as a 
 lawyer the method, the strategy of his future battle. 
 He had turned aside a year or two from the Church 
 and its studies to the law, and there, as in all things, 
 he speedily became foremost among the first. This 
 faculty of taking a definite and far-reaching grasp of 
 a subject served him well in every department of his 
 religious work, and made him the first pleader, as 
 well as final judge, of the great cause of the day — 
 Reformation against Romanism. This is always a 
 most valuable training. I find Paul, Tertullian, and 
 Augustine went through it, and how much it con- 
 tributed to their clear and compacted views you can 
 easily see. John Knox at Haddington was also a 
 notary public, and learned his skill in drawing up the 
 Articles of the Reformation of Scotland by drawing up 
 deeds about a few acres in the neighbourhood of his 
 native burgh. 
 
 I can now only mark the events which proceeded 
 from this man, the lawyer, the Christian. I shall pass 
 over the details of progress and change and seize the 
 main points of crisis and achievement. 
 
 The first great event was the publication in 15 36, 
 in Basle, when a young man of twenty-seven, of his 
 Code of Doctrine and Discipline, the Institutes of the 
 Christian Religion. It was the book mainly that 
 
CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 93 
 
 made Scaliger, the sovereign dictator of letters, say 
 — "Calvin is alone among theologians; there is no 
 ancient to compare with him ; " and drew from Sir 
 William Hamilton, well able to judge, and little in- 
 clined to praise the Eeformers, the unqualified eulo- 
 gium — " Looking merely to his learning and ability, 
 Calvin was superior to all modern, perhaps all ancient 
 divines. Succeeding ages have certainly not exhi- 
 bited his equal. To find his par we must ascend 
 at least to Aquinas or Augustine." No book of 
 theological doctrine equal to it has been produced 
 during the last three centuries, except some claim is 
 made for placing beside or near it the great work of 
 Schleiermacher ; and though, looking, the eye is now 
 and then caught by the massive works of Aquinas and 
 the small but profound and suggestive pieces of Anselm, 
 yet it is only when the City of God (De Civitate Dei) 
 of Augustine comes to the horizon that an equal, if 
 not a superior, makes itself felt to be there. It was 
 a little book at first, of five hundred pages and six 
 chapters, but it grew during twenty-three years to 
 five times the size, till, in the last edition in 1559, 
 five years before he died, you have Calvin in the full 
 height, and depth, and length, and breadth of his 
 teaching. It is curious to watch how the best ideas, 
 the carefully-devised phrases, the proportion and place 
 of connecting thoughts that appear time after time 
 in his Commentaries and occasional pieces are laid 
 up in store, fitted into, and grow to the increase of 
 the whole work. 
 
 To read it through is an intellectual drill, a moral 
 test, a sacred service ; for he never relaxes his demand 
 on attention, never descends from a lofty standard, and 
 
94 CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 
 
 never ceases to stir, either to shrinking or yielding, 
 the religious nature. I do not think there is a single 
 kindling of imagination, even when the granite of his 
 passionate logic is heated sevenfold. There are passages 
 on prayer, and on the glory and misery of man, in 
 which, rising parallel to his great themes, he takes 
 rank in sublimity as impressive and more severe than 
 Bossuet, and becomes, if less penetrating and pas- 
 sionate, as mighty as Pascal. Still, he is of intellect, 
 not imagination, all compact. 
 
 Locke, in his essay, has one or two famous images ; 
 Calvin, in his work, not one. In this resembling 
 some bare granite peak, as Sinai ; but in another 
 respect, which grows upon the reader, resembling 
 it more. At first as you approach, it looks large 
 indeed, but not overwhelming ; only the longer you 
 travel, day by day nearer to it, it grows the more, 
 and when you pass away from it, it seems still to 
 haunt the eye and command the attention. It is the 
 unity, the comprehensiveness that refuses to break 
 into parts, which claims the whole mind ; and so 
 unadorned, self-sustained, massive, it overpowers the 
 conviction, and calls forth a kindred feeling towards 
 a work that we gradually discover could only have 
 been piled up by a soul that burns steadily through the 
 whole mass with a purpose and patience that assert 
 themselves in abiding force and not in transient flash 
 and flame. It is, in fact, the sheer unshrinking unity, 
 like some monolith, the intellectual passion, this sacri- 
 fice of all fear of consequences, this Sinai-like lonely 
 majesty — for it becomes majestic in the end — that 
 forms the essential character of Calvin, intellectually 
 and morally, whether for attraction or repulsion. Why 
 
CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 95 
 
 have Sinai wooded to the top, with its sides blossom- 
 ing into flowers, parcelled out in parterres ? and why- 
 have Calvin other than he is, in his bare and simple 
 grandeur ? 
 
 By this book he did an immense service to the 
 Reformation. In its preface, the letter addressed to 
 Francis I., he speaks as a king to a king, and as with 
 sound of trumpet enters upon the defence of the new 
 Christian cause. Like a master builder, the City of 
 God rises under his hands like Jerusalem, which was 
 a city compactly built together. He completed the 
 temple, with its three courts — doctrine, government, 
 and discipline ; the relation of the soul to Christ, in 
 grace ; to each other Christian soul, in the Church ; to 
 the world outside, in the State. The unity of Rome, 
 the charm of which can with difficulty be thrown off, 
 was met by a unity of Reformation by which to this 
 day it is balanced. The magnificent constructive 
 power found a place for everything, harmonising the 
 Augustinian doctrine of grace and the Lutheran prin- 
 ciple of justification ; the Swiss leaning to the central 
 position of the Word of God, and the German leaning 
 to that of the loving Christ in the individual soul, and 
 moving with unhalting step straight on from the first 
 thought of God in the creation and redemption of man, 
 to the visible embodiment of that thought in a spiritu- 
 ally independent Church on earth, and an everlasting 
 fellowship of the blessed in heaven. 
 
 And while the book is great in its internal complete- 
 ness, it is great also in reference to Calvin's mind. 
 Though it grew five-fold, it was only as the man 
 grows out of the child. He changed nothing in the 
 leading principles, hardly anything in the secondary 
 
96 CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 
 
 details. Luther Lad no systematising genius; his 
 thoughts were not like a rock, but like a river — a noble 
 stream, indeed, changing its course, but ever bent for 
 the ocean. Melancthon had an organising power, and 
 his Common Places {Loci Communes) were published 
 when he was only twenty-four. But though he for- 
 mulated Luther's principles, still he did not build the 
 walls all round, and, moreover, shifted in after years 
 the very basis of his system, and vacillated between 
 divine grace and human will ; but Calvin lived out 
 the old canon of the Church Father : " Everywhere, 
 always, and in all things the same ; " and so his work, 
 while it grew in size and changed in arrangement, 
 never lost the power that attends unwavering and 
 severe consistency. 
 
 But I must pass from this work, the programme of 
 his whole life, to another department of his labours, in 
 which he shines with almost as great — I shall not say 
 splendour, for that is not the word to apply to Calvin, 
 but — luminousness. Calvin's commentaries are master- 
 pieces in that kind, and he ranks among its chiefs in 
 all the needed qualities of sufficient learning, surpass- 
 ing mental size in height and breadth, and, best of all, 
 spiritual susceptibility. Men who differ most widely 
 from him in the ultimate results of his judgments, 
 agree in extolling his marvellous sagacity and tact, 
 and, above all, his transparent fairness and want or 
 suppression of bias. Nobody can doubt his learning, 
 insight, and devoutuess; but to have that quality in 
 surpassing measure, betrays alike the moral singleness 
 and the intellectual manifoldness of Calvin. He had 
 such an implicit trust in God's Word that he com- 
 mitted himself to it whithersoever it listed to go ; and 
 
CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 97 
 
 so he dismisses, with a decisiveness a Rationalist might 
 envy and could not surpass, so-called Messianic pro- 
 phecies, texts in support of the Trinity and the Divinity 
 of Christ, even for predestination and particular re- 
 demption. Calvin had so firm a faith in the general 
 system of truth in the Bible that he was under little 
 or no temptation to mix the hay, wood, and stubble of 
 doubtful interpretation and disputed texts with the 
 gold, silver, and precious stones that lay around in the 
 rich and ample quarry. 
 
 Such, with many occasional pieces, were the works 
 of the mind and pen of Calvin ; and his were ivorks 
 indeed, coming from the very heart as well as head 
 and meant to do something to further the great aim 
 of his life. There was another department in which 
 he excelled. His daily work was that of an ecclesias- 
 tical and civil statesman. The little town of Geneva, 
 in a corner of sloping land between the Alps and 
 Jura, with its border position between north and south 
 Europe, was free at that moment of its old civil and 
 ecclesiastical rulers, and so was a clear space in which 
 to build up a new community, on both sides, spiritual 
 and civil, in Church and State ; and that town, though 
 little in size, and containing only some twelve or four- 
 teen thousand inhabitants — in fact, only three thousand 
 grown men — was the very place Providence had chosen 
 to be the cradle of a new and mighty influence. How 
 Calvin was led to that city has all the interest of a 
 Christian romance ; how he lived, laboured, and died 
 there has elements of keen pathos and tragedy — ele- 
 ments, too, of most instructive history. We cannot in 
 the least enter upon it here. His first appearance 
 there is noted in the archives as " that Frenchman " 
 
 G 
 
98 CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 
 
 — " iste Gallics ; " now, Geneva is known principally 
 because of the name of Calvin. It is a history that 
 recalls in many points that of another — Moses, the 
 first leader of the Church. It was in both the build- 
 ing up, in a place set apart by geographical position, 
 of a new Church and State ; not merely the teaching 
 of a new doctrine, but the instant and energetic appli- 
 cation of it to all life in the community. The Jews 
 and the Genevese were very much the same material ; 
 both had left their past, but had gained nothing fixed 
 for the present ; both were partly superstitious and 
 partly libertine. Hence the series of changes, exiles, 
 taunts, conflicts, submissions ; the loneliness of both 
 leaders, the desertion by ancient comrades, and yet 
 ever the homage of some loyal souls. Both died, 
 having got only a glimpse of an unattained per- 
 fection, and leaving a name graven on every heart, 
 but marking no spot where the weary brain and hand 
 that moved and ruled all repose. The initials of J. C. 
 and J. K., which I have read on the supposed graves 
 of Calvin and Knox — in the public churchyard of 
 Geneva, and the Parliament Square of Edinburgh — 
 are all the monuments of these two men, whose 
 memorial belongs to the whole Church. 
 
 We have already indicated the great lines of his 
 intellectual character, the absolute clearness of his 
 intellect within its own range, the grasp of principles, 
 and the manipulation of details, the assertion of every 
 deduction from his premises, and the close linking, 
 as of coat of mail, of the whole system. And to these 
 it is to be added, that he forgot nothing, had his mind 
 always at the same height and pressure, that by the 
 working of some sort of mental spectrum the ray of 
 
CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 99 
 
 intellect was always and powerfully there, whatever 
 other element is wanting. Comparing him with the 
 men who stand beside him in likeness of religious 
 creed and conformation, Calvin is unique. Take Paul, 
 and you never in Calvin find such chapters as his 
 psalm of love and his argument and prophecy of 
 the resurrection, nor such a dignified propriety and 
 playful persuasiveness as you find in his Epistle to 
 Philemon. 
 
 Augustine, his great master — the only one of the 
 fathers to whom, shall I say ? he takes off his hat when 
 he meets him — had a range of living and creative 
 speculation, a fiery African glow and abandon of soul, 
 that never either rouses or ripples the sculpturesque 
 fixedness of Calvin ; and in Jonathan Edwards, with all 
 his logic, there is a mingling of metaphysical reasoning 
 and mystical yearning. Calvin, in fact, was more the 
 pure reasoner and deducer. Neither speculative nor 
 mystical, he syllogised — got his matter out of the 
 Scripture and shaped it accordingly. What he thus 
 lost in warm attractiveness and burning force, he gains, 
 however, in severe imperatorial measure and authority. 
 
 Socially, Calvin does not bulk, though he could 
 make himself feared and loved after a fashion. I 
 have thought it was a great loss to Calvin that he had 
 not a Philip Melancthon, an equal in his own depart- 
 ment, as was the privilege of Luther. But if he had 
 no ardours, he had no mean jealousies or envies. It 
 was a loyal admiration, a true, though stern love he 
 received. He was looked up to by those around him 
 as a feudal chief of an intellectual sort. Yet there are 
 times when the inner fountain of tears bursts out, 
 when wife or friends die, when controversy utterly 
 
ioo CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 
 
 wearies him, or the battle proves too hard for his poor 
 body, with its constant torture of nine diseases, and for 
 his overladen soul, with the unlifted burden of many 
 countries and churches. His wife and little dead 
 children are pale and passive figures in his life. Yet, 
 though his home lacks the portrait-like warmth and 
 distinctiveness of Luther's, there was true joy when 
 they were beside him, and a want in the Reformer's 
 heart when he dwelt in his lonely rooms. Certainly, 
 and in full consistency with the books of the man, we 
 never hear, as in Luther's case, of the alternate laughter 
 over the cradle, and agony over the coffin of his little 
 ones ; nor, as in Melancthon's, of being found rocking 
 his child and reading a book at the same time ; nor 
 as in Zvvingle's, of his warm love for his heroic wife ; 
 nor of a pipe of Bordeaux, which Knox, in dying, 
 humorously wished to be broached. All this is want- 
 ing in Calvin. Looking at the two faces, as we see 
 them in true portraits of Luther and Calvin, explains 
 all. In Kranach's Luther — and he never seems done 
 painting him — you have always the same burly figure, 
 bull-like neck, homely Bunyan-like face, with marked 
 brows, vivid eyes looking out or up, and firm, eloquent 
 mouth, with outstretched hands. In the portrait of 
 Calvin — and all is different, and perhaps there are not 
 more than one or two portraits of Calvin — you have 
 the spare form, the thin fur-clad neck ; the pale 
 shrunken cheeks ; the compact, high, somewhat narrow 
 brow of two storeys — the first the perceptive, the second 
 the reasoning ; the long pointed nose, different from 
 that of Erasmus — his is ever sniffing at things in 
 general, Calvin's is pointing down straight to the very 
 object ; the firm, sharp lips ; and above all, the eyes, 
 
CALVIN AND CALVINISM, 101 
 
 that Beza tells us remained, after all his midnight 
 studies, brightly and piercing black till the end, and 
 the long forefinger stretched out with an inevitable 
 accuracy. 
 
 Turning from these to the moral character, there is 
 an undisturbed harmony. Few men have ever lived 
 such a one life of purpose and deed : he had no love 
 of self in any shape — of gold, or pleasure, or fame. 
 All were absorbed in the bending and blending of his 
 will to God's. His very irritability, which he fre- 
 quently and bitterly lamented, was mainly for God's 
 sake, and his sternness was never mean. We cannot 
 help looking on him with a pitying tenderness as well 
 as a revering awe. One would have liked more of the 
 human, but then we should not have had the Calvin he 
 is ; for this was his great character — in spirit, a man 
 of God ; in system, emphatically, as Melancthon 
 called him, the theologian ; in work, through and 
 through, devoted to the absolute will of God and the 
 good of the Church . 
 
 We have necessarily anticipated, in our hints on the 
 works of Calvin, the nature of their contents ; but now 
 let us look more closely at the main points of his 
 teaching which formed their spirit, and through which, 
 in living power, he had and still has an immense 
 influence. 
 
 The first thing that meets us is, what has been 
 called the formal principle of the Reformation, namely, 
 the place he assigns to the authority of the divine 
 Word, as compared with that which Luther gave to 
 the material principle, namely, justification by faith in 
 Christ. Calvin, through the instinct of his mind, 
 sought for the starting-point of theology, not in an 
 
102 CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 
 
 inward experience, however divine, but an outward 
 fact, the Word of God. In it lay the substance of all 
 he taught as doctrine, and realised as experience. So 
 planting his foot there, he excluded the whole authority 
 of the Church, and dismissed as vain, apart from the 
 Bible, everything that could not relate itself to it or 
 be proved by it. The Bible to him was, in fact, the 
 consciousness of the Church. Severing thus the rule 
 of faith from Romanism, he severed it also from philo- 
 sophy ; for these two extremes have also their points 
 of junction. Hence Calvinism moves midway between 
 Romanism and Rationalism. Lnther inclined strongly 
 to tradition, and Zwingle to pagan philosophy. Calvin 
 stood clear of both, as fountains of truth and foun- 
 dations of teaching; but the proof of the Bible he held 
 to lie, not so mnch in its miracles and prophecies, as in 
 its native nobleness and fitness of doctrine, and in the 
 inward testimony of the Holy Spirit. So the Bible 
 became a living experience, a divinely-evidenced truth 
 to the soul, a perpetual and prolonged revelation of 
 God. When he advances to the doctrine of justification 
 by faith, the living Christ in the heart, we have the 
 same comprehensive reconciling tendency — he links 
 together by one stroke the faith that justifies and the 
 faith that regenerates and renews. The inward feel- 
 ing and the ontward fruit are thus one life, and a holy 
 character is laid as deep in the very being of faith as 
 a pacified conscience. It is the one act that receives 
 a whole Christ. Legalism on the one side and Anti- 
 nomianism on the other, are excluded, simply by the 
 complete statement of the truth. 
 
 But the doctrine that gives character and colour 
 to Calvin's system is that of sovereign grace. The 
 
CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 103 
 
 manner of a man's conversion Las a determining in- 
 fluence in shaping the method of his creed. It was 
 so with Calvin. Will was his differential quality, and 
 he submitted in the great change to an almighty and 
 all-holy will. This was the cell-form of doctrine out 
 of which the whole organisation afterwards developed ; 
 but whatever are the statements of Calvin on this 
 great theme, they are essentially those of Luther, 
 Zwingle, Melancthon in his first period, of Anselm 
 and Augustine, and especially of Paul, their master, 
 and, as a strange and sharp proof of the existence of 
 such a truth as a need for a revived Christianity, of 
 Schleiermacher, though with somewhat pantheistic 
 rendering in the nineteenth century. 
 
 Pelagianism deadens, never revives nor strengthens, 
 the Church. Augustinianism, the exaltation of the 
 Divine side of salvation in grace and redemption, 
 asserts itself in reality, however it may be expressed 
 in words. Even the Armenianism of the Wesleyans 
 is closer in spirit to the latter than it is to the former. 
 Moreover, it is a side of doctrine that emerges in every 
 statement of the essential relations of the human and 
 the Divine will. It is hard to find room for both in 
 the forms of human thought, and harder still to verify 
 the working of both without a sacrifice or dilution of 
 either. And when the insoluble difficulty of the rela- 
 tion of the human and the Divine will, of man's 
 responsibility and God's prescience or predestination 
 (for these are practically the same) is intensified by 
 the additional and more painful difficulty of man's 
 sinful will and God's saving act — then a complication 
 ensues that forces from us the old cry of Paul, " the 
 depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge 
 
104 CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 
 
 of God ; how unsearchable are His judgments, and His 
 ways past finding out ! " It makes us turn, in the im- 
 potence of our understanding, to urge on rather the 
 beseeching of men by the mercies of God. It is, after 
 all, the existence of sin that, as it shatters philosophy, 
 so it perplexes theology, and makes man a contradic- 
 tion. The real knot of the unloosed difficulty centres 
 not so much in making room for both free-will and 
 omnipotence as in making room for man's sin and 
 God's wisdom, holiness, and, above all, love in the same 
 sphere. This difficulty lies not in Calvinism or in any 
 other Christian scheme of doctrine, but in all Theism, 
 and especially in every phase of Christian Theism, 
 where sin is really acknowledged and the absolute 
 need of grace admitted. To this essential difficulty, 
 however, it must be admitted that Calvin has added, 
 or seems to add, some difficulties of his own making. 
 The first touches the extension of predestination. I 
 shall not speak of his exclusion of infants. Few 
 modern Calvinists would follow him in the uninter- 
 rupted severity of his deductions on that point. Nor, 
 secondly, shall I dwell on the other extension of the 
 electing act, as including reprobation or a positive 
 direct rejection of the sinful. I do not suppose Calvin 
 believed in this when put in an unmodified form. 
 Still, in his anxiety to make room for the Divine 
 sovereign will, he falls into and sometimes insists on 
 statements with which we cannot agree. Of course 
 even he in the long run is compelled to make room 
 for a responsible human will, and a freedom in that 
 will that follows, indeed, a corrupt nature, but does so 
 as a will freely and from within. It was at this point 
 that Melancthon tried to lift off the pressure, so as to 
 
CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 105 
 
 add a certain equal co-working of the human will that 
 should act, though not by its own unaided causation 
 or in the outcome of human merit. There also I 
 believe he erred. As in the original, so now in the 
 complex position of this insoluble problem we must 
 admit a genuine predestination that vindicates grace ; 
 and yet amidst all limits, whether in the creation or 
 the corruption of man, a genuine freedom that verifies 
 responsibility. Where the third truth lies is beyond 
 human skill. Enough, the indestructible fact of Divine 
 grace in its infinite fulness, and of human responsibility 
 in its lowest estate, remain. The speculative reconcilia- 
 tion is in God, the practical is ours. 
 
 There is another point — not relating to doctrine, 
 but to tone — that I cannot pass by. No doubt, as all 
 is from God, so all will be to His glory ; yet I confess 
 it is a hard trial in reading Calvin to mark — even to 
 have forced upon one — the unmoved, almost triumphant, 
 tone with which he pronounces sentence upon these 
 mysteries not only of Divine knowledge but of human 
 misery. I had much rather have the feelings of John 
 Duncan in this matter, of whom we read : " Speaking 
 to a friend with great tenderness of the ancient philo- 
 sophers, who knew no Saviour, though they almost 
 cried for one, and pacing up and down the room he 
 said, ' My heart bleeds for Plato.' " 
 
 Passing by his doctrine of the sacraments, the 
 principle that has made Calvinism lovingly and last- 
 ingly powerful, as much, if not more, than the doctrine 
 of predestination, is his doctrine of the Church. This, 
 too, has close relations to his doctrine of sovereign 
 grace, for it connected each member of the Church in 
 absolute dependence upon God, and so made all inde- 
 
io6 CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 
 
 pendent of a clerical priesthood — all being priests in 
 the Christian sense, and all forming a Church with a 
 government independent of any other government. 
 The equality of believers, their ecclesiastical office- 
 bearers being only their ministers by their choice, for 
 Christ's sake, and to carry out Christ's will and work ; 
 the union of Churches with Presbyterian order and 
 authority ; and the independence of believers, spiri- 
 tually and ecclesiastically, of all external authority — 
 these three principles are the greatest practical vic- 
 tories of Calvin, which belong to him as to none of the 
 other Eeformers except John Knox, and which gave 
 the Christian Church freedom, both within and with- 
 out, from priest and from prince. 
 
 Such were the main points of his system. We need 
 not dwell on its excellences, its elevating all to a 
 Divine height and origin, its clear assurance of indi- 
 vidual salvation through Christ, its rooting deep in the 
 Divine, the independence of each soul from every other, 
 and of the community of Christian souls from all 
 external pressure, and its supreme end of personal 
 holiness, and ecclesiastical discipline and doctrine as 
 the means towards this end. Nor need I detain you 
 upon its defects, at which I have already hinted. But 
 they are mainly two : the first, the putting of a Divine 
 secret decree in the foreground, instead of the Divine 
 declared love in Jesus Christ ; putting the unscaleable 
 mountain of mystery and power before the soul, instead 
 of the sweet nourishing pastures of infinite redeeming 
 grace ; and the second like unto it on the other side of 
 the system, the asserting of punishment, even to death, 
 to enforce the discipline of the Christian Church. I 
 mention this the more expressly lest it should be 
 
CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 107 
 
 thought that I had forgotten Servetus and his tragic 
 end. But when I mention it, I must add that the blame 
 thrown on Calvin is most unrighteously one-sided. 
 There was no man of that day, Komanist or Libertine, 
 who would not have done the same — Luther perhaps ex- 
 cepted, and that only because of his instincts and against 
 his principles. Servetus himself would have burnt 
 Calvin according to his teaching in his Christianismi 
 Restitutio. As well condemn Sir Matthew Hale as a 
 monster of injustice because he sentenced witches to be 
 burned, as Calvin for taking part, and that a mitigating 
 one, in the execution of Servetus. 
 
 But why plead in any wise for Calvin or Calvinism ? 
 Their works praise them in the gate, and speak for both. 
 Never since the beginning of Christianity has any man 
 or system produced such immense, heavenly, and heroic 
 fruits. That great mountain has sheltered many a 
 valley, shaped by its rise and lying at its foot. That 
 deep digging and ploughing has made fruitful many a 
 barren waste. That fountain of Divine grace has parted 
 into a fourfold river, and made paradise on every side. 
 Nearly all the heroisms, most of the liberties, much of 
 the highest wisdom and character of these three hundred 
 years, trace themselves back straight to that lonely 
 man. The children of his home died and left him 
 solitary ; the children of his spirit grew a great and 
 mighty nation. The last and best biographer of Calvin, 
 Kampschulte, points out that his Reformation is the 
 only one that steps beyond the limits of his birthplace. 
 Huss was more a political and Bohemian Reformer. 
 Luther's Reformation, while deeply Christian, having its 
 roots nourished by relations to his "dear German nation," 
 has never struck kindly in any other soil. Calvin, 
 
108 CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 
 
 living in Geneva, a free city, put off the Frenchman as 
 he put off the Romanist, and came forth in his system 
 a man and a Christian. From his hands the Reforma- 
 tion became a movement independent of nationality, 
 and produced a truly Christian and Catholic Church. 
 Hence the breadth of his influence has touched all 
 orders of mind. The highest in genius and culture 
 rise in their mien of soul and measure of praise as 
 they look up to him ; and many a peasant, with God's 
 grace stirring mightily within, amidst a poor lot and 
 dreary toils, has felt the bracing air of his stern doc- 
 trine and noble aims. Pass out from Geneva. See 
 how he moved through and joined together the Swiss 
 Reformed Churches, and had all but gained over into 
 union the German Reformation too. See how, though 
 he never revisited his old France, yet his soul marched 
 on at the head of the Huguenots, and but for black 
 St. Bartholomew, had made France the central Chris- 
 tian power in Europe. See how in France also, a 
 hundred years after, it was his truth indirectly felt 
 that roused the grand and saintly spirits of Port 
 Royal. These two men, Calvin and Pascal, have 
 lifted up the French mind out of its usual chasm into 
 an unwonted sublimity. In Holland Calvin gave a 
 body to the meditations which had been cherished by 
 Thomas a Kempis in the serene air of his monastery, 
 and created its noble army of 36,000 martyrs. Cal- 
 vin's voice in his letters was a word from an emperor ; 
 when about to die they saluted him. Ten years of 
 added life to Edward VI., and Calvin, in his Reforma- 
 tion, would have shaped English Christianity, and 
 saved us from a conflict which is again deepening 
 around us at this hour. As it was, he was the teacher 
 
CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 109 
 
 and inspirer of the Puritans ; and men like Oliver 
 Cromwell and John Milton, John Bunyan and John 
 Howe, John Owen, and though differing in opinion, 
 yet like in spirit, Richard Hooker, can answer well for 
 the nobleness and beauty of souls that surrender them- 
 selves to Divine grace. Shall we forget to call Scot- 
 land to bear testimony ? John Knox was, as Guizot 
 says, no disciple of Calvin, but an equal ; yet he 
 learned much from him, and Scotland to this hour 
 owes much of its Reformation to the sovereign intellect 
 and example of Calvin. And was not the whole Cove- 
 nanting struggle one for Divine grace, spiritual inde- 
 pendence, and human liberty ? Our own old Secession 
 and Relief Churches called no man master but Christ, 
 yet they looked up to Calvin as one of His best 
 scholars ; and in later years under Chalmers, and in 
 a revived Christianity and the Free Church, the old 
 truth has given new tokens of its undying power. In 
 Germany also the only system that has broken up 
 Rationalism is that of Schleiermacher, which asserts, 
 though with many defects, the person of Christ and 
 the power of grace. But time would fail to tell of all 
 the victories of the truth. It is the great spiritual 
 force at this moment in America, for the Pilgrim 
 Fathers carried Calvin with them, and it still lives in 
 strength amid thousands of churches, and has been 
 embodied afresh, and with marvellous skill and learn- 
 ing, in the great book of Charles Hodge, the patriarch 
 of Presbyterianism. And away in far-off islands of 
 the seas and in continents to east and west, these 
 principles rescue multitudes at this hour from heathen- 
 ism, and bear fruit in homes of piety and churches of 
 God. I venture then to claim for Calvinism, or rather 
 
no CALVIN AND CALVINISM. 
 
 the Christianity which it in good measure represents, 
 a power no future age can exhaust. Its difficulties, 
 after all, lie in its high thoughts and holy lining ; and 
 these, while they awe and sometimes repel, at last 
 attract and win men. The future of the Church and 
 the world is contended for by these three — Romanism, 
 Rationalism, and pure Christianity. I have no fear 
 for the issue. There may be swayings to and fro over 
 the wide battle-field of contest, but I am sure that the 
 army that has deep convictions of sin, and lofty views 
 of God and His grace, has elements of intellectual 
 truth, moral power, and Divine reinforcement that shall 
 gain the day. These elements shall emerge after every 
 failure, and at last stand fast and for ever. These are 
 truest to. God and to man, for God's praise and for 
 man's good ; and these meet in Him who has redeemed 
 man from his lowest sin, by that death on the Cross 
 in which He has revealed God in His highest glory. 
 
( III ) 
 
 V. 
 
 JOHN KNOX. 
 
 There are certain great eras in the history of the 
 human mind, in entering upon which we feel as the 
 traveller who, after many a dreary plain, passes into 
 the midst of Alpine mountains and valleys. Walking 
 at twilight alone he gazes with intense interest on the 
 grand masses lifted up against the sky, and reaching 
 far into it ; and as he slowly carries his eye downward, 
 the rich deep levels stretching towards the noble lake, 
 and sprinkled with hamlet and village, fill up the 
 harvest of his thoughtful view. ' So it is when from 
 the tameness and noise of lower levels in the world's 
 history, we place ourselves in the centre of a great 
 spiritual and intellectual landscape. There noble forms 
 of thought and character that claim kindred with the 
 heavens, men of surpassing spiritual range and height 
 — some standing alone in their marked individuality, 
 others rising together in groups as if cast in the same 
 mould — first meet the eye, which, turning from these, 
 kindles as it beholds lying all around under their 
 shadow and protection, among humble hearts and happy 
 homes and busy multitudes, the wide-spread blessings 
 of an earnest piety, a sober thoughtfulness, and a 
 cheerful toil. 
 
H2 JOHN KNOX. 
 
 If our traveller, however, be a man of science and 
 inquiry, he will feel his interest deepened when he 
 remembers that the calm and glorious scene before him 
 is the outgrowth of fierce antagonisms, violent displace- 
 ments, and slowly working change. 
 
 So it is with us if we clearly understand the great 
 epochs of human progress. There is not a new and 
 noble thought, or principle, or character, but has been 
 fused in heat, darkness, and struggle, and when it was 
 flung forth because it could no longer be kept back, it 
 had to make room for itself by casting aside the false 
 and superstitious ; and thus it stands before us at once 
 a monument of progress and a barrier against invasion. 
 
 It is in this spirit especially that we should take our 
 stand and look abroad upon the gathering storms that 
 mark the opening of the sixteenth century, the century 
 of the Eeformation. It is the greatest boundary period 
 in the history of the world since that which saw the 
 entrance of Christianity. In fact, it was the same 
 great principles coming to meet the new forms of 
 human tyranny and superstition. 
 
 And nobly was the way paved for these great 
 principles. Fresh influences, and those of the most 
 quickening kind, sent their ploughshare through minds 
 that had long lain fallow. The great men of past ages 
 became alive again in their newly found and wide- 
 spread books. The old Greek, Eoman, and Hebrew 
 thinkers opened up their free and teeming pages to 
 those wearied with the artificial routine of their pre- 
 scribed range. Copernicus altered the contemplation 
 of the heavens, and helped to overturn the old system 
 of philosophy by his new astronomy. The Americas 
 were added on the left hand, and on the right India 
 
JOHN KNOX. 113 
 
 was made accessible ; above all, the Word of God was 
 set free, and became the Book of the people. The 
 world moved on in more senses than one, and was 
 drifting on, tacking hither and thither for some secure 
 haven. 
 
 Feudalism of all kinds was breaking up. The 
 burgher classes gradually rose to importance, enriched 
 by the increasing commerce and sharpened by the 
 spreading enlightenment, and balanced their influence 
 against kings and nobles. The scholars and wits no 
 longer bowed to the infallibility of the ancient masters. 
 It was not long before priestly feudalism also was 
 questioned. 
 
 At this time the reformers appeared. They are 
 men all bearing a distinct family likeness, men in- 
 tensely conscious of the wants of their times, who 
 having battled with and mastered in their own hearts 
 its anxious questions, and having themselves become 
 free through the grace and truth of God, could advance 
 to the help of others. Let us devote ourselves to the 
 study of one of the best among them — John Knox, the 
 Reformer of Scotland. He was born at the village of 
 Gilford, in Haddington, in the year 1505. Never, 
 perhaps, for centuries had things looked more quiet. 
 But it was the pause of stillness before the wave that 
 has been long gathering in breadth breaks upon the 
 shore. In the same year Luther reached his manhood 
 and rushed from the world to the Erfurt monastery. 
 Zwingle left the sublime solitudes of his Alpine home, 
 and amidst the stirring elements of kindred minds in 
 Basle, received into his heart the great discovery of 
 free pardon through Christ. Philip Melancthon was 
 a boy of eight years, playing with the armour in his 
 
 11 
 
ii 4 JOHN KNOX. 
 
 father's shop, and listening to the rhymes of his gentle- 
 tempered mother, far in the small town of Bretten in 
 the Palatinate. Four years after Calvin was born in 
 the south of France. 
 
 John Knox's father sent him to the grammar-school 
 of Haddington, one of the most celebrated at that time 
 in Scotland. What progress he made we cannot tell, 
 as the whole of his boyhood has been left unrecorded. 
 Little more than Latin was then taught ; but we can 
 scarcely doubt that the man who studied Greek in 
 middle life, and knew nothing of Hebrew till he was 
 fifty, and then eagerly mastered it, must have been no 
 idle boy. 
 
 It is only when he leaves for the University that we 
 begin to see the living; mind of the future reformer. 
 Glasgow had become some sixty years before a seat of 
 learning, and there Knox matriculated in 1 522. I 
 have some notion, for I have gone through the ex- 
 perience, how the Haddington grammar-school lad felt 
 as he passed under the heavy archway into the world of 
 the University. He might have thought, one day I 
 shall become Archbishop of Glasgow. He could hardly 
 have thought that after three centuries his monument 
 as the Eeformer of Scotland would look down on the 
 noble cathedral under whose roof he so often knelt. 
 
 But now he has entered upon his studies. A cele- 
 brated doctor, John Mair by name, had recently come 
 from one of the oldest universities of Europe — that of 
 Paris — and drew to his class young men from every 
 quarter. He was one of the driest of lecturers and 
 most rigid of schoolmen, but he had brought from 
 Paris opinions that were new to the ears of Scotchmen. 
 Our young student hears him, with some uneasiness, 
 
JOHN KNOX. 115 
 
 mingled with pleasure, asserting such things as these : 
 that a general council was superior to the Pope, and 
 might, if necessary, depose him from his dignity ; that 
 papal excommunications had no force if pronounced on 
 irrelevant or invalid grounds ; and that avarice and 
 ambition were prevalent in the Church of Eome and 
 the Episcopal order. Listening to interesting novelties 
 like these, Knox did not grudge to follow his teacher 
 through the bristling distinctions and tedious details 
 of Aristotelian metaphysics, scholastic theology, and 
 canon law. 
 
 There was, moreover, a charm for him in these 
 studies. They opened up views to him of dark ques- 
 tions, set forth with all the ingenuity of such men as 
 Aquinas and Scotus, and they gave full employment 
 to a mind like his, with its boldness and patience, its 
 untried strength and untamed pride. 
 
 He was never a man who could half assent to 
 anything. His soul needed reality, and therefore he 
 rose so high in his acquaintance with the learning of 
 the day that he lectured upon it with great distinction, 
 and before he had reached the canonical age of twenty- 
 five he was ordained a priest. Thus he continued till 
 his thirtieth year, and whatever may have been his 
 occasional misgivings, he held fast to his old moorings 
 while the world was strongly moving in a contrary 
 direction, but when he did shift his ground it took 
 seven long years of search and struggle to make sure 
 again his footing. Knox was one of those natures 
 that are long and late in growing, and in whom great 
 changes are effected only by a heavy pressure, and at 
 last by a fearful wrench ; but when they are made 
 there is no retracing of the steps. This is the main 
 
n6 JOHN KNOX. 
 
 thing that gives a tinge of melancholy to, and withal 
 forms a point of peculiar interest in the whole career 
 of our noble hero. Unlike in this to our other re- 
 formers. The wild and mighty elements of Luther's 
 character drove him on from crisis to crisis in his 
 inward revolution, and after a few years of tremendous 
 conflict of soul and body he was swept right across the 
 threshold of the Eoman Church. Zwingle's free Swiss 
 nature, drawn out by the boundless sweep of the Alps 
 around him, moved swift as an avalanche which the 
 warm breath of spring has touched. Melancthon's 
 mild, womanly spirit suffered little in the transition, 
 for it took place when he was but a lad ; and so with 
 Calvin. His inflexible reasoning powers — the con- 
 science, so to speak, of his understanding — did for 
 him what strong heart-passions did for Luther, and 
 when twenty-five he was the finished man in prin- 
 ciples he ever was. 
 
 But with Knox the crisis began when with most 
 men the mind has hardened in the mould in which it 
 remains ever after. We doubt not, however, the 
 tedious process through which he passed gave a 
 decision to his after deeds ; certainly we owe to it 
 in a great measure the completeness of the Reforma- 
 tion in Scotland. 
 
 But ere we trace the steps of- Knox in his conver- 
 sion, let us in one or two sentences see what was the 
 state of matters outside of the University. Scotland 
 was at that time the most Popish country in Europe. 
 Farther than most from Rome, superstition and 
 credulity were not undeceived by a near view of the 
 pagan tastes, undisguised unbelief, and sensual talk 
 and practice of the Vatican. That there should be 
 
JOHN KNOX. 117 
 
 slums around Sfc. Peter's the ignorant Scotch never 
 dreamt, and therefore their first and only cardinal, 
 Beaton, had no difficulty in repressing suspicions. It 
 is rather ominous iudeed that just when Scotland 
 got a cardinal she was beginning not to need one. 
 Besides, I do not imagine that the Scotch people 
 were much given to thinking about these things. 
 The jprcefervidum ingenium, the hot and hasty spirit 
 which has since given to the world such poets as 
 Burns, and orators as Brougham and Chalmers, was 
 wasted in interminable raids across the Borders, when 
 they visited their gentle sister, England, or in redding 
 their marches amidst quarrel and bloodshed with the 
 neighbouring barons' domains. Popery and feudalism 
 drained the energies of a country into which the 
 Reformation put a soul, and from that time to this 
 few nations have sent forth abler men into public life 
 — none has been filled with a more thoughtful 
 and sagacious people. 
 
 The Church of Rome in Scotland was in a fearfully 
 corrupt state. It possessed more than half the wealth 
 of the nation. From cardinal to curate it was tainted 
 with the grossest immorality. Bishops avowedly. kept 
 their harlots, and the parish priest was the corrupter of 
 his neighbourhood. Their learning was equally im- 
 perfect — seventeen volumes, all in manuscript, formed 
 a very respectable library for a considerable monastery ; 
 and when you look at the character of the books you 
 can easily understand their influence. In that of 
 Stirling there was a copy of the Gospels and Epistles 
 in manuscript, four missals, two psalters, four anti- 
 phonies, three breviaries, two legends, four gradual s, 
 and three processionals. Many of the clergy, and even 
 
n8 JOHN KNOX. 
 
 bishops, had never heard of the New Testament. It 
 was affirmed by them "that Martin Luther had lately 
 composed a wicked book called the New Testament, 
 but that they, for their part, would adhere to the Old 
 Testament." 
 
 Bishops never preached. Here is one of their attempts. 
 The Archbishop of Glasgow, addressing his jackmen 
 and some old women at Ayr, when Wishart had roused 
 his zeal, said — " They say we sould preiche. Quhy 
 not ? Better lait thryve nor never thryve. Had us 
 still for your bischope, and we sail provide better the 
 next tyme." The priests in their discourses were 
 employed in awful denunciations of purgatorial fire, or 
 in ridiculous announcements of village gossip. The 
 pulpit was the advertising sheet of that day. Such 
 were common things. " The priest," says Knox, 
 " standeth up on the Sabbath and crieth, ' Aune hath 
 lost her spindle ; there is a flail stolen from behind the 
 barn ; the good wife on the other side hath lost a horn 
 spoon ; God's curse and mine rest on him that knoweth 
 of the goods and restoreth them not.' " 
 
 Bat now, even in Scotland, the tremblings of the 
 European movement began to be felt. Traders from 
 France to Leith and Dundee brought the books that 
 Luther and others were printing. In 1525 an Act 
 of Pai'liament was passed against such importations, 
 alleging as a reason why Scotland should be free 
 from them, that " it is a kingdom which has alwaies 
 been clere of sic filth and vice." Two years later 
 Patrick Hamilton, only twenty-four years of age, 
 returned from Wittemberg and Marburg, glowing with 
 a desire to enlighten his countrymen, and was burnt 
 at St. Andrews. " The reek, however, of that stake 
 
JOHN KNOX. 119 
 
 infected all on whome it fell ; " and martyr after 
 martyr only excited the imagination and curiosity of 
 the people. The fires that lighted the way of these 
 noble men to heaven threw their glare upon the dark 
 and foul corners of the Church, and helped the people 
 to see their bondage. • 
 
 The cause advanced. Scotland had again been able 
 to produce martyrs, and her deliverance was at hand. 
 James V. died in 1542; next year Parliament declared 
 it lawful for every subject to read the Scriptures in 
 the vulgar tongue. Queen Mary was born, and in 
 that year also, at the age of thirty-seven, John Knox 
 openly avowed Protestantism. 
 
 We left Knox a young priest, twenty-five years of 
 age. Five years that fascinating thing called the 
 Church of the Middle Ages bound his faith and sufficed 
 for his life. But as the mighty roar of the world with- 
 out sounded in his attentive ear, and the deep current 
 of the European mind ruffled the calm course of his 
 private thoughts, and as his soul was of the sort that 
 loved to listen to " the battle afar off, the thunder of 
 the captains, and the shouting," he abandoned the 
 schoolmen, and betook himself to the study of Augus- 
 tine. I would gladly speak to you of this greatest of 
 men that has appeared in the Church since the days 
 of John and Paul. He has played a most influential 
 part in the making of the minds by which other minds 
 have been made. Great in his sins, in his penitence, 
 in his Divine love ; great in his marvellous logic and 
 in his piercing insight, he was the father of Anselm 
 and Aquinas, the greatest of the schoolmen ; of Luther 
 and Calvin, the ablest of the reformers ; of Jansenius 
 and Pascal, the noblest of Romanists ; of Schleier- 
 
i:o JOHN KNOX. 
 
 maclier and Neander, the leaders of the second Refor- 
 mation. Hundreds of great minds have passed through 
 Augustine on their way to Christ ; yet Augustine, as 
 an ecclesiastic, supported Church theories and prin- 
 ciples, while his deeper nature clung to the grace of 
 God, and to faith in Christ. 
 
 John Knox was much benefited by the study of 
 this great man's writings. But Augustine led him to 
 the Scriptures, and there he remained ; and whether a. 
 man come from the dark clouds of superstition or the 
 dreary glare of scepticism, the first entrance of the 
 mild and sweet light of Scripture is by its tender and 
 strengthening influence something unspeakably fresh 
 and soothing. It was one of the great features of the 
 Reformation that the learned class was the religious 
 class — men whose struggles had been first for peace 
 with God, and whose wisdom, wit, and eloquence were 
 therefore transfigured by its calm and holy power. 
 
 We should think John Knox was now ready for his 
 work, but he did not think so. The man who could 
 front the face of kings, hid his face in a mantle, like 
 that brother spirit of old, Elijah, when the Lord passed 
 by. Knox was an humble man, as all great spirits 
 are. When thirty-nine he used to follow, as hearer 
 and disciple, the celebrated George Wishart ; and 
 after that apostolic man was brought to the stake, he 
 returned to teach his three or four young lads as tutor 
 in an East Lothian family. This is to my mind one 
 of the noble traits in Knox, that he never took a 
 public step till he was forced to it ; but when he did 
 so there was no driving him back. Cromwell, a man 
 of the same make and mettle, lived at St. Ives and Ely, 
 sowing his fields, gathering his farm- servants around 
 
JOHN KNOX. 121 
 
 him to prayer, and trying to walk humbly with God 
 till about the same age ; but when he did come forth 
 it was to lead others, and to lose no time. 
 
 After George Wishart's martyrdom. Cardinal Beaton, 
 his persecutor, was slain, and the castle of St. Andrews 
 occupied by his enemies. It became a place of safety 
 for others, and there Knox and his boys went. 
 
 John Eough was preacher in the castle, and Knox 
 was hearer. His abilities were recognised by all, but 
 they could not persuade him to preach. At last they 
 took him by guile, and gave him a gospel call in this 
 manner. After sermon Rough turned to Knox, and 
 exhorted him " to take the public office and charge of 
 preaching even as you look to avoid God's heavy dis- 
 pleasure, and desire that He shall multiply His graces 
 unto you." Overwhelmed by the address Knox tried 
 to speak — burst into tears — rushed out and hid him- 
 self in his chamber. For days his countenance showed 
 his grief and trouble of heart. Ah ! such is the stuff 
 of which Knox and mighty men are made. I read in 
 his life of two scenes of weeping. Queen Mary wept 
 because the plain, earnest man told her the truth ; but 
 I leave any one to say whether the tears of sensitive 
 and petulant loveliness are at all so affecting as the 
 tears of this deep heart, when its flood-gates were 
 broken up by what he felt to be a command from 
 God. 
 
 There is an interesting coincidence in the religious 
 history of Scotland that deserves to be noticed. 
 
 Scotland has had three great religious movements ; 
 the first against popery, the second against prelacy, 
 the third against patronage. Three parishes lying 
 next each other are famous because of the residence 
 
122 JOHN KNOX. 
 
 of the three leaders. John Knox began to preach in 
 St. Andrews, and in a castle, as befitted him ; Alex- 
 ander Henderson in the next village, Leuchars ; and as 
 you pass onwards you light on the manse and church 
 of Kilmany, where, after thirteen years of coldness 
 and formality, the noble spirit of Thomas Chalmers, 
 after a baptism of tears and the Holy Ghost, began, 
 Knox-like, a new career. 
 
 Knox had scarcely begun the work ere he was sent 
 adrift again to learn more in different schools. 
 
 The French at length got possession of the castle of 
 St. Andrews, and for nearly nineteen months he was 
 a prisoner in their galleys, loaded with chains and 
 working at the oar. 
 
 But there, amidst great faintings of spirit, he wrote 
 a book on prayer and a confession of his faith. He 
 was upheld otherwise. They would make him one 
 day give a kiss of adoration to the image of the 
 Virgin, and on his refusal thrust it upon him. Throw- 
 ing it into the river he exclaimed, " Let our Lady save 
 herself, she is light enough ; let her learn to swim." 
 The galley slave was the purest man among them. 
 Nor did he lose hope in his future mission. Men's 
 minds are in times like these raised into earnest pro- 
 phetic moods, for when lying sick and near death, one 
 day as the ship lay off between Dundee and St. 
 Andrews, seeing the steeple of the old cathedral in the 
 distance, his eye and his soul kindled, and he said, 
 " Yes, I know it well, for I see the steeple of that 
 church where God first opened my mouth in public to 
 His glory, and I am fully persuaded how weak soever I 
 may appear, that I shall not depart this life, till this my 
 tongue shall glorify His godly name in the same place." 
 
JOHN KNOX. 123 
 
 This holy and prophetic desire of Knox, however, 
 waited long for its gratification. God gave him a 
 time of rest and opportunity of learning in the next 
 years of his life. 
 
 Being excommunicated from Scotland, he proceeded 
 to England. There he was warmly received by Cran- 
 mer, Archbishop of Canterbury, who under the good 
 King Edward was struggling to carry on the work of 
 the Reformation. The few years of this pious prince's 
 reign, standing between Henry VIII. and Mary, are a 
 key to all the subsequent troubles in the Church of 
 England. It is impossible to enter upon them, but 
 this much is needful to be said, that Knox had here a 
 lesson in the true way of conducting the way of the 
 Reformation. 
 
 Henry VIII., unfortunately, was the first reformer of 
 England. His arbitrary transference of spiritual supre- 
 macy from the Pope to himself, his retention of the 
 ignorant priests and many of the superstitious forms of 
 popery, and at the same time the true reforming prin- 
 ciples among the people that mingled their share with 
 these other and heterogeneous elements, explain the 
 interminable struggle that has never ceased to trouble 
 and threaten the existence of the National Establish- 
 ment. 
 
 Here are the germs of the great parties of the pre- 
 sent day : the Broad Church, with their adherence to 
 royal prerogative ; the Puseyite, with their leaning to- 
 wards Romanist rites and tenets ; and the Evangelical, 
 with their love of the pure Gospel. It is due to Knox 
 to state these things, because in England he is reckoned 
 an extreme man. The fact is, Cranmer, Latimer, 
 Hooper, and Jewel were of the same mind with him 
 
124 JOHN KNOX. 
 
 in most of his views of doctrine, polity, and worship. 
 These men set before them as their model the Cal- 
 vinistic and Presbyterian Churches of Zurich and 
 Geneva, but from many causes they could not reach it, 
 and when Edward VI. died, popery again rose into 
 power. It is known to very few that Knox was a 
 preacher in the Church of England, though in many 
 things an allowed nonconformist ; that he was consulted 
 about the Book of Common Prayer ; that he had in- 
 fluence to procure an important change in the Com- 
 munion Office, completely excluding the notion of the 
 corporeal presence of Christ ; that he was one of the 
 court chaplains, and that he had offered to him a 
 bishopric which he refused.* 
 
 What might have been his influence in England 
 had God permitted his residence there, we know not. 
 When, however, Queen Mary ascended the throne, he 
 had to flee, not to Scotland indeed, for there another 
 Mary, she of Guise, awaited him, but to the Continent. 
 After a troubled interval in Frankfort, at the desire of 
 the English congregation, he crossed the Jura, entered 
 Geneva, and first stood face to face with Calvin. 
 
 Calvin was at this time the greatest man in Europe. 
 Luther had died eight years earlier, grey-headed and 
 weary of the strife, and laid, his mighty heart now still, 
 in the church on whose doors he fastened his ninety- 
 five theses. Geneva was now to the Reformation what 
 Wittemberg had been at the beginning ; and there 
 the soul of every movement was John Calvin. Few 
 men have been more blackened and misunderstood ; 
 and yet I know of none by whose matchless coherence 
 of thought, passionate sense of unworthiness, complete 
 
 * Lorimer, "John Knox in England, in Newcastle, and Berwick." 
 
JOHN KNOX. 125 
 
 prostration before the majesty of God, child-like love 
 of the Saviour, and unwearied zeal and labour for the 
 progress of holiness, the mind is so affected, and almost 
 awed, as by those of this man. Looking at him from 
 a distance, he stands like the Mont Blanc he beheld 
 every day, cold, sad, solitary, and sublime ; but draw- 
 ing nearer, we discover beneath this loftiness of soul, 
 and ennobled by it, many of the tenderest graces and 
 sweetest affections. 
 
 So John Knox felt it, and till the end of Calvin's 
 life, when he was in Scotland, he received his letters 
 and rejoiced in his friendship. 
 
 We should have liked to have sat by these two men 
 some day in 1 5 56 in Calvin's study in Geneva. Calvin 
 preaches every day, writes letters to all Europe, com- 
 poses books full of profound thought, consults with 
 the magistrates, and this has gradually worn out his 
 strength. There he stands (I shall never forget his 
 portrait in the public library in Geneva) with his high, 
 square brow, his piercing eye, his thin-cut lips, his 
 whole face of unearthliness, study, and self-denial. 
 He could not but recognise in Knox a brother — a 
 younger one certainly in learning and intellect, but 
 his match in simplicity of character, his superior in 
 ready popular speech and rich vein of shrewd Scotch 
 humour. Knox has none of Calvin's deep and subtle 
 speculation in his eye, but it is keen, straight-looking, 
 and withal, melancholy, as of a man who has seen 
 sorrow ; and there is in his lips, if not the finer traits 
 of genius, yet a defiant compression, and you know, 
 should he open them, words to purpose and of pith 
 would not be wanting. 
 
 Knox spent in Geneva the quietest part of his 
 
126 JOHN KNOX. 
 
 troubled life,* but his heart yearned after his native 
 land. Letter after letter was sent by him, and at 
 last the time came when he should return. Once 
 and again he did so, till in I 5 5 9 he came back never 
 again to visit Geneva. " Grave men," he says, " were 
 melted into tears at my departure." By this time 
 many of the best nobles in the land were thoroughly 
 Protestant ; the people hated the French Eegent for 
 her duplicity, and the French troops for swarming 
 among them ; Elizabeth of England was ready to 
 back them. When Knox came his presence gave 
 confidence to all. As a counsellor of the nobles, as 
 a champion of the people, his influence acted power- 
 fully in controlling or impelling as was needed. 
 
 Of all the Eeformations, that of Scotland was the 
 last and best. It had grown in strength during forty 
 years. It touched the national mind at every point. 
 The spirit of Wallace, as well as of Knox, moved over 
 the land. Neither the nobles nor the people would 
 submit to be governed by French soldiers and French 
 cardinals. The Divine right of monarchy was flung 
 away, and the great principle that power comes of the 
 people, and must be used for their behoof, was practi- 
 cally asserted by deposing the Queen Eegent and 
 placing the government in other hands. Above all, 
 the people were wearied of popery, and needed only 
 that their Protestantism should be declared. Hence 
 everything proceeded regularly and so peacefully that 
 not a single Papist was put to death for his opinions. 
 
 John Knox hurried up and down the country, 
 preaching wherever he went the full and free pardon 
 of the Gospel and exposing Popish idolatry and super- 
 
 * Dr. Lorimer's "Researches in Geneva." 
 
JOHN KNOX. 127 
 
 stition. At last he readied St. Andrews. Things 
 were there trembling in the balance. The Bishop sent 
 him word that, " In case John Knox presented him- 
 self at the preaching-place in his town and principal 
 church, he should make him to be saluted by a dozen 
 of culverines, whereof the most part should light 
 upon his nose." But Knox called to remembrance 
 his assured hope ten years ago in the galleys, and 
 in spite of all he entered and preached. So power- 
 fully had he preached, that the provost, bailies, and 
 inhabitants agreed to set up the reformed worship in 
 the town. The cathedral was stripped of images and 
 pictures, and the monasteries were pulled down. 
 
 Some writers, over-jealous in matters of taste, and 
 looking coldly, moreover, upon the reformation of which 
 Knox was the advocate, have been unable to forget, 
 and unwearied in denouncing such barbarous deeds. 
 The fact, however, is, that Knox was indignant at the 
 excesses of the rabble, and in his usual emphatic style 
 was not slow to proclaim them as the rascal multitude, 
 for demolishing buildings so much needed as places 
 of worship according to the reformed manner. He 
 could, indeed, see how the removal of objects that had 
 so long enslaved the mind and fascinated the imagi- 
 nation of a rude and superstitious people might be 
 accompanied with anything but injury to their ad- 
 vancement in a purer faith and more spiritual wor- 
 ship ; and looking at the matter in this light, the 
 old proverb was easily applicable : " Down with these 
 crow-nests, else the crows will big (build) in them 
 again." There was, however, a better reason than this 
 given by a woman in Perth, who, when the flames of 
 the monasteries in that town were rising to heaven, and 
 
i 2 8 JOHN KNOX. 
 
 some were lamenting their destruction, exclaimed, that 
 if they knew the scenes of villainy and debauchery that 
 had passed within these walls they would " admire the 
 judgment of heaven in bringing these haunts of pollu- 
 tion to such an end." Shortly after, in the month of 
 August 1560, Parliament met and sanctioned the 
 establishment of Protestantism. Knox, with others, 
 drew up a Confession of Faith, which was read over 
 article by article. The close of all this turmoil is 
 interesting. The Earl of Athol, with the Lords 
 Somerville and Borthwick, were the only persons who 
 voted against it, assigning the truly catholic reason 
 — We will believe as our forefathers believed. The 
 Bishops spake nothing. Knox was removed to Edin- 
 burgh. Not contented with what had been done, he 
 pressed upon the Parliament the duties they owed to 
 the Church and the nation. 
 
 He stood up for the education of the people. In 
 the " First Book of Discipline " he required that out 
 of the old Church lands and tithes there should be so 
 much appropriated as would build a school in every 
 parish. But he went further than this, and proposed 
 that a 'college should be erected in every "notable 
 town," in which logic and rhetoric should be taught, 
 along with the learned languages. He would provide 
 at the public expense for the education of the children 
 of the poor who discovered talents for learning ; and 
 all these in addition to the three national universities. 
 Men are only now-a-days thinking that it would be a 
 great matter to have a peoples' college and library 
 in Liverpool, Manchester, and Glasgow. Had it rested 
 with John Knox alone, Scotland would have had these 
 in every large town three hundred years ago. The 
 
JOHN KNOX. 129 
 
 fact is, instead of being a rude fanatic and harsh bigot, 
 there was no man in Scotland who threw himself more 
 warmly into the progress of thought and learning ; 
 and there are few men in England now who would be 
 bold enough to plan schemes of popular instruction so 
 sweeping and comprehensive. He could be no narrow- 
 minded ascetic who would have every young apprentice 
 and working-man in his beloved Scotland an adept in 
 logic and rhetoric and the learned languages. The 
 nobles, and with them the good Regent Murray, shrugged 
 their shoulders and pronounced the plan " a devout 
 imagination." 
 
 From this time John Knox, as a true tribune of the 
 people, was never at peace with the nobles as a body. 
 There was a good reason for their opposition. Most 
 of them had seized upon Church lands, others had 
 taken long leases of them for small sums of money, 
 or got friends appointed bishops who transmitted to 
 them ample compensation. These last were called by 
 the shrewd Scotch " Tulchan bishops," such being 
 the name given to a calf-skin filled with straw, to 
 which, nevertheless, the cow readily yielded up her 
 milk. 
 
 Knox's spirit was roused to indignation against 
 such unworthy meanness. " Well," said he, " if the 
 end of this order, pretended to be taken for the main- 
 tenance of the ministers, be happy, my judgment fails 
 me ; for I am assured that God is not the author of it, 
 for first I see two parts given to the devil, and one- 
 third must be divided between God and the devil." 
 
 But Knox had other troubles to encounter — nobles 
 who were so greedy of gain would not be apt to stand 
 firm when the cause of religion was in danger. Scot- 
 
130 JOHN KNOX. 
 
 land could look to none but to himself to save her 
 from the insidious aggression of the old popery. 
 
 During the year of 1 561 that immediately suc- 
 ceeded the Parliament which sanctioned the Reforma- 
 tion, the young widow of the dauphin of France, and 
 queen of Scotland, returned to the palace of her fathers 
 in Edinburgh. Mary at that time was only nineteen 
 years of age. Educated by her uncles of Lorraine 
 and Guise, in France, in the Divine right of kings over 
 their subjects, and in the infallible certainty of the 
 Eomish faith, unchecked in her self-will and natural 
 freedom of manner, in the gayest and most dissolute 
 court of Europe, she came back to assume the govern- 
 ment of Scotland. The result was confusion, misery, 
 misconduct, and at last death. There are two por- 
 traits of Mary in the great gallery of Hardwick Hall, 
 that tell the sad history of twenty-seven long years. 
 We see her in the first as she was when she set 
 foot in Scotland. Looking upon it there is a light 
 and delicacy about the whole face that fulfil all we 
 have heard of her surpassing beauty. The smooth 
 rounded forehead, the hazel eye, the soft auburn hair, 
 the cheeks most delicately tinted, the finely formed 
 lips, and all pervaded by a quick expression of young 
 enjoyment; these when once seen can never be for- 
 gotten. The other is a dark melancholy picture, a 
 large full-length, in black, with a cross and rosary, 
 with little beauty, and a heavy shadow on the brow, and 
 in the eye a timidity approaching to terror, as if she 
 were listening to the step of some enemy. Poor 
 Mary ! Beauty and long years of loneliness and bitter 
 imprisonment, and at length death, calmly welcomed 
 as a relief to the worn-out heart, have shaken the 
 
JOHN KNOX. 131 
 
 judgment of the wise, and shed the tears of the con- 
 demning. Still, had her wishes been fulfilled, three 
 centuries of piety and progress in Scotland had been 
 awanting to us, and another Ireland had darkened the 
 glory of our country. 
 
 Mary came from France, determined at all hazards 
 to re-establish popery. In a few days after her arrival, 
 John Knox was called to her presence. She charged 
 him among other things with encouraging subjects to 
 resist their rulers. " Think you," said she, " that sub- 
 jects, having the power, may resist their princes ? " 
 " If princes," Knox replied, " exceed their bounds, 
 madam, no doubt they may be resisted even by power. 
 For no greater honour, nor greater obedience, is to be 
 given to kings and princes than God has commanded 
 to be given to father and. mother. But the father may 
 be struck with a frenzy, in which he would slay his 
 children. Now, madam, if the children apprehend 
 the father, and take the sword from him, and keep 
 him in prison till the frenzy be over, think yon, madam, 
 the children do any wrong? Even so, madam, it is 
 with princes, who would murder the children of God 
 that are subject to them." The conversation then 
 turned on religion. " Ye are not," said Mary, " the 
 kirk that I will nourish. I will defend the Kirk of 
 Rome ; for it is, I think, the true Kirk of God. 
 "Your will, madam," replied Knox, "is no reason; 
 neither doth your thought make the Roman Church to 
 be the true and immaculate Spouse of Jesus Christ." 
 He added that the Roman Church had degenerated 
 farther than the Jewish Church which crucified Christ. 
 " My conscience is not so," said the queen. " Con- 
 science, madam, requires knowledge, and I fear that right 
 
l 3 2 JOHN KNOX. 
 
 knowledge you have none." On taking his leave, the 
 Reformer said, " I pray God, madam, that you may be 
 as blessed within the commonwealth of Scotland as 
 ever Deborah was in the commonwealth of Israel." 
 
 One is at great loss to discover in these earnest 
 statements, and that most loyal and Christian prayer, 
 the barbarous address or " bigot scowl," as even Sir 
 Walter Scott calls it, that in the minds of some, seem 
 to make up their whole idea of our Reformer. This, 
 moreover, comes with a bad grace from writers avowedly 
 popish, who should know, that had Mary been a Pro- 
 testant queen in a Romish country in those times, a 
 measure harder than the hardest words would have 
 been dealt out to her, her crown would not have 
 been secure to her for an hour, and her very life little 
 more so. 
 
 Not long after, Queen Mary wished to marry a 
 papist, Henry Darnley. The nobles were by this 
 time under the influence of the court. Some had 
 even the effrontery to declare that they had neither 
 law nor parliament for their religion. 
 
 John Knox did not spare them, as they came to 
 hear him in St. Giles', and warned them of the con- 
 sequences that would arise if they gave their consent 
 to the union of their sovereign with a papist. 
 
 Again he was sent for ; Mary fell into a passion, 
 declaring that in all ways she had tried to please him, 
 " And yet I cannot be quit of you ; I vow to God I shall 
 be avenged one clay." Hereupon she burst into tears. 
 " What have you to do with my marriage ? " she said, 
 " or what are you in this commonwealth ?" "A sub- 
 ject born within it," answered the Reformer; "and 
 albeit I be neither earl, lord, or baron in it ; yet has 
 
JOHN KNOX. 133 
 
 God made me (how abject that ever I be in your eyes) 
 a profitable member within the same." As he left the 
 room with a merry countenance, some of the popish 
 attendants said, in his hearing, " He is not afraid." 
 " Why should the pleasing face of a gentlewoman afray 
 me ? " said he (regarding them with a sarcastic scowl) ; 
 " I have looked in the face of many angry men, and 
 yet have not been affrayed above measure." 
 
 For many years he fought the court and nobles 
 alone, not for himself, but for the cause of Christ and 
 the people of Scotland, who looked to him as their 
 unflinching friend. 
 
 At last he was worn out. Of a small and frail 
 stature, he could bear but little more. His friend, the 
 good Regent Murray, was assassinated, and it affected 
 him so violently that he was seized with apoplexy. 
 They fired at him through the window of his old house 
 in the Canongate, and he was glad to retire for a while 
 to St. Andrews. 
 
 There the old man used to walk in the courts of 
 the College talking to the students. His soul went out 
 to the young hopes of those who should succeed him in 
 the great work. On the Sabbaths he preached to the 
 people of the town, and as he was, next to Luther, the 
 greatest popular orator of the Reformation, it is right 
 we should let you know how he preached. An eye- 
 witness thus describes it : — 
 
 " I had my pen and little book, and took such things 
 as I could comprehend. 
 
 " In the opening up of his text he was moderate. 
 The space of half-an-hour he made me so to thrill and 
 tremble that I could not hold a pen to write. He was 
 very weak. I saw him every day of his doctrine go 
 
134 JOHN KNOX. 
 
 slowly and wearily, with a furring of martriks about 
 his neck, a staff in one hand, and good, godly Richard 
 Ballenden, his servant, holding up the other oxter, 
 from the abbey to the parish kirk, and by the said 
 Richard and another servant lifted into the pulpit, 
 where he behoved to lean at his first entry ; but ere he 
 had done with his sermon he was so active and vigo- 
 rous that he was like to beat the pulpit into pieces and 
 flie out of it." 
 
 He returned to Edinburgh to ordain his successor. 
 He never preached more powerfully, and after the ser- 
 mon he was led slowly from his beloved church to the 
 old house, never more to go out a living man. 
 
 His death was simple and noble, not without those 
 genial gleams of humour and sterner struggles of spirit 
 that all along characterised the man. 
 
 When very sick some friends called on him, and 
 they would have left, but he would have them stay till 
 a hogshead of wine in his cellar should be pierced for 
 them, adding, with a hilarity he indulged in when with 
 those he loved, " That they should send for some of it 
 so long as it lasted, for he would not tarry till it was 
 all drunk." 
 
 When near his last hour he had a most fearful 
 assault of temptation. " The cunning serpent," he 
 said, " has laboured to persuade me that I have merited 
 heaven and eternal life and blessedness by the faithful 
 discharge of my ministry. But blessed be God, who sug- 
 gested some such passages of Scripture as these : ' 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.' Upon this, as one vanquished, he left me." 
 
 At last they thought him asleep and prayed for him. 
 
JOHN KNOX. 135 
 
 They asked him if he heard the prayers. " Would to 
 God," said he, " that you and all men had heard them 
 as I have heard them ; I praise God for that heavenly 
 sound. Now," he said, with a deep sigh, " it is come." 
 They repeated holy promises of Scripture, and asked 
 him to give a sign that he heard them, and died in peace. 
 He lifted up one of his hands and fell asleep. 
 
 I can imagine the long silence in that old house as 
 it drew near the midnight of that day in the November 
 of 1572. Looking upon that face, thin, furrowed, and 
 now peaceful in death, the whole life of the man would 
 rise up in their hearts with its incessant toil, its com- 
 plete unselfishness, its exceeding jealousy for the Lord 
 of Hosts, its grand trust and courage drawn from the 
 crucified One. When they buried him on Wednesday, 
 Earl Morton pronounced his eulogium in these words, 
 " Here lies one who never feared the face of man." 
 
 And now when we look back through the ages since 
 he departed, we see everywhere the noble features of his 
 character, and the deep indentations of his principles. 
 
 Scotland owes everything she has of value to this 
 man. There is not a great movement in her history 
 but has followed in his track. The heroic Covenanters, 
 the free-minded Seceders,the self-denying Disruptionists, 
 took much of their shape and impulse from the great 
 Eeformer. And just in proportion as the good and 
 pious men in the Church of Scotland have been ani- 
 mated by his principles, have they wou the affections 
 of the people and spread the cause of Christ. England 
 also owes to him the first movements of her protracted 
 struggle with the House of Stuart. The Presby- 
 terianism of the Long Parliament was his — Cromwell 
 followed right in his spirit — and the glorious Revolu- 
 
136 JOHN KNOX. 
 
 tion of 1688 was but the carrying out of those 
 constitutional and religious principles, the declaration 
 of which by Knox drew tears from Mary, and has 
 drawn down upon himself calumny and misrepresenta- 
 tion to this very hour. 
 
 We need not then stay to defend him ; his works 
 praise him in the gates. Nor does he care about it now. 
 
 For ourselves no better wish could be formed than 
 this : that in each one present there were the same 
 spiritual struggle, humility, and faith in Jesus Christ, 
 as in Knox. 
 
 For our country, could prayers effect it, we should 
 exclaim, Oh ! for an hour of John Knox, to rally the 
 timid, to resist the opposing, and to show us what men 
 they were who in other times rolled back the darkness 
 of centuries, that we may not yield a foot-breadth of 
 the glorious inheritance they have bequeathed us, 
 but in their spirit, and, above all, in the spirit of the 
 Great Eedeemer and Saviour of the world, their Lord 
 and ours, may go forward to do the work of our own 
 day. 
 
 " Lives of great men all remind us 
 We can make our lives sublime, 
 And departing, leave behind us 
 Footprints in the sands of time : 
 
 Footprints, that perhaps another 
 Sailing o'er life's solemn main, 
 
 A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 
 Seeing may take heart again. 
 
 Let us, then, be up and doing, 
 
 With a heart for any fate ; 
 Still achieving, still pursuing, 
 
 Learn to labour and to wait." 
 
 — Longfellow. 
 
( 137 ) 
 
 VI. 
 
 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 To introduce to this audience one of the greatest men 
 in all history, perhaps the greatest of Englishmen, 
 and certainly the greatest of Puritans, it is necessary 
 simply to utter that name which can never be pro- 
 nounced without awakening every feeling that emi- 
 nence in genius, misfortune, patriotism, and piety can 
 call forth. 
 
 It is now two hundred and seventy-one years since 
 John Milton was born in Bread Street, London, on the 
 ninth of December 1608. No reflecting man, as he 
 hurries through Cheapside, can even, at this day, look 
 down that narrow thoroughfare without being pecu- 
 liarly interested with the remembrance of this event. 
 He need not, however, step aside to visit the house, 
 well known from having on its front the fitting sign 
 of a spread eagle, for, since the fire of 1666, it has 
 ceased to exist. 
 
 The remembrance and the results of the period of 
 Milton's birth can never pass away. It was one of 
 the most remarkable ages in all history, ranking with 
 those of Pericles, in Greece ; Augustus, in Rome ; 
 Luther, in Germany ; Louis XIV., in France ; and the 
 French Revolution, with the forty years that followed 
 
I3 8 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 it, throughout Europe. It is certainly by far the most 
 marked epoch in English history. If you take your 
 stand upon the year 1608, and sweep round in a 
 circle from 1560 to 1 660, from the beginning of the 
 reign of Elizabeth to that of Charles II., you will find 
 that the time includes nearly all the greatest men and 
 questions in British literature, politics, and religion. It 
 was in the very centre of this creative and fertile era 
 that Milton was born j and when death took him, the 
 last of a mighty race of men disappeared. Into its 
 large mould his mind was cast ; to its powerful and 
 searching influences he was subjected in his earliest 
 years ; and even he, however strongly reacting, could 
 not fail to be affected by it. 
 
 It would be out of place to inquire into the causes 
 that gave to this period its amazing freshness, profu- 
 sion, and magnificence. It is sufficient to note that it 
 followed the disenthralling time of the Reformation, 
 and the advancing wealth and importance of the middle 
 classes ; and was accompanied by the chivalry and 
 glories of the days of Queen Elizabeth. In every de- 
 partment the human mind was more powerful, active, 
 and productive than perhaps it had ever been before. 
 In the department of literature it stands unequalled. 
 The names of Shakespeare, Spenser, Raleigh, Bacon ; 
 and further on, of Taylor, Browne, Barrow, Howe, 
 Bunyan, and our own Milton, are names of men, not 
 of mere taste or reasoning, but of original genius 
 and immense learning. Nor in the department of 
 politics was it less eminent. Then began and grew 
 into strength the great conflict that added to Magna 
 Charta the Petition of Right, and that closing in 
 the Revolution settlement deserves to be studied and 
 
JOHN MILTON. 139 
 
 revered as the birthday of British liberty and inde- 
 pendence. For it was then that the Divine right of 
 kings, their power of taxation and of arbitrary punish- 
 ment, were discussed and denied. It was then that an 
 Englishman's person, property, home, and thoughts 
 were guaranteed his own for ever. It was, above all, 
 the period of religious awakening and conflict. The 
 first great European crisis, that between Eome and 
 Keformation, was now nearly one hundred years old. 
 In England the contest was taking another and a 
 peculiar shape. There was in one part of the English 
 Church a growing fondness for and adoption of the 
 doctrines, rites, and government of the Church of 
 Eome ; a clinging to priestly powers, sacramental effi- 
 cacy, and gorgeous ceremonies. In another part there 
 was an equally strong determination to push the work 
 of reformation to its Scriptural limits, and to recede in 
 simplicity, purity, and liberty, farther and farther from 
 Rome. Each of these tendencies is native to the 
 human mind, and each of them found authority and 
 room to work, from the standard books of the same 
 Church. For the germ of the inextricable confusion 
 which existed then, and exists still, lies in the Refor- 
 mation of England having been a patchwork between 
 the passions of Henry and the principles of Cranmer. 
 It is a house which differs according to the point of 
 view from which it is observed. Approach it from 
 one side, and it looks like a piece of Roman architec- 
 ture ; but come to it from another, and it is solid plain 
 Geneva work. Hence the Prelatic party of Milton's 
 times, the Non-Jurors of William III, and the Puseyism 
 of the present day. They were favoured with Laud in 
 their times, we are blessed with Philpots in ours. And 
 
i 4 o JOHN MILTON. 
 
 hence also the Puritan party within the Church, non- 
 conformity without, and the growth of a new Puritan 
 party again within the Church in the evangelical clergy. 
 The Ushers and Leightons of that time are just the 
 Simeons and Bickersteths of this. 
 
 But these differences gave shape and impulse to the 
 movements for individual and national libertv : and it 
 is not difficult to see on what side each party would 
 range itself. The Romanising party, opposing all in- 
 dependent action of mind in religious things, naturally 
 set itself against the same in the social and political 
 departments, and basing itself on arbitrary authority 
 and Divine right, sympathised with the same principles 
 when applied to support absolute monarchy and de- 
 spotic power. The reforming party, on the other hand, 
 asserting and employing liberty of thought and con- 
 science in religion, carried the same principles into 
 the state ; liked the tyranny of James or Charles as 
 little as that of Bancroft or Laud, and added to the 
 power of their Puritanism the kindred power of their 
 patriotism. 
 
 Thus, you can easily observe, the two parties were 
 ranged against each other; their lines extending from 
 point to point in the grand field of the dearest and 
 most sacred human and divine rights. It was in the 
 midst of this period, rising year by year to its crisis, 
 that Milton was born. 
 
 It will be well, before we proceed, to mark out the 
 main divisions of his life ; and they are three in num- 
 ber. The first, extending from his birth in 1608 to 
 his return from Italy in 1639, includes the whole 
 course of his training for his future work ; the second, 
 reaching from 1639 to 1658, contains his political 
 
JOHN MILTON. 141 
 
 and public career; and the third, beginning in 1658 
 and ending in his death in 1674, is rich with the 
 latest fruits of his genius and wisdom, of which we 
 need here mention " Paradise Lost " only. 
 
 The youth and early manhood of Milton are full of 
 interest and instruction. We must beware of linger- 
 ing too long upon a season that leads us up to the 
 fountain-heads of a mind and character so original and 
 finished, and to the first hopes and pursuits of a life 
 that was to be continued amidst the thick of contro- 
 versy, and ended in the seclusion of poverty and 
 blindness. There are few things in all biography so 
 attractive and instructing to young men as the youth 
 of Milton. 
 
 In the father and mother of Milton, we find parents 
 worthy of him. His father must have had all his 
 son's independence : for becoming a Puritan at Oxford 
 University he was disinherited by his old Popish father ; 
 and in him we find also the passion for music, next to 
 that for liberty in Milton ; for he was himself a com- 
 poser of tunes sung to this day in our churches. His 
 mother, a lady of good family, either from Wales or 
 Lancashire, was of a gentle disposition. 
 
 In this quiet and elegant home Milton was reared. 
 Unconscious of his existence, the greatest wits of Eng- 
 land, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Donne, Selden, and 
 others, met in these years for their nightly entertain- 
 ment in the Mermaid Tavern hard by in Friday Street. 
 It is not too much to suppose, that Shakespeare may 
 have seen the boy Milton ; however that may be, it is 
 pleasant to know of their being so near each other'; it 
 is full of rich suggestion to remember that Shake- 
 speare died in 16 16 at Stratford, when Milton, in his 
 
142 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 eighth year, was beginning to think. These men 
 represent their times — Shakespeare, the boundless, in- 
 tellectual, and imaginative freedom of his — Milton, 
 the concentrated and sublime moral purpose of his. 
 It may be disputed, which is the greater poet ; it can- 
 not, which is the greater man. How much we miss, 
 in the amazing Shakespearian range, that clearness 
 and elevation of spiritual aim which would have added 
 " the consecration " to the " Poet's Dream " and made 
 him, without any sad deductions, one of the greatest 
 benefactors of men. Up to his fifteenth year, Milton 
 was educated at home, and had as his tutor Thomas 
 Young, a man who, because of his Puritanism, was 
 forced in 1 630 to leave his country and his cure, a 
 man of piety, and as Milton himself says in an elegy 
 he wrote to him — 
 
 " First led by him through sweet Aonian shade, 
 Each sacred haunt of Pindus I surveyed." 
 
 It is an immense mistake to suppose that Puritanism 
 was merely " a small unsightly root, but of Divine 
 effect," as sour as it was strong ; on the contrary, it 
 ranked at this time amongst its numbers the majority 
 of the best cultivated minds in England. 
 
 In his fifteenth- year he went to St. Paul's school, 
 and to this year belong the first traces of his mind. 
 Very characteristically they are versions of two of the 
 Psalms, and in the handling of thought and language 
 there is a manner that does not belie what he after- 
 wards was. When seventeen he entered Cambridge, 
 and continued there seven years. During this time, 
 he continued to add to those stores of learning which 
 he was afterwards to shape into higher creations. He 
 
JOHN MILTON. 143 
 
 was a universal scholar. He was at home among the 
 old sacred bards of the Bible ; the poets of Greece, — 
 Homer and Euripides especially ; those of Rome, giv- 
 ing somewhat strangely the preference to Ovid ; those 
 of modern Europe, among whom his favourites were 
 Dante, Tasso, Spenser, and Shakespeare. Nor must 
 we omit what he himself dwells upon, the ardent love 
 of his mind, " in the spacious circuits of her musings," 
 for the great poet-philosopher Plato, who at that time, 
 and for many years after, formed most of the noblest 
 Cambridge minds, and among others Jeremy Taylor, 
 Henry More, and John Howe. From many minute 
 references in his works, and from the great affinity 
 between them, it is not to be doubted, that at this 
 period at least, this wonderful Pagan Theologue, as 
 Howe calls him, shed over his genius a purer light of 
 wisdom and affection, amidst the dazzling images of 
 poetry and the fascinating conflicts of politics. These 
 were, however, but a small portion of his studies. 
 Those only who have read annotations to Milton's 
 works can possibly be aware of his almost universal 
 command, even to verbal imitation, of the whole of 
 ancient and modern literature. It is well to bring 
 out this for the purpose of showing that Milton pos- 
 sessed that genius for labour without which all other 
 genius can never reach its perfect stature or perform 
 its highest works. 
 
 The college time, however, was one of production 
 also ; and omitting his Latin elegies, which give us 
 many fine touches of his young and fresh hopes, his 
 English poems are by far the most remarkable. In the 
 former he is more an echo of the ancients — in the latter 
 we have the dawn and key-note of the future man. 
 
i 4 4 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 The ode on the morning of Christ's nativity has, like 
 Nineveh monuments, the arrow of the king upon it. 
 It is weighty in thought, severe in sentiment, rich in 
 allusion, varied and solemn in cadence, and worthy to 
 inaugurate the twenty-first year of Milton's life. It is 
 impossible to separate Milton's progress in poetry from 
 his religious growth, as he himself expresses it in the 
 sonnet on his twenty-third birthday : — 
 
 " All is, if I have grace to use it so, 
 As ever in my great Task-master's eye." 
 
 We never hear of any great crisis in the history of 
 his soul considered apart from that of his genius. The 
 sleepless anxiety of Cromwell in his twenty-fourth year, 
 and the wild agonies of Bunyan, seem to have been 
 unknown to him. Early training and the peculiar 
 seriousness of his mind naturally give to his religious 
 experience an unbroken character, and in the face and 
 words of the youth we mark the same features and 
 tones which grew and deepened as age advanced. We 
 have often wished to have had such a revelation of his 
 mind in this matter as the letters of Cromwell and the 
 " Grace Abounding " of Bunvan give of theirs. Enough, 
 however, escapes him to show that it partook as much 
 of the old prophet as the Gospel evangelist. There 
 were many things beside native cast of mind to produce 
 this effect. It was an age of Hebrew sternness, and 
 Milton was becoming more and more Puritan as the 
 opposite party were pushing matters to extremes. This 
 was the period of ship money and soap monopolies in 
 the state — and of altars in the east end of churches, 
 and of charging all clergymen to have in good repair 
 and order " four surplices at All-hallowtide." Not 
 
JOHN MILTON. 145 
 
 many years before, the pilgrim fathers had set sail in 
 the little Mayflower and found a home for Puritanism 
 in New England. Still neither Charles nor Laud 
 would take warning. 
 
 These things were, of course, known and talked of 
 in Cambridge. Two young men were there who looked 
 at things differently, and who, in after years, became 
 the greatest writers on either side. These were Jeremy 
 Taylor and Milton. In colleges close to each other 
 they were studying — Jeremy Taylor having entered the 
 university a year after Milton. Both were wonderful 
 men and had strange vicissitudes. But in this, apart 
 from other things, they were different — Taylor was 
 one of those studious, imaginative men who are content 
 with their dreams and their folios, and surround them- 
 selves with a world of their own — letting the actual 
 world drift on as it best may — Milton was all this and 
 more; he had his imagination and love of study in 
 chains to his will ; and while he wrote books to be 
 read, he did actions to be written. 
 
 Had it not been for the petty posture -master 
 Puseyism of Laud ; his canons about vestments,- and 
 kneelings, and turnings to the east ; binding them as 
 eternal truths upon the consciences of all who entered 
 the Church, Milton would, according to his father's 
 desire and his own resolutions, have taken orders ; but 
 he declined doing so, for, as he says, " perceiving that 
 tyranny had invaded the Church, that he that would 
 take orders must write slave and take an oath withal, 
 which, unless he took with a conscience that could 
 retch, he must either straight perjure or split his faith 
 — I thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before 
 the sacred office of speaking bought and begun with 
 
 K 
 
146 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 servitude and forswearing." Nor did " the insipid 
 clamours of the bar," as he calls them, nor " the beaten 
 path which leads right on to opulence " please his mind, 
 which had by this time felt the stirrings of a higher 
 duty and usefulness. In this state of feeling Milton 
 took his degrees, and, esteemed by all, left a univer- 
 sity which, like many of its best sons, he had never 
 loved. 
 
 Many years after a young student from the vale of 
 Esthwaite visited the room known as Milton's study, 
 and, standing there, his image, as he walked among 
 men in his glorious golden dawn, grew up in dis- 
 tinctness before him. Young Wordsworth, afterwards 
 so like him in the purity and wisdom of his genius, 
 and the noble self-reliance of his character, thus speaks 
 of young Milton : — 
 
 " Yea our blind poet, who in his later day 
 Stood almost single ; uttering odious truth — 
 Darkness before and danger's voice behind, 
 Soul awful — if the earth has ever lodg'd 
 An awful soul — I seemed to see him here 
 Familiarly, and in his scholar's dress 
 Bounding before me yet a stripling youth — 
 A boy, no better ; with his rosy cheeks 
 Angelical, keen eye, courageous look, 
 And conscious step of purity and pride." 
 
 By this time Milton's father had attained inde- 
 pendence, and lived in his own country house at Horton, 
 in Buckinghamshire ; and here Milton spent five of 
 perhaps the happiest years in his life. He continued 
 to add to his former acquirements ; pursuing wide and 
 various studies in history, poetry, and philosophy. A 
 certain sonnet to his friend Charles Deodati speaks in a 
 
JOHN MILTON. 147 
 
 style we are not accustomed to associate with Miltonic 
 sublimity : — 
 
 " I who once assumed a scornful air 
 And scorned at love, am fallen in his snare : 
 (Full many an upright man has fallen so ;) 
 Yet think me not thus dazzled by the flow 
 Of golden locks, a damask cheek, more rare 
 The heart-felt beauties of my foreign fair, 
 A mien angelic, with dark brows that show 
 The tranquil lustre of a lofty mind." 
 
 And so on lie writes in a way that proves to every 
 judicious person that Milton was by this time decidedly 
 in love. Other visions, however, began to haunt his 
 mind. That unshaken consciousness of his great genius 
 and destiny that made him afterwards " bate not a jot 
 of heart and hope, but ever bear up and steer right 
 onward," began to manifest itself to him as he took the 
 measure of his powers and studied the plan of his 
 future doings. As he himself says, " by sundry masters 
 and teachers it was found that whatever he wrote, the 
 style, by certain vital signs it had, was likely to live." 
 And therefore, in answer to a friend who charged him 
 with indolence and indifference in his retreat, he de- 
 scribes himself as " not taking thought of being late, 
 so it gave advantage to be more fit ; for those that 
 were latest lost nothing when the master of the vine- 
 yard came to give each one his hire." Moreover he 
 knew that poetry was, in its highest sense and achieve- 
 ments, no mere amusement, bat the greatest truths 
 clothed in the most ethereal beauty, and set to the 
 divinest music ; and therefore he tried so to live as 
 one who knew and declared that he who would write 
 a heroic poem, must first make his own life heroic. 
 
1 48 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 With these noble dreams and purposes he lived 
 during those years, from twenty-three to twenty-eight, 
 when most men have entered into the heat and burthen 
 of the day. Keeping back from his grand design, he 
 threw off, as preparatory exercises, those youthful 
 poems which breathe the very spirit of an English 
 country life, and indicate a mind studious of every 
 feature of delight in nature, and rising to lofty and 
 musical thoughts. These poems are the well-known 
 L'Allegro, II Penseroso, Comus and Lycidas. In 
 L' Allegro and II Penseroso, we have the play of Milton's 
 genius in his morning and evening walks around 
 Horton. They manifest what never fails in the poet, 
 acquaintance and sympathy with nature in all her 
 moods and objects, but as yet we have few traces of 
 the finer spiritual light and relationships in which the 
 highest poetry beholds them. Milton was evidently 
 more the thoughtful than the cheerful man. How 
 touching is his last wish. His weary age indeed 
 attained a peaceful hermitage, more solitary and silent 
 than he had imagined, a hermitage of melancholy dark- 
 ness, but there also his prayer was more than answered. 
 
 " Till old experience do attain 
 To something like prophetic strain." 
 
 His next poem, Comus, is of a higher order. It 
 abounds not only in clear pictures, dancing epithets, 
 and graceful mirth and melancholy, such as fill up the 
 two former pieces ; it is full of a sweet and pure 
 wisdom that might have dropped from the lips of Plato, 
 of refined sentiments breathing the aspirations of un- 
 earthly beings, and these embodied in 
 
JOHN MILTON. 149 
 
 " Such sights as youthful poets dream 
 On summer eves by haunted stream," 
 
 and uttered in cadences so richly musical, that they 
 
 " take the prison'd soul, 
 And lap it in Elysium." 
 
 Comus, indeed, is one of the most perfect poems in the- 
 English or any other language. 
 
 In his Lycidas, written in 1637, he mourned for 
 the death of a young friend, and also the thickening 
 evils of his country ; and in the same year, after suffer- 
 ing truer sorrow for the loss of his mother, he left 
 England and travelled during the next fifteen months 
 on the Continent. 
 
 Never did any man set out on his travels better 
 prepared to enjoy and to be improved by all lie saw. 
 His was the learned eye, the buoyant enthusiasm, the 
 soul capacious and susceptible of every sublime and 
 beautiful association and image. To see nature on its 
 grandest scale, and to tread the dust that stirred be- 
 neath with its thousand venerable and heroic remem- 
 brances, was all congenial to the mind of the young 
 Englishman. Accustomed heretofore to the quiet 
 pastoral scenes of Buckinghamshire, he now passed 
 alono- the shores of the broad and blue waters of the 
 
 O 
 
 Lake of Geneva, calm and rippling at the foot of the 
 immense ranges of the Alps. He saw the sun shining 
 upon the glorious Gulf of Genoa, and the fair Italy, 
 the land of history and poetry, stretching out before 
 his eager gaze. Every footstep awakened every power 
 within him. Venice, strange and faery, like one of 
 his dreams, carried his mind onward to the indefinite 
 and imaginative regions of the East. In Ferrara 
 
1 5 o JOHN MILTON. 
 
 he would stand in the dungeon of Tasso, and wonder 
 how the bright realms of chivalry entered within its 
 grated door ; nor would he leave unvisited the home 
 of Tasso's great rival, Ariosto. As he descended the 
 hill into Florence, the dead Dante and the living 
 Galileo would rise up before his mind, emulous of all 
 great spirits. I can imagine him sitting on the Stone 
 of the great bard of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, 
 and musing on his wonderful history, as rich in 
 patriotic as in poetic recollections, and sadly moving, 
 because of his long exile and poverty, his banishment 
 and burial far from the Florence he loved so well. 
 But the visit he paid to Galileo, blind and prisoned, 
 is a great historical picture. England has done nobly, 
 in sending men of honour and worth to visit, in their 
 chains, the humble confessors for Christ, the Madiai, — 
 as noble in the sight of God and true-hearted men as 
 the great astronomer, — and the time will come when 
 the dungeon of the martyrs of the Gospel will darken 
 all Europe, and Rome itself, with as deep a shame and 
 indignation as the dungeon of the martyr of science 
 does at this hour. There Milton stood before Galileo 
 — he who was in after years himself to widen the 
 thoughts and liberties of men — a greater work than to 
 discover new firmaments — and, like the great Italian, 
 to close his days in darkness. At length he stood 
 amidst the majestic ruins and remembrances of Rome, 
 — republican, imperial, Christian, and papal Rome. 
 He made a first and then a second visit, and spent, 
 during both, four months. To Milton these months 
 must have been worth as many years. The hourly 
 sight of the Capitol — frequent wanderings in the Forum, 
 where the eye saw only broken columns by day and 
 
JOHN MILTON. 151 
 
 among these at night, instead of the ten thousands of 
 old Rome, the sheep and the oxen, — but where an ima- 
 gination like Milton's would hear the swell of Cicero's 
 eloquence, as it wielded the fierce democracy ; and the 
 faint rebuke of Caasar, as he was struck down by the 
 wounds of his friend ; and, farther off, the wild tumult 
 of the Colosseum looking down upon the Christians 
 struggling with the lions ; solitary walks there at 
 twilight, when the sun shed over the mouldering ruins 
 its softening and mournful touches of dim beauty ; or 
 at moonlight, when the owl, hooting from the halls of 
 Augustus, gave voice to the solemn hush of the great 
 amphitheatre, — these sights, and sounds, and influences, 
 must have flooded over his soul and raised it to a sub- 
 limity, beauty, wonder, and pathos, unknown before. 
 But we must pause in this rich train of thought, and 
 ask, what Italy did for Milton ? 
 
 We think it was of infinite advantage to him as 
 a poet. Its deep blue skies ; its golden air ; the 
 melancholy beauty of its twilight hours ; the solemn 
 clearness of its starry nights, dropping down so near 
 to the earth ; the soul-like music of its churches, and 
 the breathing pictures and statues of its galleries ; the 
 ruins that at every step rose up before his eye — land- 
 marks of a history which was the history of the world, 
 whether as pagan or Christian, and tombstones ci a 
 mighty buried past ; the very dust, quick with the 
 memories of all that touches, ennobles, and instructs, 
 these, and more than these, could not stand round the 
 eye and ear and soul of Milton without informing 
 every sense, and feeding and purifying the master 
 faculty of imagination within him. 
 
 Italy too was the land of genius. Not to speak of 
 
152 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 the old minds ; to walk as lie did where Dante mnsed, 
 and to speak with men who had daily seen Tasso face 
 to face, must have raised hope and courage within 
 him. The genius of Michael Augelo looked down 
 upon him from the dome of St. Peter's, that he had 
 heaved into the sky, and the ethereal paradise-like 
 spirit of Raffaelle still lived in the " Transfiguration " 
 of the Vatican, the last work of his genius ere he 
 dropped his pencil for ever. What a book was Italy 
 to Milton, and he read it well. I can scarcely think 
 we should have had the fourth book of Paradise Lost 
 had he not been there. 
 
 But not as a poet only, as a patriot also his visit 
 was of immense service. Better the sweet enjoyment 
 of living freedom, better the long agony of fighting 
 for it, than the sad remembrance of a freedom that 
 has died. True poetry must breathe the air of liberty ; 
 like the eagle of the mountain it will die or droop if 
 you cage up the soul of man. The civil despotism of 
 all Italy, the combined civil and ecclesiastical slavery 
 of Pome, made his heart burn within him. There 
 were as many noble minds thirsting for liberty in Italy 
 as there were in England, but they could not get it. 
 And therefore Milton felt, better the rapture of the 
 strife going on in old England, than the sickening 
 breath of the death-like calm around. 
 
 And as a Puritan and Christian man he was con- 
 firmed. Though kindly treated by the Pope, he for- 
 got, or rather broke through the advice of good Sir 
 Henry Wotton on his leaving England, that a traveller 
 should have " eyes open and mouth shut," for he 
 publicly defended the Reformation and condemned 
 Rome in Rome itself, and narrowly escaped the In- 
 
JOHN MILTON. 153 
 
 quisition. Like Luther, I believe Milton would have 
 lost ten thousand scucli rather than not have seen 
 Rome. The Christianity that was torn to pieces in 
 the Colosseum, and worshipped full of fear in the sand- 
 holes of the catacombs — the Christianity of Paul, who 
 stood of old asserting his civil rights and sacred con- 
 victions before the Emperor — this was far more con- 
 genial to our Milton than the Christianity of the 
 Capitol and the Vatican, and of the gorgeous services 
 of St. Peter's. 
 
 Such were his feelings at the time ; and he says, 
 " When I was preparing to pass over into Sicily and 
 Greece, the melancholy intelligence which I received 
 of the civil commotions in England made me alter my 
 purpose, for I thought it base to be travelling for 
 amusement abroad, while my fellow-citizens were fight- 
 ing for liberty at home." 
 
 Hearing the signal sound from afar, it summoned 
 him as with trumpet call to its help. For the history 
 of Englaud had been as rich in great events as that 
 of Milton during these last eight years. Tyranny in 
 Church and State, the one presiding in the High 
 Commission Court, the other in the equally infamous 
 and un-English Star Chamber, had been sorely trying 
 the patience of a generous nation ; but this patience 
 was soon coming to an end, and giving way to indi- 
 vidual and then to national resistance. People could 
 stand by no longer and see a man like Dr. Alexander 
 Leighton whipped, pilloried, branded, the half of his 
 nose slit up, and committed to prison for life, merely 
 because he censured Episcopacy and called for the 
 abolition of the hierarchy. It was a very bad argu- 
 ment to answer Prynne's Book against Plays, in which 
 
154 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 he censured the King and the prelacy, as well he might, 
 by paring off his ears to the stumps, degrading him from 
 all his honours, and putting him in prison for life. Dr. 
 Bastwick had written a book in which he denied the 
 divine right of the order of bishops above presbyters. 
 The knife, the saw, and the branding-iron were applied 
 to his ears. A bunch of flowers was given to him, and 
 a bee settled on it. " Do you not see this poor bee ?" 
 he said. " She hath found out this very place to suck 
 sweet flowers, and cannot I suck sweetness in this very 
 place from Christ ? " Burton preached two sermons 
 against Laud's innovations, and suffered the same 
 punishment. Fainting with heat and pain, he cried 
 out, " 'Tis too hot to last." All religious and think- 
 ing men felt the iron going into their souls, and that 
 it was now too hot to last. When Englishmen saw 
 the best of the clergy ejected by Laud, and many of 
 the best of their countrymen leaving the graves and 
 hearths of their fathers for the wild western wilder- 
 ness, they could not but resolve that religion should 
 be set free from such encroachments. 
 
 So it was in the Church. In the State matters were 
 driving on at the same speed and in the same direction. 
 The King imposed, without consent of Parliament, a tax 
 called Ship Money. John Hampden refused to pay it, 
 though he was charged twenty shillings only. A white 
 surplice is a trifle, and so are twenty shillings ; but if 
 wearing the one and paying the other be taken as an 
 acknowledgment of the submission of the Christian 
 conscience and the civil independence to unscriptural 
 or unconstitutional authority, you may do so at the ex- 
 pense of all religious and manly freedom. Thermopyla3 
 was but a worthless rocky pass, Bannockburn but a 
 
JOHN MILTON. 155 
 
 waste swamp ; but if either had been yielded, Greece 
 and Scotland had been lost. Hampden's twenty shil- 
 lings brought out the principle all the more that 
 England only can tax England, and no man, not even 
 the king, dare touch the smallest pin-point of my 
 property. John Hampden, by a venal decision of the 
 judges, had to pay the money, but Charles lost the 
 lingering attachment of the people. Things were come 
 to that state when the moving of a finger only is needed. 
 This was done speedily. In 1638 Charles attempted, 
 at Laud's instigation, to impose upon Scotch Presby- 
 terianism a prayer-book more Romish than the English 
 one. Jenny Geddes flung her stool at the dean as he 
 read the collect in St. Giles' Church, Edinburgh ; and, 
 as by an electric shock, the nation was roused. Charles 
 attacked Scotland, and was defeated. The Scotch 
 marched into England, and so strong had the English 
 feeling become that every old hostility was forgotten, 
 and England joined in opposition to royalty and prelacy. 
 Such was the state of matters when Milton set foot 
 in England once more, and here we close the first part 
 of his life. 
 
 II. — The second part, upon which we now enter, 
 ranges from 1639 to 1657, ^ rom ^ ns return from his 
 travels to his retirement from the Latin Secretaryship 
 under the Commonwealth ; and this again is plainly 
 divisible into two parts — the first a time of fierce con- 
 flict with tongue, and pen, and sword, till the execution 
 of Charles ; the second a time of comparative peace, to 
 the close of Cromwell's protectorate. 
 
 Milton now stood, in his thirty-first year, upon the 
 threshold of his public life. As he himself says of 
 
156 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 Cromwell, " He had grown up in peace and privacy at 
 home, silently cherishing in his heart a confidence in 
 God, and a magnanimity well adapted for solemn times 
 that were approaching." The natural seriousness of 
 his mind had, from study of great books, and especially 
 study of the great times in which his lot was cast, 
 risen to a certain loftiness of temper and aims. The 
 passion for that liberty which he reckoned the image 
 of God in man had grown into a calm and settled 
 principle, confirmed by the maturity of his wisdom, and 
 ennobled by the powers of his imagination. 
 
 Two paths lay before him — to devote himself to the 
 buildiug up of that great poem, towards which every- 
 thing he read, saw, felt, thought, had been gathering 
 as to a centre ; or to leave " the shady spaces of philo- 
 sophy " and poetry, it might be for ever, and give 
 himself to the present needs of religion and liberty in 
 his country ; " to interrupt," as he himself says, " the 
 pursuits of his hopes, and to leave a calm, pleasing 
 solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts, 
 to embark on a troubled sea of noises and hoarse dis- 
 putes, from beholding the bright countenance of truth 
 in the quiet and still air of delightful studies." 
 
 In a magnificent passage of one of his prose writings, 
 which are so full of fine snatches of autobiography, he 
 speaks of his early conceived and passionately cherished 
 desire to write a book which " the world would not will- 
 ingly let die," a book that would " inbreed and cherish 
 in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility ; 
 allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the affec- 
 tions in right tune ; " and a book written in the mother 
 dialect of England that would do for his country 
 what the greatest and choicest wits of Athens, Rome, 
 
JOHN MILTON. 157 
 
 or modern Italy, and those Hebrews of old, did for 
 theirs. For this purpose he had surveyed the powers 
 and acquirements of his mind, and anxiously weighed 
 the various forms of poetry, epic, and drama, pastoral ode 
 and hymn ; had mused over the achievements of King- 
 Arthur as a fit subject for a British epos, and had actually, 
 as may be seen at this day, in MSS., at Cambridge, 
 drawn out the sketch of a tragedy on Adam in Paradise. 
 
 Now, however, he saw, as he looked at his country, 
 that the heroic life must be led before the heroic poem 
 could be written, and so, keeping it, however, in full 
 view through the tumults of the times, he laid aside 
 his singing robes and went to play his part like a man 
 in the struggle. 
 
 He gave up the flower and fruit and summer of his 
 manhood, and for the next twenty years, nearly, what- 
 ever may have been the visitations of the Divine muse, 
 nothing but a few brief, bare, unadorned sonnets 
 escaped from that mind which afterwards flooded the 
 world with its lofty melody, and created Hell, Paradise, 
 and Heaven. 
 
 I cannot help looking at this decision, at the mid- 
 time of his life, as one of the noblest homages ever 
 made to the cause of God and humanity. Not indeed, 
 that Puritanism and poetry are, as many insinuate and 
 affirm, opposed to each other. Men who think thus, 
 must have a very poor idea of either ; as if Puritanism 
 were shortening the hair and lengthening the face, 
 abstaining from plum pudding on Christmas Day, and 
 affecting a peaked or a shovelled hat all the year round ; 
 or as if poetry were the tricking out in rhymes pretty 
 conceits, and gilding over ugly vices. No, Puritanism 
 and poetry, in their true sense — the one religion in the 
 
158 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 heart and the other religion in the imagination — are 
 as soul and body. Woe to that literature where they 
 are severed ; but well is it for that time when, as in 
 Milton, the pure sentiments of Christian piety are one 
 with the intrepid feelings of human freedom, and both 
 are ministered to and heightened by genius and taste. 
 Let us here quote, before proceeding to Milton's eccle- 
 siastical and political writings, a passage that will show 
 what he felt, and at the same time, of what eloquent 
 prose he was master. 
 
 " Neither do I think it shame to covenant with any 
 knowing reader, that I may for some years go on trust 
 with him toward the payment of what I am now in- 
 debted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat 
 of youth or the vapours of wine, like that which flows 
 at waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist, or the 
 trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, nor yet to be 
 attained by the invocation of dame memory and her 
 siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal 
 Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and know- 
 ledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed 
 fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom 
 he pleases : to this must be added industrious and select 
 reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly and 
 generous arts and affairs ; till which in some measure 
 be compassed at mine own peril and cost, I refuse not 
 to sustain this expectation from as many as are not 
 loth to hazard so much credulity upon the best pledges 
 that I can give them." 
 
 Milton meanwhile took up his abode at Aldersgate 
 Street, in a humble house, with a small garden, " the 
 Muses' bower," as he called it; and not far off, at 
 Westminster, the Long Parliament began its sittings 
 
JOHN MILTON. 159 
 
 on the 3rd of November 1640. It was at its com- 
 mencement the greatest Parliament England ever saw. 
 It met after an interval of eleven long years, and was 
 determined that England should not be degraded by 
 civil and ecclesiastical tyranny to the state of Spain 
 and Italy. We owe almost everything we have as a 
 free nation to the determined stand of the patriots who 
 composed it. It went right to work at once. It chose 
 a speaker who was not the nominee of the King ; it 
 ordered its speeches to be published, a thing which had 
 never been done before ; it restored the silenced minis- 
 ters ; brought Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton out of 
 prison in triumph ; it abolished the infamous High 
 Commission and Star Chamber ; it attacked the bishops, 
 sent them from their seats in the Lords to their flocks 
 and their dioceses ; and it impeached Strafford and 
 Laud, the chief conspirators against the liberties of the 
 State and the Church. The eyes of the nation were 
 upon their Parliament ; all minds were agitating the 
 questions of the day, and the main question was — 
 What is to be done with the bishops ? As Butler, in 
 his Hudibras, says — 
 
 " The oyster women locked their fish up, 
 And trudg'd away, to cry, ' No bishop ; ' 
 Botchers left old clothes in the lurch, 
 Aud left to turn and patch the Church." 
 
 Milton at this season wrote his first controversial work ; 
 it was entitled " Of Beformation in England and the 
 Causes that hitherto have hindered it, in two books." 
 In the first book he asserts the imperfection of the 
 Beformation, as carried out in England, when compared 
 with the New Testament and the primitive Church, 
 
160 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 and points out two principal causes of this, in the 
 retention of popish ceremonies, and the confiding to 
 diocesan bishops illegitimate powers from which the 
 people were excluded. In the second book he shows 
 the political aspect of prelacy as always opposed to 
 liberty, and not necessarily friendly to royalty, but 
 simply, as proved by history, only when it suited its 
 purpose. In two other treatises he entered into direct 
 controversy with the excellent Archbishop Usher and 
 the genial Bishop Hall, and defended both himself 
 and five Presbyterian ministers, whose work — called 
 " Smectymnuus," a word formed from the initials of 
 their names — these Episcopalian writers had attacked. 
 However unsparing in his invective Milton was, 
 these writings — and he wrote and published five in 
 one year — prove that whatever might be the temporary 
 and personal disputes around him, his great aim was 
 to bring back the Church, and with it the State which 
 it misled and fondled in its worst pretensions, to the 
 simplicity of the Gospel ; and to assert, against all 
 arbitrary measures, the right of every man to exercise 
 free speech and thought. The prelacy of these times 
 offended Milton's ideas of the unassuming character of 
 that dispensation whose Author came not to be minis- 
 tered unto, but to minister ; whose spiritual genius 
 was opposed to pomp and ceremony ; and whose means 
 and ends forbade the adoption of any coercion, as hurt- 
 ful alike to the Gospel and the State. In fact, it was 
 not an episcopacy alone, but an established sect, that 
 Milton opposed, as either making the State an instru- 
 ment of oppression in the hands of the dominant party, 
 or making the Church a vassal to do the meanest work 
 of the State. Thus, he thought, religion would flourish 
 
JOHN MILTON. 161 
 
 in the purity of its principles and the affections of its 
 children ; and the sword of persecution, whether with 
 its blunted edge of an insulting toleration, that cannot 
 allow Dissenters to be married but the State functionary 
 must look on, as upon criminals or children, or to be 
 buried in parish churchyards without a priest and a 
 service they disallow ; or its sharp, thirsty edge of blood- 
 shed, so eager, when it can, to creep out of its scabbard 
 and put an end to the heretic, when it cannot so easily 
 put an end to the heresy : this sword would be most 
 effectually deprived of all power by being not only 
 sheathed, but cast away. 
 
 And Milton was wise in his judgment, for the hold- 
 ing of the opposite principle involved all parties in that 
 age in inextricable sins and errors. It is easy for the 
 persecuted to see the beauty, reasonableness, and divine 
 authority of freedom of conscience and worship. No 
 man talked more liberally than James II. did, when 
 he was a subject and persecuted, about the absurdity 
 of visiting speculations with penalties which should 
 be reserved for acts, and of refusing the services of a 
 man as a soldier, seaman, or lawyer, because he be- 
 lieved in seven sacraments and transubstantiation ; and 
 yet no man more bitterly persecuted in turn the Puri- 
 tans and the Covenanters. Jeremy Taylor published, 
 in 1647, his celebrated "Liberty of Prophesying," 
 wherein he advocates the right of all men to adopt 
 and avow their religious opinions. He was then 
 wandering, a chaplain and a schoolmaster, among the 
 Welsh plains and hills; but when, thirteen years 
 after, he became Bishop of Down and Connor, in 
 Ireland, he did not protest, though no man had a 
 lovelier and milder spirit, against those acts that sent 
 
 L 
 
162 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 thousands of faithful men adrift to beg and starve and 
 die. The pilgrim fathers — men who had been brought 
 up in the independency of John Kobinson, and had 
 been driven to Boston and Salem because of their 
 determination to think and act according to con- 
 science — enacted cruel laws, and put Quakers, two 
 of their pious women, to death, and for no cause 
 but that of their religion. It was a common error, 
 and led to common crimes ; and we shall be short- 
 sighted indeed if we do not see the root of the evil. 
 But it was in vain. "It is glorious," as has been well 
 said, " to see how nature triumphs over art. The arti- 
 ficial religion of creeds and rituals withers in the hands 
 of the most absolute monarchy and the most subtle 
 priesthood, while the simple practice of piety and 
 virtue lives with the poor through successive genera- 
 tions. Penal statutes to repress it resemble penal 
 statutes to cleanse the world of violets. Fashion may 
 banish them from the burgomaster's garden, but the 
 heavens will conspire to nourish them in the shade of 
 a nettle, or at the foot of an oak." 
 
 In the midst of these controversies, in 1643, Milton 
 married Mary Powell, the daughter of a Eoyalist cava- 
 lier. As all the world knows, this was the first great 
 misfortune of his life. "It was struck up," says an 
 old biographer, " in great haste." He seems to have 
 wedded a fine face and figure, and not a tender and 
 kindred soul. In a month his household gods were 
 shattered ; and, high spirited and dreaming of complete 
 happiness, he was disappointed with his choice, and 
 insulted by her departure. Let us not, however, be 
 unjust or ungenerous to the lady. It was. not her 
 fault if she could not appreciate the stately and some- 
 
JOHN MILTON. 163 
 
 what severe schoolmaster — and Milton doubtless carried 
 out more literally than is perhaps agreeable to ladies 
 the sense of that encomium of Sarah, whose great 
 virtue, as the marriage service duly and carefully re- 
 minds them on entering into the honourable estate, 
 consisted in calling her husband lord and master. 
 Other things interposed and envenomed the original 
 causes. Mrs. Milton stayed away at her Royalist 
 father's, in Shotover, and was as indifferent to Milton 
 then as Lady Byron was in later times to her husband. 
 Milton wrote his books on the Doctrine and Discipline 
 of Divorce, in which he asserts and argues that uncon- 
 geniality is cause sufficient for dissolving the marriage 
 bond. It was an unfortunate controversy. It set 
 Milton wrong with his best affections, and gave a 
 sternness to his natural seriousness, drying up what 
 — to a man of poetic mind, however self-reliant — is 
 the well-spring of the greatest earthly happiness, the 
 love and sympathy of her he has taken to his bosom. 
 It set him wrong with the religious parties at that 
 time, classing him overmuch with men of wild and 
 eccentric notions ; and it has placed him in a dis- 
 advantageous light before posterity, as a man over- 
 bearing at home, and of dangerous opinions in the 
 most important of social questions ; whilst, in reality, 
 his waiting in England till his mother died — his 
 tender care of his father, whom he took under his 
 roof and cherished till his end — his generous forgive- 
 ness of his wife, and protection and hospitality to her 
 friends in the days of their reverses — all prove that 
 whatever may be the tone of his public conduct, the 
 high heart of the man bled inwardly in its disappoint- 
 ment and desolation. 
 
164 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 Milton, however, continued his charge of the young 
 men he educated, and the cause of liberty to which lie 
 had devoted himself. His celebrated "Tractate on 
 Education" is an outline of the manner in which he 
 trained his scholars. It, in common with Locke's 
 treatise on the same subject, has formed the centre of 
 the many controversies in regard to the classical teach- 
 ing of our public schools. Let any young man read 
 the little book, and he will find a ground-plan of study 
 that may stimulate, as well as humble him, by making 
 him aware what Milton meant by that " complete and 
 generous education which fits a man to perform justly, 
 skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both public 
 and private, of peace and war." 
 
 In the same year, 1645, Milton published his great 
 oration entitled Areopagitica, a speech for the liberty 
 of unlicensed printing. He was by this time alienated 
 from the dominant Presbyterian party, because of their 
 opposition to his doctrine of divorce ; and they gave 
 him still further cause by attempting to restrict the 
 liberty of open speech, and with it, of the press. They 
 did so not because they were Presbyterian, but because 
 they were powerful ; because they had not, as yet, un- 
 learned all the lessons of Home, or any of their pre- 
 dilections for the interference of the State with private 
 judgment and conscience. They did what Episcopacy 
 had done before in England, and what Independency 
 was doing at that moment in America, in a worse 
 form ; and no party that has the power, will ever 
 cease, altogether, and of their own accord, to act in 
 the same way, unless they all learn the common lesson, 
 that magistrates can coerce, and by bolts confine bodies, 
 but neither can coerce nor confine souls. 
 
JOHN MILTON. 165 
 
 This speech of Milton, the object of Edmund Burke's 
 praise and imitation, is his best prose work. No one 
 can rise from its perusal without feeling proud of that 
 English language, which is, at this hour, the only 
 tongue that speaks the thoughts of independent men, 
 and that English mind which has settled for ever the 
 great principles which, the more they prevail, make a 
 nation prosperous and happy, because free. 
 
 Public matters were now hastening swiftly on to 
 their results, and becoming more and more perplexed. 
 The fields of Edgehill, Newbury, Marston Moor, and, 
 at last, Naseby, had been fought and won. Many of 
 the chief actors in the former scenes of the great 
 drama had been swept away. Strafford and Laud 
 lost their heads on Tower Hill. John Hampden was 
 seen late in the afternoon of a June day, in 1643, 
 coming out of the skirmish at Chalgrove, faint and 
 wounded, and three weeks after he died, leaving a 
 name of unspotted patriotism, and regrets that, in the 
 stormy time that was lowering, his clear head, warm 
 heart, and firm hand, were mouldering in the quiet 
 grave. Falkland, the best of the Cavaliers, was struck 
 down at Newbury. The Royalist cause was thoroughly 
 broken ; the Presbyterian power of Parliament threat- 
 ened by the Independent power of the army ; and 
 henceforth the two great historical figures are Charles 
 and Cromwell, the one seen amidst the darkness of 
 death, the other amidst the blaze of victory. 
 
 Such was the close of the career of Charles. He 
 did not see that for every inch he raised his throne 
 above mercy and justice, he was raising his scaffold at 
 an equal rate. Let us sympathise with the reverses 
 of the monarch j and the noble bearing, in the last 
 
166 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 terrible hour, of the man. But let us pause before we 
 speak of the " blessed martyr." Most men reckon his 
 execution a great blunder, and many a great crime. 
 Very likely it was a blunder, for his son still lived, 
 and the scaffold of a king stirs a nation's heart to its 
 depths. And yet it told then, and tells to this day. 
 It was like the burning of the Pope's bull by Luther. 
 That axe stroke rung through the world the warning 
 that kings had better take care what they do ; and 
 that the wrath of an oppressed people, when its blood 
 is up, may sweep them away too ; and it stands in 
 English history to teach every future governor that his 
 throne, and perhaps his life, is safe only when the con- 
 stitutional liberty of the nation is safe also. That it 
 was a crime is a more serious question. If it was, 
 then some other things were crimes. It was a crime 
 to fight against Charles at Naseby, — to invite William 
 of Orange over to England, — and to meet James II., 
 the Lord's anointed, at the Boyne. The " glorious 
 Eevolution " was a crime. It was rebellion against a 
 lawful king, and can be defended on this principle 
 only — that rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God — 
 that " we must prefer," as Milton said, " Queen Truth 
 to King Charles ; " that " it is not the glory of a Pro- 
 testant State never to have put their king to death — it 
 is the glory of a Protestant king never to have deserved 
 death." Let those, then, who shout, " King William 
 and the Protestant religion ! " ask themselves if they 
 are not in substance shouting, " King Charles and the 
 scaffold on Tower Hill ! " Let those who approve of 
 the reward offered for the head of the Pretender, in 
 1745, see that they are right in abhorring the taking 
 off the head of his great-grandfather in 1649. 
 
JOHN MILTON. 167 
 
 In fact, you must choose between the abstract doc- 
 trine of its being sin in any case to oppose a king ; 
 and that of its being right to oppose him to the death 
 if need be. If you choose the former, you condemn 
 not the regicides only, but the Covenanters ; the 
 friends of King William ; and all the efforts for 
 liberty, in Hungary and Italy, at the present hour. 
 If you choose the latter, you adopt Milton's senti- 
 ment, " If I blame tyrants, what does that concern 
 kings ? " and must limit your objections to the execu- 
 tion of Charles to matters subordinate and technical. 
 
 Upon these and other grounds, Milton defended this 
 great historical event in several writings of distin- 
 guished power and eloquence. The main principle of 
 these is adopted now by all parties — the indefeasible 
 right of the people to protect their liberty against 
 oppression. Let us thank God that the habits of our 
 times can carry out this principle in milder forms than 
 they did or were able to do in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, and let us not forget that, perhaps, after all, 
 there was no other path but a rough and a stern one 
 for our forefathers.. 
 
 During the next half of the second period of Milton's 
 life — from 1649 to 1658 — he was Foreign Latin 
 Secretary in the executive government under the 
 republic. Whatever might be the ad ministry lire 
 genius of Oliver Cromwell, it is to be remembered 
 that at this time of England's highest greatness among 
 European powers, John Milton forged the thunder- 
 bolts which the Protector launched. To him also is 
 owing, in some measure, that eminently Protestant 
 character of our country's councils, in which the weight 
 of England was added to the power of Gustavus of 
 
1 68 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 Sweden, and the voice of her mercy reached the ear 
 and heart of Christendom in behalf of the persecuted 
 Waldenses. They were both great and kingly men ; 
 they have both been grievously misrepresented. Crom- 
 well must often have been an interesting study to 
 Milton, whose universal sympathies could reach to a 
 mind so different from his own in its want of specula- 
 tion and poetry, but excelling him in that other genius 
 which consists in intuitive sagacity, and equalling him 
 in commanding will, invincible courage, a richness and 
 strength of character formed amidst the spiritual con- 
 flicts of St. Ives, the fearful issues of Naseby and 
 Worcester, and the tumultuous discords of civil parties 
 around him. Were anything else wanting to set right 
 the brave Lord Protector, besides his touching letters 
 of piety to his wife and children, and the magnificent 
 story of his country during his power, that is supplied 
 by the eulogies of a man like Milton, who is eminently 
 sparing in his praise. Why give him a monument so 
 long as England lasts ? As on Sir Christopher Wren's 
 grave in St. Paul's let us write on Cromwell's memory, 
 " If you seek a monument, look around." 
 
 III. But let us hasten to the last and most interest- 
 ing portion of his life, that included within 1658 and 
 1674. He had lost his sight altogether in 1652, and 
 remained in darkness during the next twenty-two years. 
 When Charles II. was restored his works were burned 
 by the common hangman, and he himself was narrowly 
 searched for, and, had he been found, his head would 
 have rolled from the scaffold. The great work of his 
 life, however, was yet to do, and he could not die. 
 
 Then he set himself to that poem which had filled 
 
JOHN MILTON. 169 
 
 the dreams of his youth and the meditations of his 
 manhood, and which now came back in his nightly 
 inspirations to be crowned and transfigured *by the 
 revelations of his old age. Nothing* could crush his 
 dauntless spirit, or quench the heavenly fire that 
 burned within him. The extremity of poverty, the 
 darkness amidst the blaze of day, the lonely hearth, 
 the indifference of children, the price set on his head, 
 the hourly fear of the assassin, the calumnies that 
 defiled his character and the misfortunes that degraded 
 his country, infirmities of body and advance of years ; 
 in the midst of all this chaos rose up the glorious 
 creation of Paradise Lost. Written within the space 
 of five years, as is generally supposed, and published 
 in 1667, it contains the sap and fruit of fifty years' 
 growth, and that going on in a mind as original, 
 capacious, and susceptible as ever belonged to any of 
 the sons of men. Milton's prime gift was his imperial 
 imagination, that "vision and faculty divine;" that 
 something God-like that all men feel, when it meets 
 them, and acknowledge to be of heaven. Whatever 
 powers Milton had, all subserved this perception of, 
 and complacency in, a diviner harmony, beauty, and 
 greatness ; a purer delight, and serener truth than 
 sense or reason know. Hence his whole being was 
 poetry ; the sense of that subtle and wonderful relation- 
 ship of the soul within, and the world without ; by 
 which the one clothes its thoughts in all that is most 
 tender, sublime, and harmonious in sight or sound, 
 and the other has given to it, by the vivifying imagina- 
 tion, a finer substance, a more spirit-like light, and a 
 purer melody. 
 
 These are the sources of all that is great and beauti- 
 
i 7 o JOHN MILTON. 
 
 ful. Love and joy in the soul are themselves reflected 
 
 in the sparkle of the sea, the voice of children, the 
 
 smile of flowers ; and a still forest depth, a far off 
 
 mountain height, a vast immeasurable desert of sand, 
 
 or a vaster, more immeasurable firmament of stars, the 
 
 wail of the blast as it storms across the yielding mass 
 
 of pines, — these call up, nourish, and give body to the 
 
 loftiness, and silence, and strange infinitude of the 
 
 world of thought and feeling within the soul. 
 
 No man had ever a livelier sympathy with the vast, 
 
 whether in the sweep of firmaments or of thoughts, 
 
 than Milton. His mind was like his own Paradise, 
 
 where 
 
 " Over head tip-grew, 
 Insuperable height of loftiest shade, 
 Cedar and pine, and fir and branching palm." 
 
 The grasp and intuitive directness of his understanding 
 is second only to the power of his imagination. It 
 possessed somewhat of the same " regal port ; " ex- 
 hibiting masses of moral truth with an argumentative 
 greatness, and beings of immense powers and passions, 
 with a depth and correctness, that make us feel how 
 fitly it was mated to the master-faculty. And, com- 
 bined with the massive intellectual nature of his 
 thoughts, is to be added their habitual moral and 
 religious character. 
 
 Such were his three great faculties — imagination, 
 intellect, conscience ; and these were like the cloud of 
 Wordsworth, 
 
 " Which moveth altogether, if it move at all ; " 
 
 or as he himself says of the angels, so it might be said 
 of them, 
 
JOHN MILTON. 171 
 
 " In mighty quadrate join'd, 
 Of union irresistible, moved on 
 In silence their bright legions to the sound 
 Of instrumental harmony." 
 
 " To such height of God-like power " was his whole 
 mind elevated, and the result was the embodiment, by 
 means of its complete action, of what is greatest and 
 sweetest in the human soul, and in divine things, 
 in forms that, were they become visible, they might 
 most worthily assume. 
 
 But there are two other things to be added to these 
 natural gifts. There was the immensely rich memory 
 of the poet ; rich in knowledge of books, scenes, and 
 men. It was no desert land over which his imagina- 
 tion reigned. Every period of his life had added some 
 needed part to the huge store. Public life had taught 
 him the secrets of the human heart on a grand and 
 extended scale ; foreign climes had engraven pictures 
 in undying lines upon his memory, that afterwards 
 they might feed fancy and be hung up in the great 
 temple of his genius ; and books had brought wisdom 
 and knowledge to him from all times and countries. 
 " Then," as has been touchingly said by Hal lam, " the 
 remembrance of early reading came over his dark and 
 lonely path like the moon emerging from the clouds. 
 Then it was that the muse was truly his, not only as 
 she poured her creative inspiration into his mind, but 
 as the daughter of memory, coming with fragments of 
 ancient melodies, the voice of Euripides, and Homer, 
 and Tasso, sounds that he loved in youth and treasured 
 up for the solace of old age." These and more than 
 these he had collected around him ; and Paradise Lost 
 was like a lake into which all flowed ; calm, lonely, 
 
1 7 2 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 and broad ; at one time shaded by the gigantic gloom 
 of hell ; at another brightened by the fresh beauty of 
 paradise ; and once again lost amidst the seven-fold 
 splendours of heaven. 
 
 The other endowment was the fine eye and ear of 
 Milton. He had a painter's eye and a musician's ear. 
 The first had been quenched in night, but it had 
 worked well when it was day ; and nothing can excel 
 the exquisite delicacy of the latter. The Milfconic 
 pause, and cadence and swell of harmony, lifting the 
 soul to the gates of heaven, might have been copied 
 from some wandering melody that had escaped the 
 upper spheres. 
 
 Such were his gifts and acquirements, as they stand 
 out in the marvellous subject, treatment, and style of 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 Nor must we forget the circumstances in which 
 Milton was placed. Whatever his poem may have lost 
 from his blindness, in his inability to write it down 
 when he desired, to consult books, to look abroad upon 
 nature, still it owed much to it also. Songs in the 
 night rise to a sublimer and more pathetic strain than 
 songs of the day, and Milton himself speaks of 
 
 " The solemn nightingale who ne'er 
 Ceased warbling, but all night tun'd her soft lays.*' 
 
 and expressly of himself thus — 
 
 " As the wakeful bird 
 Sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid, 
 Tunes her nocturnal note." 
 
 The darkness laid bare to him firmaments of glory and 
 immensity ; brought out in tenderer and more pathetic 
 light the bright scenes he had beheld of old, and made 
 
JOHN MILTON. 173 
 
 him yearn over them with a love that we cherish only 
 for the lost. It drew his whole soul back upon itself, 
 till, in -the clouded solitude, his thoughts became objects 
 of sight, and stood forth as in sculptured forms ; and 
 then his ear became more quick to every modulation, 
 and dwelt for its delight upon every cadence, till " his 
 thoughts voluntary moved harmonious numbers." 
 
 Two years after Milton's death Bunyan wrote his 
 Pilgrim's Progress. We owe, I doubt not, much of 
 its fond minuteness in describing every footstep of the 
 pilgrim — the freshness of its valley of humiliation and 
 the clear shining of the prospect from its delectable 
 mountains, the sombre darkness of the river of death, 
 and the transparent glories and triumphant songs of its 
 New Jerusalem — to the chains and walls and dreariness 
 of twelve years in Bedford Jail. No other of Bunyan's 
 works has these features in the same degree ; they are 
 the fruits of the passionate yearnings of his soul over 
 " the bright and breathing world," as it called up the 
 past and the absent, and invested them with the tender 
 and sublime lights of genius and of grief. Thus the 
 passion and power, as well as piety, of John Bunyan 
 were purified and transfigured ; and the fair earth, so 
 refreshing to his bold, clear eye, grew fairer before the 
 gaze of his fancy, as the far off heavens, with their 
 tones of jubilee, and sweetness of repose, and over- 
 powering glory, came down to meet the longings of his 
 faith. Pilgrim's Progress was the child of both — an 
 immortal child, humbler in form and feature than its 
 great compeer, Paradise Lost, but living for ever in 
 the heart and home of infancy and old age, while its 
 elder brother dwells solitary, as in some remote and 
 silent sanctuary. As it was with Bunyan, the greatest 
 
i 74 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 irregularly educated genius of the time, so it was with 
 Milton, who added to his superiority over Bunyan in 
 genius all that he wanted in learning and culture. 
 Prisoned in the darkened chamber of his soul, the 
 contrasts of extreme gloom and light come out before 
 him, and, amidst these primal elements, he conjured 
 up his hell and his heaven. At the same time all the 
 reminiscences of scenes of beauty and luxuriance, seen 
 years before, revived as his fancy and feeling brooded 
 over them, till, purified under the influence of his 
 pensive and elevated spirit, they grouped themselves 
 together in the description of Paradise. 
 
 Let us add also to his blindness the misfortunes that 
 clung around his old age. As the tide of youthful 
 hopes and manhood's cares sank down, up rose the 
 " broad bare backs " of his lofty thoughts, and when it 
 passed away altogether the precious treasures lying in 
 the depths of his mind were laid open. Thus Paradise 
 Lost grew up amidst poverty and persecution. Eng- 
 land had been lost, and fame, and strength, and hope ; 
 and now the regret of the patriot rose into the divine 
 sorrow and song of the Christian poet. Then also his 
 will became purer and stronger than ever, and sustained 
 his genius, as on eagle-wings, through its longest and 
 loftiest flights. Like Samson carrying away the gates 
 of Gaza, Milton walks erect under the weight of theme 
 and thoughts that no man but himself has ever been 
 able to bear for so long a time. He moves among the 
 few but great elements out of which he had to make 
 his poem with a firmness of step that amazes us as 
 much almost as the invention with which he arranges, 
 adorns, and shapes them forth. 
 
 The result of all these causes, then, was Paradise 
 
JOHN MILTON. 175 
 
 Lost, the epic of the world, the greatest poem in the 
 English, perhaps in any, language. 
 
 It would be in vain for me to enter into detail upon 
 its subject, fable, action, character, sentiments, machi- 
 nery, moral, diction, and versification ; nor can I enter 
 upon the grateful task of pointing out its various 
 qualities. Who that has read the first two books 
 need be reminded of its sublimity ; farther than these 
 the mind cannot go. The unrivalled beauty of the 
 fourth book is universally admitted. The wonderful 
 suggestiveness of the whole in calling up, by single 
 lines and epithets, vivid trains of thought, and thus 
 making every reader himself a poet, is equally well 
 known ; and last, but chief, the one spirit that almost 
 everywhere reigns through it of reverence, faith, purity, 
 and adoration, makes it greater in its godliness than it 
 is even in its genius. Its one great defect was perhaps 
 inseparable from its peculiar excellence. It does not 
 touch the springs of common sorrow and common joy. 
 Milton was either unskilled in or disdained these sources 
 of power over the popular heart. He speaks to us, or 
 rather before us, like a younger brother of the arch- 
 angel Eaphael, to whom he seems more akin than to 
 man. Yet what can equal those measured wails of 
 sorrow, when, coming back to earth, he finds himself 
 irrecoverably shut out from its face of light. 
 
 " Thus with the year 
 Seasons return ; but not to me returns 
 Day or the sweet approach of eve or morn, 
 Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, 
 Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine, 
 But cloud instead, and ever during dark 
 Surrounds me ; from the cheerful ways of men 
 Cut off." 
 
i 7 6 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 We must not linger upon the works of his last days. 
 Paradise Regained is a moon-like reflection of the 
 setting light of Paradise Lost. Samson Agonistes, 
 his last poem, so different from the flush and flower 
 of the early Comus, is an image of Milton's mind in 
 its latest stage, and looks like the Torso of Michael 
 Angelo, large and sinewy in its naked strength. His 
 Dictionary of the Latin Tongue, his History of Eng- 
 land, and his System of Theology, not to mention a 
 Grammar for Children, and a Treatise on Logic for 
 Youth, were the objects of his vast and varied toil. 
 
 And now, ere we leave him, let us glance at his 
 character and daily habits. His character was com- 
 posed of rich and rare elements, and in such a way 
 that it can never for a moment be mistaken. It seems 
 as if made on some disused type of being between 
 angel and man. It stands aloof and rises aloft. His 
 mind has always a solitude about it. It dwelt apart 
 even amidst the dust of the earth in remote and silent 
 regions of thought, and there, all that is lofty and 
 lovely was familiar to it as the faces of home are to 
 other men. And these made him serene in joy as in 
 sorrow. He had meat to eat which the world knew 
 not of. The light of the soul within destroyed the 
 clouds of circumstance and change, or became brighter 
 because of their presence. His courage was that of 
 the old Roman senator and the middle-age knight, 
 grafted upon the thoughtful and assured Christian. 
 His was the fortitude that was strong to wait. He 
 knew well that when the revels of Charles and White- 
 hall had gone out in blackness and shame, the calm, 
 clear, remote star of his genius would still look down 
 in its course upon the revering look of thousands, and 
 
JOHN MILTON. 177 
 
 give guidance to unborn generations. And his was 
 the fortitude to work, and so he toiled on till 
 
 " Th' ascending pile 
 Stood fixed her stately height." 
 
 And he had in his heart the very essence of piety. 
 He had, I doubt not, to struggle much with pride of 
 spirit, and that occasioned some great errors in re- 
 ligious truth ; but still he reposed on the atonement 
 of that Saviour whom otherwise he sadly mistook. 
 This was his express and deep-felt ground of hope 
 before that God in whose sight even the mind of a 
 Milton is small almost as that of a little child ; and his 
 heart is best laid open in the cry, " God, be merciful to 
 me a sinner." So at least, Milton himself, I am sure, 
 was convinced in that experience of which he has said 
 little, but of which his whole life tells enough. 
 
 And now that " mighty orb of song " was about to 
 set. There he lived during the last twelve years of 
 his life, in that small house, one room on each floor, 
 in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields. He had lost his 
 two wives, and had a third as his companion. He 
 rises in the morning at four in summer and five in 
 winter, and begins the day with his old Hebrew Bible ; 
 and for two hours meditates and prays. Then he sets 
 himself to compose his great works, getting some stray 
 hand of friend, or daughter, or wife, or boy, to write 
 to his dictation. Had you gone at mid-day to see 
 him, the sound of viol or organ would perchance have 
 met your ear as you approached the house, for the old 
 man solaced his toil by sacred song ; or perhaps you 
 might have looked on him, as clothed in a grey coarse 
 cloth coat he sat at the door to enjoy the balmy 
 
 M 
 
i 7 8 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 summer air ; and had you entered, you might have 
 seen him, as one who visited him did, up one pair of 
 stairs, in a chamber hung with rusty green, sitting in 
 an elbow chair, dressed neatly in black, his dark grey 
 eyes clear as if they still were full of light, his face 
 pale and looking with an expression of pain from gout 
 in his hands and fingers. 
 
 Such was the old man eloquent, who thus, 
 
 " With the accustomed garb of daily life 
 Puts on a lovely and a touching grace, 
 Of more distinct humanity, that leaves 
 All genuine admiration unimpaired." 
 
 And now the time came when he should die. Years, 
 and anxiety, and exhausting creative effort had done 
 their work. On the 8th day of November, 1674, in 
 his sixty-sixth year, he departed, so peacefully that 
 the precise time was not known to those around. 
 
 It was on a Sabbath day that he entered into rest, 
 and left the sadness and darkness of earth for the 
 vision of God and the joy ineffable. 
 
 " There entertain him, all the saints above, 
 In solemn troops and sweet societies, 
 That sing, and singing in their glory move, 
 And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes." 
 
 And now we stand and look upon that face, so beauti- 
 ful in youth that he was called the lady of his college, 
 so noble and touching in old age. In a moment all 
 that clouded or brightened it passes before us. The 
 quiet scenes of youthful Horton ; the mornings and 
 evenings of Italy ; the troubled events of the Eebel- 
 lion and the Commonwealth ; the figures of Hampden 
 and Cromwell, — these have met it in times gone by ; 
 and the enthusiasm and inspiration of genius, the clis- 
 
JOHN MILTON 179 
 
 appointments and sadness of grief, — these have purified 
 its features and furrowed its brow. It is the finest 
 face in English history. Looking at it steadily, how 
 firm yet feminine are the lips ; how dreamy and deep 
 the quenched eyes ; how wide and serene the brow 
 with the grey locks, once golden, parted off from it. 
 
 They buried him on the 12th of November, next to 
 his father, in the chancel of Saint Giles', Cripplegate. 
 The noble, the learned, and the poor, went in great 
 numbers to lay him in the grave. There the weary 
 is at rest. Fifty-two years earlier Oliver Cromwell was 
 married at the altar of the same church. Beneath its 
 pavement, undistiuguishable till the day of resurrection, 
 the dust of Milton lies. 
 
 And now, looking at his life and death, we may well 
 exclaim of Milton, as he did of another, 
 
 " Come, come, no time for lamentation now, 
 Samson hath quit himself 
 Like Samson, and heroically hatli finish'd 
 A life heroic." 
 
 Many are the lessons which we may learn from both, 
 but we must close. Vain were it, indeed, for any one 
 to try to emulate the course of his genius as it 
 " sounded along its dim and perilous way ; " though 
 there is no surer mark or better nourishment of 
 a mind of genuine thought and sensibility than to 
 repair frequently to the study of his works, for, like 
 the sun, he is 
 
 ' A mighty sphere, 
 Hither, as to a fountain, other stars 
 Repairing, in their golden urns draw light." 
 
i8o ) 
 
 VII. 
 ST. COLUMBA. 
 
 St. Columba (for saint lie is by Divine grace as well 
 as by universal canonisation) is the first and only con- 
 spicuous figure in the beginning of the history of Scot- 
 land. One or two names, indeed, among the brave 
 and good men who made Scotland what it is in its 
 strange mixture of religious enthusiasm, persistent as 
 the sternness of her primary granite, and passionate 
 as the colours of her purple heather ; names such as 
 those of Ninian of Whithorn, in Galloway, and Palla- 
 dius of Fordun, in the Mearns, still survive in popular 
 tradition. These, however, gleam forth in the waste 
 sea of distant and shadowy time — mere rocks above 
 the surface — fragments of a past influence otherwise 
 now submerged. Columba stands upon the horizon, 
 clear and monumental, like some Ben Nevis or Ben 
 Macdhui. And when all other history is dumb around 
 this great and solitary " Highland Reaper " in a nobler 
 harvest field, we feel as we still hear his tones, un- 
 silenced after thirteen centuries, that Wordsworth's 
 lines are truer than in their original reference : — 
 
 {: A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard 
 In spring-time from the cuckoo bird, 
 Breaking the silence of the seas, 
 Among the farthest Hebrides." 
 
ST. COLUMBA, 1S1 
 
 So Columba looks as lie stands at the very gateway of 
 our national history, and opens in Iona a course of 
 heroic and heavenly deeds, worthily continued at 
 Bannockburn and Druruclog. 
 
 It was in the year 5 2 1 that Columba (so called 
 from his dove-like loving character and glancing eye) 
 was born at Garton, in Donegal, Ireland. Ireland was 
 then called Scotland, the land of the Scoti — descend- 
 ants of the Sciute, the Scythians — or, as the word 
 means, wanderers, who came of old from the Black 
 Sea. Modern Scotland was then known as Albyn ; 
 and from Albyn, and in it, from Kilpatrick, on the 
 banks of the Clvde, came the man St. Patrick, who 
 Christianised the island we now know as Ireland. We 
 claim him for Scotland and the Clyde from the con- 
 sensus of the latest and best authorities, namely, Dr. 
 Todd and the Bev. J. T. Shearman, in his newly pub- 
 lished " Loca Patriciana ; or, Identification of Locali- 
 ties, chiefly in Leinster, visited by St. Patrick." Torn 
 by Irish pirates from a Christian home at Kilpatrick, 
 sold a slave in Ireland, converted on the hill of Slea- 
 mish as he herded his sheep and mused over the 
 Christian lessons of his distant home — for so he tells 
 us in " Confessions " — he became Apostle of Ireland, 
 and within a hundred years Ireland earned the title 
 of Insula Sanctorum, the Island of Saints. "We would 
 gladly linger on this great name, but we can do 
 nothing more than mark his relations to Columba. 
 Columba was the grandson of that Kiel of the Nine 
 Hostages who stole away Patrick from his Clyde 
 home, an event which God used to the conversion 
 of Patrick. And it was in one of the religious 
 schools Patrick founded that Columba was trained 
 
1 82 St. COLUMBA. 
 
 up to Christianity. The day that made Patrick 
 an Irish slave, made Columba the Scottish Apostle. 
 So close, after all, though so hidden from us, are the 
 links God forges, that we may patiently and hope- 
 fully know that He is ever wielding the great hammer, 
 and shaping the far-reaching chain. 
 
 Columba came of a royal family, and Conal, king 
 of the northern Picts, was his kinsman. Patrick the 
 slave has found a son and successor he dreamt not of 
 in Columba the prince. The slavery of Patrick led 
 to his Christian freedom — the high birth of Columba 
 gave him a natural leadership over the Celtic heart. 
 But above all, Columba came straight into the fervour 
 of the first Christian era of Ireland. The men who 
 knew Patrick, and may have seen him die in 493 — 
 only twenty-eight years before the birth of Columba 
 — were the relations and teachers of Columba. The 
 edge of first impressions was still unworn, the blossom 
 and fruit of the new life still kept its tender bloom. 
 Moreover, his social position, with its many advan- 
 tages, gave him the unimpaired benefit of the new 
 learning and religion. 
 
 The life of Columba, from his first passing out of 
 boyhood at the age of sixteen, divides itself into two 
 nearly equal portions of thirty years — the one spent 
 in Ireland, the other in Scotland. There seems to 
 have been unbroken growth in the first half of his life. 
 There are the gentleness and purity of his boyhood, of 
 which tradition speaks in mythical stories. Ere he 
 was twenty-five years old he had founded many schools 
 of learning and devotion, and, above all, one at Deny 
 — the place of the oaks — which he loved best of all, 
 and which is now the centre of ultra- Protestantism in 
 
ST. COLUMBA. 183 
 
 Ireland. A genuine Celt, lie loved to wander on from 
 scene to scene, and yet to have a home for his heart. 
 Early poems, if not his to the letter, yet certainly his 
 in spirit, are preserved, revealing his pensive and 
 idealising mood. A lover of written records, specially 
 the sacred and biblical, the Psalms of David were dear 
 to him, with the fresh- springing songs of the Irish 
 bards, wakened up by religion and patriotism. Celt 
 and Christian have seldom been more finely united 
 than in Columba. He had the marked qualities of the 
 Gaelic as distinguished from the Cymric or Welsh Celt. 
 Native devoutness, as ingrained melancholy, bold dash 
 and dan, the same on the heights of Alma as amidst 
 the storms of the Hebrides, as also the grander qualities 
 of the Christian, modifying and transfiguring these 
 natural gifts, the unquestioning faith, the fresh fervour, 
 the unhesitating surrender to Christ, all these we see 
 conspicuous in our first missionary. Looking at Columba 
 as Celt and Christian, we cannot forget our latest and 
 greatest missionary, Alexander Duff. Duff was born, 
 as he himself wrote, " in the parish of Moulin, fairly 
 within the Grampians," the very heart of the north 
 Pictish race whom Columba visited and converted, so 
 that Duff owes himself to Columba. " The fire, the 
 glow of the missionary's genius," says his friend and 
 biographer, " was Celtic by nature and by training." 
 Moreover, it was from Ulva, seen near and daily by 
 Columba from Iona, that the grandfather of David 
 Livingstone came. Livingstone was Celt to the very 
 core, with his adventurous, audacious instinct of travel, 
 and Christian too; and who can tell how much Ulva owed 
 to Iona, and therefore how much, after many generations, 
 Livingstone, and with him Africa, owed to Columba. 
 
1 84 ST. COLUMBA. 
 
 But we hasten to speak of Columba, not in the first 
 and more peaceful period of his life, but in the second 
 and more heroic and historical period of his missionary 
 career. 
 
 Already Christian in his life, he was also, what he re- 
 mained to the very last, a passionate lover and unwearied 
 transcriber of books. He had few books. Demosthenes 
 knew Thucydides well, for he had transcribed the his- 
 torian eight times ; and we do not wonder that his 
 genius was coloured and bis oratory braced by the 
 great original. Columba knew David's Psalter well, 
 for we are told he had transcribed it three hundred 
 times. To have transcribed the Psalms hundreds of 
 times, and prayed them over tens of thousands of times, 
 lets us into the secret of Columba's spirit and work. 
 And it is a story, true in its main feature, about the 
 transcription of the Psalter, which is the turning point 
 between the two periods of his life. During the first 
 period the strong iron will — the purged intensity of 
 which inspired and ennobled his missionary career — 
 had not yet been disciplined and mellowed, but broke 
 out at times into bursts of ungoverned wilfulness and 
 volcanic fire ; and obeying these during a long and 
 laborious night, he had, unknown to the owner, St. 
 Fillan, copied his Latin Psalter ; that copy (still in exist- 
 ence, according to Irish archaeologists) he was asked 
 to give up ; but on refusing, was tried by the king, 
 and condemned. He fled, and stirring up his kins- 
 men, came to battle and bloodshed ; he himself urging 
 the fight on the very field. Then an ecclesiastical 
 council excommunicated him. Cut off by Church and 
 State, he wandered, long and sorrow- stricken, in the 
 wilds of his native Donegal ; and at last, partly to 
 
ST. COLUMBA. 185 
 
 prove liis penitence, partly to embark on a new and 
 nobler campaign — one not of wrath but of peace — not 
 of bloodshed but of salvation, he left Ireland to minister 
 to the Scottish Picts. Half chief, half missionary, he 
 left with twelve friends, in a coracle, — a wicker boat 
 covered with hides. Since Paul left Troas, and sailed 
 with Silas and Timothy to Macedonia, and until the 
 I 20 Puritans left Plymouth to found New England, 
 never has vessel gone forth on such an Iliad and 
 Odyssey. They passed on in the perilous voyage till 
 Colonsay (Columba's Isle), and then Oronsay, was 
 reached. Climbing to the highest point of the latter, 
 the old Donegal hills still beckoned dreamy and tender- 
 hued in the distance. The deep passion for the Emer- 
 ald Isle — known too well, repeated so often in many an 
 Irish emigrant — had nearly overcome him. He hastened 
 on farther north, till, Ireland no longer visible, the 
 coracle sped into the bay, called after it to this hour 
 the Port-a-hurrach. There in Iona he set foot, in his 
 forty-second year, with his great life work yet to be 
 done. 
 
 Most men, and not the least, most Christian men, 
 need even in later middle life an awakening of the 
 whole soul almost equal to a second conversion ; and if 
 they are to enter upon some hard and untried scene, 
 if they are to bring into action some new force or 
 quality, God will see well to it that the change that 
 is needed shall befal them. The old passion and poetry, 
 as well as piety of Columba, had to be touched to finer 
 issues. The slag was now separate from the pure 
 metal, and that was fused and molten in the stern re- 
 pentance of a middle-aged man, to be poured out into 
 a spirit and an enterprise of a larger and finer mould. 
 
1 86 ST COLUMBA. 
 
 The same change in essence occurs, strange to say, in 
 the other two men who, with Columba, are the three 
 greatest religious benefactors of Scotland. John Knox 
 was forty-two years of age before he dared, after tears 
 and agony, to preach his first sermon. Thomas Chal- 
 mers was thirty-two when his old nature was at last 
 purged by the fire and transformed by the light of the 
 new life. One can hardly forget also, that in another 
 department of our history the Battle of Bannockburn, 
 achieved by Robert Bruce in his matured wisdom and 
 courage, was closely connected with the passionate and 
 reckless blow he aimed at Cummin in the Dumfries 
 Abbey of Greyfriars. And, in sacred history, it was 
 the blow Moses dealt to the Egyptian that sent him 
 into Midian, there to learn more of God and of himself, 
 and be thereby fitted in deep middle life to be the 
 leader of Israel. 
 
 And if Columba was now fully fitted for his work, 
 not less in God's providence was Iona fitted to be its 
 scene and its starting point. There are two islands 
 lying close to each other in the group of the now wildly 
 darkened, now enchantingly brightened, Hebrides, 
 which strike most different, bat almost equally deep 
 chords in a thoughtful traveller. Staffa rises alone, a 
 God-made cathedral, or rather a little chapel attached 
 by sameness of structure to the distant cathedral of 
 the Giant's Causeway. There the Atlantic wakens in 
 thunder-Psalm the praises of the august Creator — or 
 there, amidst the solemn silence under its majestic 
 roof, the heart adores the Builder and Divinity of this 
 primeval shrine. Iona lies low and small, a few miles 
 off — low, for its highest hill is not more than 3 00 feet ; 
 and small, for it is only three miles long and one mile 
 
ST. COLUMBA. 187 
 
 broad — a homely scene constrasted with the pillared 
 magnificence of basaltic Staffa, and with the lofty 
 Benmore of neighbouring Mull, or the far-ranging 
 Cuchullins of gigantic Skye. In itself unexpressive 
 in feature, it has yet above it the sweet blues of the 
 heavens, and around it the solemn purples of the At- 
 lantic, and, part of itself, the silver shore, with the 
 magic brightness of its sand, heightened by the clear 
 ripple and the smiling shadows of its waters ; other- 
 wise, it is altogether ordinary, and would hardly be 
 noticed for its own sake. But since Columba landed 
 and lived in it, all is changed, all is haunted and hal- 
 lowed. The bay of the landing on the western side ; 
 the site of his cell and church on the eastern ; the 
 Reilig-Ohrain — the old cemetery where himself once 
 lay, and where still lies much saintly and kingly dust 
 — itself the oldest cemetery in Britain and in the world, 
 where till a late year the dead were still laid ; the 
 knoll whence he gave his last prophetic blessing to the 
 island ; the cross of Maclean, only remaining relic of 
 Columba's time : the spot on whose hard stones he died 
 on his knees amid the angel deeds of a great Christian 
 toil which, in the eyes of his grateful and sorrowing 
 disciples, made the midnight bright with angel forms ; 
 these, and one more place memorable in the coming 
 centuries, the " Port of the Martyrs " where twice the 
 Danes slaughtered the monks of Iona, and to which 
 time after time came the sound of the long wailing 
 coronach, when kings of Scotland and Norway, and 
 Lords of the Isles, were brought to be buried near the 
 dust of Columba, and passed along the green grassy 
 Machar plain, till, with all funeral pomp, they were let 
 down in the ptace of sepulture; these, and above all 
 
188 ST. COLUMBA. 
 
 the sense of Columba's life, still dominating in memory, 
 I 300 years since lie lived here, and still strong in the 
 nation he blesses to this hour, touch the humble Iona 
 with a light of spiritual elevation and pathos, which 
 surpasses Staffa with its majestic awe, and raises it in 
 supreme power far above the mighty tumult of the 
 Highland hills around. 
 
 This island, once so insignificant that it was known 
 only as " Hy " or " I," an island, then later as the 
 island of the Druids, was known long and well as 
 Icolumkille, the isle of the cell of Columba. It was 
 ceded to him by his kinsman the king of the Picts, 
 and very probably the better liked by Columba because 
 here he could spread the religion of Christ where once 
 had been a shrine and seat of Druidism. For thirty- 
 three years his work lay here and far on the mainland 
 of Scotland. 
 
 In this island he began to build his church, not a 
 stately minster, nor even of the solid aud chiselled 
 stonework we still see in the well-known ruins of the 
 church built centuries afterwards by the piety of the 
 good Queen and Saint Margaret of Dunfermline, but, 
 as was the custom, of wood, thatched with the ivy 
 which still abounds in Iona. Then came dwellings, 
 far more humble, for himself and his friends. Co- 
 lmnba's own cell had a hard floor and a stone pillow, 
 whereon for years he slept. Then followed ploughing, 
 mowing, and reaping, herding, and fishing. But all 
 this manual toil, whilst a discipline for the body, gave 
 room for mental work. This lay chiefly in the study 
 of the Scriptures, perhaps also of some treatise of the 
 profound Augustine, or homily of the eloquent Chry- 
 sostom. Above all, there was continual transcription 
 
ST. COLUMBA. 189 
 
 of the Psalter and the Gospels. This was their only 
 printing press. Columba was an unwearied tran- 
 scriber, and had a severe eye for absolute accuracy in 
 others : " Your MS. is perfect," said he to a scholar, 
 " but you have omitted an i once." But even this was 
 made servant to the spiritual work. The day and the 
 night, also, were duly divided into set periods, when 
 psalms were sung and prayers repeated, and thus the 
 Divine worship and service crowned all. Such was 
 the physical, mental, and spiritual discipline of Iona. 
 Meanwhile, they rooted out Druidism from the hearts 
 of its few natives, and planted the Gospel of Christ. 
 Day by day boats came from far and near, with peni- 
 tents and inquirers, or with invitations to Columba to 
 cross to the mainland and arbitrate in clan feuds ; 
 and once, at Inverness, and for the first time in our 
 history, he consecrated and anointed a king. 
 
 Either invited, or at set seasons of his own choice, 
 he went from his retreat, u his temple of holy in- 
 dustry," and, on foot or on horseback, traversed the 
 dreary moors and steep mountains of Inverness and 
 Argyll, far down across the Grampians to the Lowlands. 
 Wherever he went he preached, and settled holy men 
 who should carry on the work. For centuries his 
 work grew at Dunkeld, St. Andrews, Abercorn, Govan 
 on the Clyde, Culross, Coldingham, Lochleven near 
 Kinross, Brechin, Portmoak, Melrose. There, and in 
 multitudes of other places, either in person or by his 
 scholars, he wrought. Tradition tells us of his con- 
 ferring at Shiskan in Arran, with St. Molios of the 
 Holy Isle. A more historical and memorable inter- 
 view is that held with Kentigern, the good St. Mungo, 
 on the spot where Glasgow Cathedral rises by the 
 
190 ST. COLUMDA. 
 
 now hidden Molendinar Burn, among the vast 600,000 
 of the modern city. Glasgow and Iona, what different 
 histories ! Very likely he visited the cell on Inchcolm, 
 within sight of the unrivalled Edinburgh, called after 
 himself, where, according to Sir James Simpson, there 
 is a genuine Columban cell or oratory of the sixth 
 century — his very period. So the Word grew. 
 Never once do we read of force or persecution being 
 used to spread it, for, though Columba, Abbot of 
 Iona, crowned kings both in Scotland and in Ireland, 
 he never asked their arms in his apostolic work. 
 
 Not long after Columba died, men of his own 
 fashion and spirit went from Iona ; one man in espe- 
 cial, St. Aidan, evangelised England from the Tyne 
 to the Humber, from Northumberland to Mercia, re- 
 stored Christianity, almost stamped out by the Danes, 
 and in Lindisfarne established the mother church 
 which afterwards grew into Durham Cathedral, and 
 owed for centuries, as its present learned bishop, Dr. 
 Lightfoot, said a few weeks since, allegiance to the 
 Abbot of Iona. 
 
 This is not the place fully to discuss or nicely to 
 measure the ecclesiastical position of Columba. * Cer- 
 tainly he was not an Episcopalian, much less a Prelatist, 
 in any modern sense ; though the Abbot of Iona was 
 long the spiritual Primate of Scotland and of the North 
 of England. To call him Presbyterian would not be liter- 
 ally correct, though there was parity among the clergy, 
 and the only superior was the elected abbot. Nor can 
 he be called a Romanist, much less a Papist, because 
 the Christianity of Ireland came straight from France, 
 and so indirectly from Asia Minor, and never once did 
 Columba acknowledge any dependence on Rome. As 
 
ST. COLUMBA. 191 
 
 little can lie be called Protestant, inasmuch as, -without 
 a fully developed Popery, Protestantism as such could 
 not and did not exist. But he was in spirit and doctrine 
 much nearer to Luther than to Pius V. His love and 
 trust in Christ involved all that is expressed in justifica- 
 tion, though not with the needed and anxious accuracy 
 which is the glory and blessing of the Eeformation ; 
 and whilst Columba might not be untouched by some 
 traces of error which afterwards grew into serious evil, 
 still his spiritual needs and work kept him right and 
 strong. Though himself, for the sake of his work, 
 unmarried, it was no rule of Iona to compel celibacy. 
 In brief, he belonged to the grand old and ever new 
 denomination of Christians, men full of faith and of 
 the Holy Ghost and of power. 
 
 Looking away from the work, so rapid and durable, 
 let us look at the man who was the soul of it all. He 
 was outwardly of princely mien and bearing, wearing 
 without reproach the grand old name of gentleman, 
 tall in stature, keeping the body under, but in no 
 ascetic spirit; for "he always showed," says his bio- 
 grapher, Adamnamus, " a cheerful countenance," the 
 Columba-like expression. But the eye that softened 
 with tenderness to the sick and the penitent ; that 
 returned pitifully the wistful look of his old horse, now 
 worn out like himself through many a sore road ; that 
 dared not look back to Ireland — that dove-like eye 
 could, eagle or lion -like, light up with the old but now 
 purged fire of wrath as he denounced the oppressor 
 or rebuked and condemned the flagrant sinner ; could 
 look keen into the visions of heavenly truth, or con- 
 front unflinchingly a hundred miles of moor and 
 mountain, or whole hordes of men who set themselves 
 
i 9 2 ST. COLUMBA. 
 
 against his work, He liad the imagination of a bard, 
 the heart of a philanthropist, the voice, sweet and loud, 
 of an orator, the sagacity of a statesman, the instinct 
 of a ruler, knowing how to be feared, but more how 
 to be loved ; above all, he had the soul of a Christian, 
 and, in a life quickened and elevated by the breath of 
 prayer, he did a great work for Christ and for his 
 fellow-men. 
 
 But the time came when, like Israel, Columba must 
 die. He had a wish to depart on Easter Day, but he 
 put it aside lest on that day of resurrection-joy a 
 shadow should fall on the hearts of his children as 
 their head was taken from them. He drew together, 
 as dying men are wont to do, all his life, now it was 
 about to close, into a few last deeds and words, full of 
 simplicity and depth. Too weak to walk, he was car- 
 ried in a rustic waggon to the workers in the field, and 
 on a height still marked, blessed them in their work. 
 On the Saturday before he died, he went to see the 
 granary, and came away glad that his children should 
 have bread enough after he was gone. As he came 
 back to the monastery he sat down by the cross of 
 Maclean, and there, as he rested and mused, his old 
 white horse, which carried daily the milk from the 
 dairy, put his head over his master's shoulders, and 
 looked piteously as if bidding him farewell. Diarmid, 
 his faithful servant, wished to send the animal away, 
 but with the greatness of heart of men like Columba 
 (reminding us of that most pathetic scene in which, 
 when Sir Walter Scott was dying, his dogs came and 
 licked his hand, and his worn eye kindled afresh) he 
 said, " No, let him weep for my departure. The 
 Creator has revealed to this poor dumb animal what 
 
ST. COLUMBA. 193 
 
 He lias hidden from thee a reasonable man." He 
 blessed the faithful horse, and with a heart full of a 
 prophetic impulse, he went up to the hill of the Abbot 
 and pronounced over his beloved island, seen for the 
 last time, its future glory. When in the monastery 
 he busied himself in his cell transcribing the Psalter, 
 not now in that covetous spirit which cost him his 
 country and his peace, but in a Divine calm and hope. 
 It was the I oth verse of Psalm xxxiv. , ' ' Inquirentes 
 autem Dominum non deficient omni bono," " They 
 that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing." 
 He wrote no more that day nor ever. " I must stop 
 here," he said, " Baithen will write the rest." We 
 cannot forget here the like life-ending of a kindred 
 soul, Bede, in Jarrow, 139 years afterwards. "It is 
 time," he said to those weeping around him, " that I 
 should go to my Creator. I long to depart and to be 
 with Christ." One of his scholars then said to him, 
 " Dear teacher, there is still one sentence to be 
 written ; " he answered, " Write quickly." The young 
 man shortly after said, " The sentence is written," and 
 then, the last line completed, he was ready to go, and 
 looking steadfastly up cried, " Glory to the Father, 
 the Son, and the Holy Ghost," he too went away. 
 Columba rose, and seated on the stone which was his 
 pillow for years, sent his last admonition to love God 
 and one another. At midnight, as the bell rung, he 
 rose to prayers ; he was the first to reach and kneel 
 at the altar. Diarmid followed, groping his way, and 
 crying, "Where art thou, father?" He found him 
 lying before the altar, and, placing himself at his side, 
 raised "the good grey head that all men knew." 
 Columba never spoke again ; only he opened his eyes 
 
 N 
 
i 9 4 ST. COLUMBA. 
 
 upon them full of love and joy, raised his hand to bless 
 them, as many years after the dying John Knox lifted 
 his finger to point his hope in God. The hand sank 
 powerless by his side. The oar of his life-long toil 
 dropped from it, — he had touched the shore, — gone 
 "into the port of everlasting peace, and was home at 
 last. It was in 597, and he had lived seventy-six 
 years. 
 
 But Columba lives still. He wrote no book ; he 
 did a nobler and more lastiug work — he inspired 
 souls ; he brought them to God and to Christ ; he 
 laid the foundation of all our history. Our great 
 Scotsman, Thomas Carlyle, musing among the old 
 Druid blocks of Stonehenge, is thus recorded by 
 Emerson : " The old times of England impress Car- 
 lyle much ; he reads little, he says, in these last years 
 but the ' Acta Sanctorum,' the fifty-three volumes of 
 which are in the London Library. He finds all Eng- 
 lish history therein. He can see, as he reads, the old 
 saint of Iona sitting there and writing, a man to men. 
 These ■ Lives ' show plainly that the men of these 
 times believed in God, and in the immortality of the 
 soul." 
 
 This witness is true ; and we too shall find all 
 human history in the Gospel at last, if we work in our 
 own day in the old spirit of faith ; but if we are to do 
 so, we must wait patiently as well as work bravely, for 
 the best fruit of a life, like that of Columba, is found 
 centuries after the man is away. " God," said John 
 Wesley, " buries the workman, but carries on the 
 work." It is a singular coincidence that the Sabbath 
 before that on which Columba died in Iona, Augus- 
 tine from Rome had inaugurated Roman Christianity 
 
ST. COLUMBA. 195 
 
 in Canterbury, by the baptism of the Saxon king 
 Ethelbert. Columba's and Augustine's work has, 
 amidst all errors and changes, made our country a 
 nation and a mother of nations. There was no need 
 then, that, in fond love and admiration, Adamnanus 
 should crown the noble simple life of the great abbot 
 of Iona with a wreath of miracles and visions. The 
 great miracle he wrought, as is God's gift to all true 
 souls, was the life he led and the work he did. The 
 great vision he saw is common to all who look away 
 from themselves and the world, to Christ and His 
 cause. His only distinction was that he did the one 
 with his whole heart, and set the other always before 
 him. And this, too, belongs to all, even the humblest 
 and feeblest, who seek like grace, and being true to 
 it, shall attain like honour. 
 
( 196 ) 
 
 VIII. 
 
 FRANCIS XAVIER. 
 
 Two young men went to the University of Paris, the 
 one to the College of La Marche, the other to that of 
 St. Barbe, in the same year 1523. The one was John 
 Calvin, a Frenchman, in his fourteenth year, even now 
 as always, master of himself, with the national gift of 
 lucid expression and unshrinking logic, combined with 
 a cold manner, which, however, only hid a passionate 
 will. The other, Francis Xavier, was in his seventeenth 
 year, a Spaniard — a Biscayan, with all his country's 
 love of adventure and glow of imagination. Possibly 
 they never met each other — in after life they pursued 
 courses far apart, though Xavier bore certain marks 
 throughout life of the new Protestant life which filled 
 the air at that period, and of which afterwards Calvin 
 became the chief. In Calvin you have the Reforma- 
 tion in its keenest type, alike of intellectual freedom 
 and spiritual fervour — in Xavier the reaction against 
 the Reformation pushed to its most absolute obedience 
 to authority, and in its most self-consuming zeal. 
 
 Spiritual life and truth still lingered in the Roman 
 Church. But the reaction came more in the revival 
 of life than in the return to truth. The Council of 
 Trent, which re-adjusted the system of theology over 
 
FRANCIS XAVIER. 197 
 
 against Melancthon and the Reformers, did not save 
 the Chnrch. That was done by the resurrection of a 
 new and nobler spirit ; for however much we must 
 condemn Popery, we must never forget the candour of 
 Him who said, " Forbid him not, for he that is not 
 against us is for us." The Theatines ; more conspi- 
 cuously the Oratorians, breathing the spirit, and formed 
 by the rules of that true saint, Philip Neri, who never 
 forgot his early training in the convent of Saint Mark 
 in Florence, nor ceased to be inspired by the living 
 traditions of the great Savonarola ; Carlo Borromeo 
 with his Oblates ; but above all, the Jesuits saved 
 Rome. And while Loyola was the head and hand of 
 the company of Jesus, to Xavier belongs the merit of 
 securing for its early missionary work the heart of 
 Christendom — for Christendom gave, and still gives, the 
 homage of its spontaneous admiration to a man who 
 was indeed one of the company of Jesus in the highest 
 sense, and who was also a missionary of His Church, 
 unrivalled since the days of St. Paul. 
 
 We have thus marked the relation of the Apostle 
 of India to his times. We shall not attempt to try 
 even to mark what has passed in the thousand years 
 that separate him from the Apostle of Scotland, St. 
 Columba. Xavier was born in 1 5 06, in the castle of 
 Xavier in Navarre, as its mountains slope down into 
 Spain. His date removes him from the front rank, 
 from the Primates of the European movement. Luther, 
 Zwingle, and Melancthon, represent the first, the 
 creative era of the Reformation. Philip Neri and 
 Ignatius Loyola stand in the same relation to the re- 
 action. Xavier, like Carlo Borromeo, belongs to the 
 second generation, for he was born a year after John 
 
198 FRANCIS XAVIER. 
 
 Knox, and three years before Calvin. Like Colmnba, 
 lie was of princely blood, and lie always bore himself 
 as a Spanish Knight while he worked as a Christian 
 missionary. All his brothers became soldiers, as was 
 the custom of the family. He, chivalrous in spirit as 
 they, and more chivalrous in his life work, had that 
 temperament of thoughtfulness and aspiration that lay 
 more open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. The 
 Bay of Biscay, with its splendour in calm — its subli- 
 mity in storm — the valleys, forests, and mountains of 
 the Pyrenees, familiar in their exquisite charm and 
 glory to his daily view, tempered and also lifted up his 
 young nature into their own beauty and magnificence. 
 So growing, he went, not into the army, but into a Uni- 
 versity ; and the most famous of all in Europe at that 
 time was the University of Paris. In the same year, 
 as we have said, Calvin went there also. Protestant 
 martyrs were during these days burnt at the stake in 
 Paris, and the sight of their calm triumphant faith 
 haunted for life the heart of Calvin. Xavier, high- 
 souled and susceptible, felt the force of the current 
 flowing strongly around him- — but another mind became 
 his master, and moved his roused feelings in another 
 direction. Calvin did an immense work — sending 
 abroad his thoughts while himself remained in Geneva 
 — the fixed centre of the cyclone he raised and ruled. 
 Xavier left enduring impressions in his almost ubi- 
 quitous career — moving others, himself being moved. 
 Meanwhile both studied unknown to each other. 
 
 With whatever exceptions, it is the rule that the 
 new governing ideas that are to leaven the masses of 
 the people in the next generation shall have their birth 
 and first movement among young fresh minds and 
 
FRANCIS XAVIER. 199 
 
 hearts. From the Universities of Wittemberg with 
 Luther ; of Edinburgh with Chalmers ; of Oxford with 
 Newman, came the greatest impulse to the spread of 
 the new thought of their respective periods ; and so 
 with the University of Paris in the time of the Eefor- 
 mation. Xavier, having passed through his student 
 years, had become a teacher, lecturing on the Physics 
 and Ethics of Aristotle, whom Dante, two centuries 
 earlier a student in the same University, called the 
 master of them who know. Xavier, however, had not 
 the temperament of a scholar and thinker. His real 
 nature and vocation were yet to be discovered. And 
 Loyola was to Xavier what Chalmers was to Alexander 
 Duff; the influence which decided him. 
 
 A Spaniard like Xavier, and brought up a few miles 
 apart, Loyola set himself to influence Xavier. He had 
 already gained over Faber, a gentle Savoyard, and 
 Xavier's room companion in the college — but in adding 
 Xavier he knew he would gain one who would gain 
 others. So, as we can easily understand in his first 
 approaches, as has often been the effect of the Jesuit 
 method, he alternately conciliated and repelled Xavier, 
 who, amidst his amusements and carelessness, felt, yet 
 feared, his subtle influence. One day, however,' Loyola 
 dropped in his hearing, as if casually, the great un- 
 answerable question, " But what shall it profit a man 
 if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul. ? " 
 It was a living seed, and the harvest was Xavier. The 
 thought stung him, " What am I doing ? Whither 
 am I going ? " and he prayed as he had never done 
 before, and the great change came. From that day, 
 as he himself said, " I ceased to tamper with the 
 heresies that abounded, as did many of my contem- 
 
2oo FRANCIS XAVIER. 
 
 poraries." He succumbed entirely to the leading of 
 Loyola ; but as little can we doubt that from that hour 
 the love of Christ and of souls was his ruling passion. 
 Let it not be forgotten, that in the first Jesuits there 
 was much of Jesus and little of that cunning sinister 
 worldly policy which the word ' ' Jesuit " now repre- 
 sents. Though not Protestants, yet the glow of the 
 Eeformation had purged many from much of the dross 
 of Eomish evil, and produced in many who still op- 
 posed the Reformation, new types of character worthy 
 of any Christian Church. 
 
 The noble hymn he afterwards wrote on the love of 
 Christ, which is adopted by and sung in many churches, 
 is the key-note of his conversion and of his whole 
 course. 
 
 " My God, I love Thee, not because 
 I hope for heaven thereby ; 
 Nor yet that they who love Thee not 
 Must burn eternally. 
 
 Thou, my Jesus ! Thou didst me 
 
 Upon the Gross embrace ; 
 For me didst bear the nails and spear, 
 
 And manifold disgrace. 
 
 Then why, blessed Jesus Christ ! 
 
 Should I not love Thee well ? 
 Not for the sake of winning Heaven, 
 
 Or of escaping Hell. 
 
 Nor with the hope of gaining aught, 
 
 Not seeking a reward, 
 But as Thyself hast loved me, 
 
 ever-loving Lord, 
 
 E'en so I love Thee, and will love, 
 
 And in Thy praise will sing, 
 Because Thou art my Lord and God, 
 
 And my Eternal King." 
 
FRANCIS XAVIER. 201 
 
 Put these lines alongside of the words of the great 
 Protestant metaphysician and mystic, Jonathan Ed- 
 wards, and you feel the real oneness of all Christian 
 souls — " True religion in a great measure consists in 
 holy affections. A love of divine things, for the beauty 
 and sweetness of their moral excellence, is the spirit 
 of all holy affections." 
 
 Henceforward Xavier and Loyola worked as with 
 one soul in their separate spheres. Long afterwards 
 Loyola drew up his celebrated manual called " Spiritual 
 Exercises ; " but meanwhile he was training his slowly 
 gathered disciples in their spirit. And on a memor- 
 able day, in the church of Montmartre, Paris, Xavier 
 became one of the first six who solemnly, and under 
 the new name, " The Company of Jesus," devoted 
 themselves to its two great objects — the first, the pre- 
 servation of the Catholic Church, and the second, the 
 spread of that Church. These were its two fields, the 
 home and the foreign ; and herein at least Loyola 
 copied Scripture precedent as well as followed wisest 
 strategy. For thus the Jesuits, at the bidding of the 
 Roman Church, contested Protestantism in Europe, 
 and sent some of her bravest soldiers to fight the 
 battles of the Church in India, Japan, and China. 
 To act on the offensive, however audacious, is tenfold 
 more safe, and likely to be more successful, than the 
 bravest defensive action. 
 
 Meanwhile, though fixed in purpose, the Jesuits were 
 not rash. Xavier spent seven years in Italy — in Venice, 
 Verona, Vincenza, and Rome. These years were the 
 time of his apprenticeship. He nursed daily the sick 
 and dying in the hospitals. Like that noble woman, 
 Sister Dora, he would suck the poisonous stuff out of 
 
2 02 FRANCIS XA VIER. 
 
 ulcerated throats. Day after day he lived in rags, 
 poverty, solitude, and prayer. When not preaching 
 in the streets and market-places, he was breathing the 
 corruption of hospital wards or prison cells. There is 
 not a hint of murmur. The young Spanish noble- 
 man, the popular Parisian professor, stripped himself 
 of all rank, and denied himself all refinements. 
 Many miracles are put down to his account, and the 
 power of miracles he was not averse to claim, though 
 he never claimed it ; but this life of self-sacrifice, in 
 the teeth of all old likings, borne unflinchingly and 
 rejoicingly, is- the unbroken miracle of this and every 
 other part of his life. Such great spiritual spectacles 
 as those of Luther praying and fainting in the Erfurt 
 cell, and Xavier living a beggar and a nurse in the 
 Venetian hospital, lift us up into that common Chris- 
 tian atmosphere, without which Protestant piety cannot 
 breathe, and in the presence of which Romish error 
 cannot altogether kill spiritual life. 
 
 After these seven years Xavier was sent to India as 
 missionary alike of the King of Portugal and of the 
 Pope, to extend the Church. One day, another ap- 
 pointed to the work having failed, he was called to go ; 
 on the morrow he was on the way. He was like our 
 own noble William Burns, of whom we are often re- 
 minded when reading about Xavier, and who, when 
 asked by the Newcastle Presbyterian Synod when he 
 would be ready to go to China, startled them by say- 
 ing, to-morrow. He was ready to go that very moment, 
 so far as his faith was concerned, and his carpet bag 
 required only a few hours of longer preparation. 
 
 As he sailed from Lisbon, Xavier walked all the way 
 to it from Italy, and passing by his old home in Spain 
 
FRANCIS XAVIER. 203 
 
 lie went on, though his mother was dying. Xavier 
 was thirty-five years old when he started, and in eleven 
 years his work was done. At this age, the middle of 
 life's day, when Dante says he began his great poem, 
 Xavier began his greater life. Looking at it for a 
 moment, even Carlyle, after his most overflowing 
 denunciation of Jesuitism, says, "It is to be hoped 
 one is not blind withal to the celebrated virtues that 
 are in Jesuitism ; to its missionary zeal, its contempt 
 of danger." It is to be hoped not, else the worse, 
 not for Xavier, but for the man who cannot see. 
 Obedience, absolute and instantaneous, is the rule of 
 Jesuitism — obedience not merely to the voice of God 
 but to the command of the General. This is the 
 opposite quality to that which Protestantism asserted, 
 namely, private opinion and personal faith in Christ. 
 But Xavier believed in obedience and gave it. 
 
 Sailing for India with the Viceroy of King John of 
 Portugal, he might have fared sumptuously every day, 
 but he chose to live among the sick, gave up his bed 
 to the dying, slept on the bare floor, and preached the 
 Gospel. At last, thirteen months after he left Lisbon, 
 he reached Goa, the capital of the Portuguese posses- 
 sions in India. He went at once to the hospitals to 
 tend the sick, and to the schools to train the children, 
 knowing that through both he should reach all hearts. 
 Light your fire at the base of the pyramid, it will find 
 its way by and by to the top. Leaving these places, 
 he went forth, bell in hand, through the streets, and 
 summoned the people round him and his message. It 
 was the method of the prophet Jonah, with his one 
 awful cry, " Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be over- 
 thrown ; " with this difference, that Xavier came as the 
 
204 FRANCIS XAVIER. 
 
 apostle of salvation. It was the method of Christ 
 Himself on the sea-shore ; on the mount ; in the streets 
 and lanes. It was the method of Wesley and White- 
 field ; as it is still that of our own missionaries in 
 Africa and Rajpootana. 
 
 Xavier is at last fairly at work. Never a linguist — 
 speaking most frequently through an interpreter — his 
 life of poverty, pity, prayer, however, spoke plainly for 
 him on behalf of the Saviour he brought. He went 
 on, bell ringing in one hand, crucifix lifted up in the 
 other. That dumb symbol spoke one truth at least, 
 the mightiest of all, that of God incarnate dying for 
 sinners. The traveller who visits the cathedral of 
 Milan is awed and melted by the noble building, but 
 when his eye fixes on the great crucifix over the high 
 altar, thrown out amid the streaming light, there comes 
 upon him a thrill of highest joy at the central object 
 of all — the symbol of the divine mercy in Christ. This, 
 at least, is true, that the difference of a cross as symbol 
 is immense when compared with the mean and foul 
 symbols men see everywhere in the idol grove and 
 temple ; and what Livingstone said, in another rela- 
 tion, is true here also, that it is the comparison of 
 native Christians, however rude, with native heathens, 
 and not with Christians in civilised lands, that marks 
 the immense step in advance between a convert and 
 one who never heard of Christ. 
 
 But Xavier was more than a bold denouncer of sin 
 and a fervent preacher of Christ ; he brought also into 
 his work those qualities of fine tact, of high breeding, 
 and of compliance in trifles for the sake of his great 
 work, in his personal dealings with men, especially 
 with princes and rulers, which attracted and con- 
 
FRANCIS XAVIER. 205 
 
 ciliated. Moreover, his poverty, his squalid attire, his 
 feet bruised and bleeding with long journeys — for as a 
 rule he walked on the worst roads or on none — even 
 hundreds of miles, arrested the dullest. His hardships 
 were sometimes almost beyond belief. He seemed to 
 woo hardship like a bride. The sufferings, and also 
 the joys of the early Church, and of the heroic Cove- 
 nanters, are recalled, as we read the story of his daily 
 dying to self and living to the Master. Not that he 
 himself speaks of these things — he left that for others 
 to do. The picture which he unconsciously draws of 
 himself in the epistles he wrote to Loyola, or to his 
 fellow-missionaries and his converts, and which give 
 you his real likeness, are more full of action than of 
 suffering, and exhibit a mixture of habitual joy as well 
 as keen shrewdness. There are indeed at times darker 
 tints, but these are mentioned only in connection with 
 great consolations. 
 
 At Goa, where he spent his first years, he produced 
 a wide reformation of manners, and in many cases of 
 spirit. His preaching was powerful ; and Henry J. 
 Coleridge, nephew of the great poet and philosopher, 
 his latest English biographer, speaks also of his. mira- 
 cles, referring to those enumerated in the Bull of his 
 canonisation. Xavier, however, never relates these, 
 though even he was not disinclined to raise the mar- 
 vellous into the miraculous ; and his spiritual force, 
 his moral irresistibleness, his almost supernatural 
 energy and patience, may well explain the genuine 
 wonders of his work. It is not to be disguised, that 
 when we read of his baptizing 1000 in one day — nay, 
 in a solitary case, 10,000 — and when we see he is so 
 well satisfied with the rate as to add, in respect of those 
 
2 o6 FRANCIS XAVIER. 
 
 he baptized, Feci Christianos (I have made Christians), 
 we feel painfully how much superstition was in him- 
 self, and how much superficiality must have been in 
 his work. Still it is not to be forgotten, that many 
 churches were established, that to this hour footprints 
 of Xavier are seen in the far East ; and above all, that 
 fifty-one years after he died, during a terrible persecu- 
 tion following a change of dynasty, there were hundreds 
 of men and women in Japan ready to die rather than 
 deny Christ. 
 
 As was his custom, when at. the very height of his 
 success, Xavier left Goa to work among the Paravas, 
 the pearl fishers on the coast extending from Cape 
 Comorin to the Island of Manaar. These, by reason 
 of their occupation, were among the lowest of the Indian 
 population. Among them Xavier became a Parava to 
 the Paravas, and lived with them and like them. Like 
 Chalmers, who never looks greater than when rejoicing 
 over a convert excavated out of the "West Port quarry, 
 Xavier looks greater among the Parava hovels than in 
 the palaces of Japan. We have not space to follow 
 him by land and sea, in weary scorching travels, amidst 
 storm and shipwreck. He liked to leave, then revisit 
 a place, that he might deepen old and create fresh im- 
 pressions. Travancore, Manaar, Malacca, the Moluccas, 
 the Isle of Moro, the Paravas, and many others, are 
 names of his battle-fields and victories, as the Welling- 
 ton statue in St. Paul's Cathedral bears all round it 
 the names of the great scenes of the Duke's courage, 
 from Toulon to Waterloo. 
 
 We do not wonder that before Xavier was forty he 
 was grey-headed. Forty hours on a plank at sea, 
 innumerable hungers and thirsts, unsleeping nights, 
 
FRANCIS XAVIER. 207 
 
 unresting days, breathing in plague-stricken hospitals, 
 facing armed savages, praying for days in forests and 
 amid swamps, sometimes well-nigh dead through fever, 
 — these made his head early grey. But his heart was 
 always glad ; and ever and again in his letters he 
 breaks out into thanks. There were times when, wearied 
 out in soul and body, he retreated to rest — and nowhere 
 did he love more to retreat than among his first friends 
 and converts at Goa. Thence, in the quiet gardens of 
 the College, he writes to Loyola : " For what death is 
 more bitter to me than to live without Christ when 
 once we have tasted His preciousness, or to desert Him 
 that we may follow our own desires ? Believe me, no 
 cross is to be compared to His cross ; but, on the other 
 hand, how happy it is to live in dying daily, and in 
 mortifying our own will, and in seeking not our own 
 but the things that are Jesus Christ's. Sometimes, as 
 he meditated, he would cry out in transport, because 
 of the abundance of his revelations, " Enough, Lord, 
 enough." So, in the pleasant garden at Goa, he took 
 a quiet breathing-time, and sent down his roots deeper 
 in God to gather the sap and strength that lie there. 
 
 One of his bravest enterprises was to the Isle of 
 Moro, with its savage cannibals. His friends tried to 
 dissuade him, but he exclaimed, " Shall the Isle of 
 Moro be the only place to receive no benefit from re- 
 demption, and when Jesus offered to His Eternal Father 
 all the nations of the earth as His inheritance, was this 
 excepted from the offering ? If I should die by their 
 hands, who knows but that all after might receive the 
 faith ? for it is certain that the seed of the Gospel 
 has ever increased more largely by the blood of mar- 
 tyrs than bv the sweat of missionaries." "Writing 1 at 
 
208 FRANCIS XAVIER. 
 
 that very time to Loyola he says, — " The danger to 
 which we are exposed and the labours we undergo for 
 the sake of God alone, are an inexhaustible source of 
 spiritual joys. These islands, bare as they are of every- 
 thing, are the very places for a man to lose his sight in 
 with excess of weeping, but they are tears of joy. For 
 my part, I never remember to have tasted such intense 
 delight ; and these consolations of the soul are so pure, 
 so exquisite, and so continual, they take away all sense 
 of suffering." Such tones of joy and triumph rise high 
 above all errors and infirmities, and tell of a noble 
 peace and might which only Christ can give. 
 
 He passed on to Japan, 4000 miles off. Here he 
 met with men altogether different from the cannibals 
 of Moro. The Japanese were then, as they are now, 
 the Athenians, the Parisians of the East — witty, luxu- 
 rious, sharp in mind, fluent in speech, hard to im- 
 press ; sceptical alike in their systems of philosophy 
 and theology. Japan was therefore to Xavier what 
 Athens and Corinth combined were to Paul. A man 
 of perfect self-denial — walking on foot, with a little 
 bundle in one hand containing his food and his gar- 
 ments, and carrying the vessels for the sacrament in 
 the other — a man of unshaken faith, he was yet a 
 man of the world in the best sense — full of tact, deli- 
 cate and flexible ; a man, in fact, for winning others. 
 He could not only toil, he could do what is harder — ■ 
 he could suffer. Spat upon one day, he only wiped 
 his countenance with his handkerchief, and continued 
 to speak ; and this deed of forbearance moved multi- 
 tudes never moved before. Even the Bonzes, the 
 priests, were not able to withstand his magnanimous 
 bearing of this insult — this cross. Here, again, as 
 
FRANCIS XAVIER. 209 
 
 everywhere, tie had great success ; but he left soon, 
 saying, " I come to sow, not to reap." Many years 
 afterwards, there were 400,000 Christians and hun- 
 dreds of churches in Japan. Eight or wrong, that 
 was his impassioned method. In this also William 
 Burns resembled him as he moved on from spot to 
 spot, dropping the seed, but not waiting to gather the 
 harvest. 
 
 Leaving Goa for the last time in 1552, he returned 
 no more till he was brought back dead, to lie there 
 to this hour. He landed at Malacca. There the 
 fever plague raged, and at once Xavier went to the 
 hospital. But bound in spirit, he set his face stead- 
 fastly towards China, and after many days he reached 
 the low sandy island of Sancian, off the coast near 
 Canton. He yearned to cross, and though it was 
 death to land, asked to be put overnight on shore. 
 But the Portuguese, his former friends, deserted him, 
 refused to provide him with the most ordinary food, 
 and he was attacked by a most violent fever. Leaving 
 the vessel, with its constant motion, which prevented 
 him turning his heart to God, he asked to be conveyed 
 on shore. He lay in a tent constructed of stakes and 
 branches of trees. There, in the intervals of fever, his 
 soul panted after his God. In the delirium he cried, 
 " Bens mens, et omnia " (" My God, and my all "). As 
 it increased he talked of nothing but God, and of 
 passing into China. These were varied by broken 
 cries, " Jesu, fill David, miserere mei " — " Sanctis- 
 sima Trinitas ! " At length, on Friday the 2nd 
 December 1552, his eyes were bathed in tears, and 
 fixing with a loving look of adoration on his crucifix, 
 he cried out his last words with a loud voice, " In te, 
 
 o 
 
210 FRANCIS XA VI ER. 
 
 Domine, speravi; non confundar in etemum" ("In 
 Thee, Lord, have I trusted ; let me not be con- 
 founded for ever"). He was forty-six years of age, 
 and had in the last eleven done his great work. His 
 dying words were those which close the great Te 
 Deuni. It is the lonely appeal in its closing broken 
 words which human weakness makes to Him whom it 
 began adoring with united praise. Three hundred 
 years afterwards, William Burns ended his life not far 
 off, with the last ascription of the Lord's Prayer, " For 
 Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory." 
 The dead body of Xavier was brought back to his 
 beloved Goa ; and there he lies, full of rest from head 
 to foot, a saint indeed : saint beatified of the Roman 
 Church, saint also in deepest homage and love of the 
 Church Universal. 
 
 I shall not excuse Xavier's errors, nor linger on 
 his defects. Amidst all errors, he carried in his heart 
 the highest of all truths, the love of Christ : amidst 
 all defects, he achieved the greatest work of bringing 
 the weakest and the worst to its trust and transfigura- 
 tion. The Roman Church has had many saintly souls 
 among its children later than Xavier — a Pascal and a 
 Fenelon ; earlier than him, a Francis of Assisi and a 
 Catharine of Sienna ; in our own days, a Lacordaire 
 and a Eugenie de Guerin. These are notes of God's 
 presence in her when other notes utterly fail, or are 
 turned into notes of error or evil. The Universal 
 Church also owns such as among her noblest children, 
 and glorifies God in them with that joy and tender- 
 ness which Christ felt for saints in Sardis. The purest 
 and wisest Christian knows more than any other that 
 he can learn much from the struggles and victories 
 
FRANCIS XAVIER. 211 
 
 of God's grace in such saints amidst all their dark- 
 ness and weakness. And he must be a Christian, 
 self-satisfied indeed, who does not feel his love to 
 Christ brightened, and his zeal for souls inflamed, by 
 even this imperfect outline of the life and work of 
 Francis Xavier. 
 
( 212 ) 
 
 IX. 
 
 DAVID BR AI NERD. 
 
 Three things have made the name of David Brainerd 
 memorable — his biography by Jonathan Edwards ; his 
 eulogy by Kobert Hall ; and the preference for him, 
 as a kind of Protestant patron saint, of Henry Martyn 
 and Robert M'Cheyne. But these would not have 
 given to, much less preserved for, his memory its 
 strange spiritual charm and power, apart from the 
 lonely self-denying Christlike life of the man himself. 
 David Brainerd belonged to the third generation 
 after the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers on Plymouth 
 Rock. On both father's and mother's side he came of 
 families who had sprung from clergymen in Norfolk 
 and Lincolnshire. The grandfather of his mother 
 preached in the Old Boston of John Robinson, the 
 minister of the Pilgrims both in England and in 
 Holland. His blood was of what we may call the 
 bluest Puritan colour. The serious piety, the Calvin- 
 istic doctrine, the unflinching patriotism, the equally 
 unflinching love of liberty of these contemporaries of 
 Cromwell's Ironsides, are the high elements, alike 
 Christian and human, that have made America the 
 country it is in its noblest features. Brainerd in- 
 herited these qualities — alike spiritual and heroic. 
 
DAVID BRAINERD. 213 
 
 The Pilgrim Fathers landed in 1620. More than 
 a hundred years afterwards, in 1718, Brainerd was 
 born at Haddam, Connecticut. The Puritan depth of 
 doctrine and life still remained in New England, when 
 in Old England it was becoming shallow. Shut up 
 within the wilderness, guarded by a simple unspecula- 
 tive life, which only by dint of hard toil could keep 
 existence in any measure of comfort, Puritanism still 
 stamped its sharp -edged image on their thoughts and 
 characters. So, we find its influence supreme and 
 unquestioned in the training of Brainerd. " I was," 
 as he truly says, " from my youth something sober, 
 and inclined to be melancholy rather than the con- 
 trary." Even at his seventh or eighth year, thoughts 
 of death — sin — conversion to God, were familiar to 
 him ; and we find in him exactly the same process 
 through which Edwards at a like date passed. With 
 Edwards too, as with Brainerd, the years that followed 
 brought reaction, carelessness, and declension ; but 
 when body and mind were growing up to manhood, 
 when reflection again awoke, and the two paths of life 
 parted clearly, and decision for one or other must be 
 made ; again, the old question of childhood as to con- 
 version, came up for manhood's reply. Then followed 
 days of secret fasting, reading of the Bible, and prayer. 
 What nobler course could a youth of eighteen or nine- 
 teen enter on ? In a most interesting paper Brainerd 
 gives the varying steps that led to that change which 
 at length brought the new sense of Christ's salvation, 
 and a divine life, as its fruit. Two things out of the 
 many others in this decisive experience should not be 
 left unnoticed. First, the violent conflict — even to 
 bitter repulsion — with God's sovereignty, and especially 
 
214 DAVID BRAINERD. 
 
 with tli at sovereignty in the over-severe testing of a 
 willingness to be lost if God so wished it. This was 
 the sharp peak which the daring climber of those days 
 tried to reach. This self-annihilation — this absolute 
 crucifixion of self — lay on the one side ; and corre- 
 sponding to it on the other side, lay as the positive 
 element of the new life, a love of God purely for His 
 own moral excellence in its supreme beauty and purity. 
 Between these two was the path of the renewed soul 
 moving on, not in keen feelings either of pain or of 
 joy drawn from the lower sources either of sense or 
 imagination, but in those emotions which are purely 
 of the spirit — meekness, love, self- surrender, contem- 
 plation, and likeness to God. 
 
 Such were the main elements of what may be called 
 Brainerd's spiritual exercises — so different from those 
 of Loyola — so different also from those of Luther, who 
 placed in the foreground of conversion the freedom 
 from condemnation ; but so kindred, though in a 
 different form of doctrine, with Tauler and Fenelon, 
 as also with Thomas a Kempis. 
 
 It was a stern discipline standing in wholesome 
 contrast with the too easy and practically antinomian 
 religion of many. At last, " out of the eater came 
 forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweet- 
 ness." " My former concern," he says, " and exercise, 
 and religious affections were now gone. I thought 
 the Spirit of God had quite left me, but still was not 
 distressed yet disconsolate, as if there was nothing in 
 heaven or earth would make me happy. And having 
 been thus endeavouring to pray (though being, as I 
 thought, very stupid and senseless) for nearly half-an- 
 hour (and by this time the sun was about half-an-hour 
 
DA VI D BRA I NERD. 2 1 5 
 
 high, as I remember), then, as I was walking in a 
 dark thick grove, — unspeakable glory seemed to open 
 to the view, and apprehension of my soul. ... I 
 stood still and wondered, and admired. I knew that 
 I never had seen before anything comparable to it for 
 excellency and beauty ; it was widely different from 
 all the conceptions of God or things divine. I had 
 no particular apprehension of any one person in the 
 Trinity, either the Father, or the Son, or the Holy 
 Ghost ; but it appeared to me to be Divine glory that 
 I then beheld ; and my soul rejoiced with joy imspectk- 
 able to see such a God, such a glorious Divine Being, 
 and I was inwardly pleased and satisfied that He should 
 be God over all for ever and ever. ... At this time 
 the way of salvation opened to me with such infinite 
 wisdom, suitableness, and excellency, that I wondered 
 I should ever think of any other way of salvation." 
 This was the great dayspring from on high on Brainerd's 
 soul. Clouds, of course, came afterwards. " I was 
 involved in thick darkness, and under great distress ;" 
 yet, he adds, "not of the same kind with my distress 
 under convictions." No, not of the same kind ; for he 
 never doubted the reality of the change : he only 
 lamented that the growth following the change was 
 so unlike the divine pattern. Christians of a meaner 
 type are apt to stop at the point which Brainerd felt 
 was but the starting-place for a new life, full of effort 
 and progress. " Not as though I had ' already at- 
 tained ' ' the regions beyond ' — the ' Amplius ' — the 
 ' Excelsior ; '" these he pressed towards, for these he 
 panted, even when faint and out of breath. This 
 noble aspiration had, indeed, to work under the subtle 
 depressions of a consumptive frame ; as well as amidst 
 
2i6 DAVID BRAINERD. 
 
 the forest life, with its weird gloom and wretched diet, 
 its melancholy loneliness ; it had to struggle also with 
 an ingrained temperament of despondency and an 
 overstraining of mystical desire. Hence arose the 
 difference between Edwards and Brainerd, essentially 
 so alike. The ample breadth of Edwards' speculation 
 carried him out of himself; while the sunny scenery 
 in which his home lay charmed him by its soothing 
 beauty, and sowed in him those rare and exquisite 
 wild flowers of imagery, that cheer and surprise us 
 amidst the solemnity of his feelings and the droughts 
 of his logic. Brainerd's nerve, moreover, was more 
 sensitive ; he was indeed an infant crying for the light, 
 with but few songs from God his Maker, in his weary 
 nights. The great change in his inner life decided 
 him to leave his father's farm in order to study for the 
 ministry. The nearest college was that of Yale, in 
 New Haven, beautiful as the City of Elms, and fresh 
 beside the resounding waves of the Atlantic. We 
 have visited the grave, in Wrexham Parish Church in 
 Cheshire, of John Yale, who founded the college and 
 gave it his name; and in 1863, in the heart of the 
 Civil War, we spent a day in New Haven, when it 
 was forsaken by its students, who had gone, as had 
 also the Harvard and Princeton students, to the front 
 of the battle for the Union and for Freedom. No 
 other college in America has left its mark so deeply 
 on the theology of the country. " The fathers of 
 New England theology," says Dr. George Fisher, 
 the worthy successor of so many illustrious men — 
 " Edwards, Bellamy, Hopkins, West, Smalley, Em- 
 mons, D wight — went out from Yale." It had also as 
 one of its tutors Samuel Johnson, whom Professor 
 
DA VI D BRA I NERD. 2 1 7 
 
 Fraser celebrates as the friend of Berkeley when in 
 Ehode Island — the teacher also of Jonathan Edwards 
 when at Yale College, and worthy of being mentioned 
 with him as the second of the two great American 
 metaphysicians of that time. It has also sent large 
 supplies to the mission field, to which America gives 
 many of her very best men. John Sargeant went first to 
 the Stockbridge Indians. Jonathan Edwards followed 
 him, teaching savages for seven years, during which also 
 he wrote in four and a half months, in a log cabin, 
 his treatise on the Freedom of the Will. Before him 
 Brainerd had worked the same neighbourhood. The 
 two Smiths, Azariah, and Eli the eminent Syrian mis- 
 sionary, and many others, also went from Yale. 
 
 To that college Brainerd came, and into his studies 
 carried the same habits of devotion which he had learned 
 on his farm, and took with him afterwards to the forest. 
 As a student he was first in his year, and would have 
 received the highest degree ; but the one great flaw 
 in his life interposed. 1740 was a year of revival of 
 religion that spread over all New England. George 
 Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards — two very different 
 men — were, under God, its main agents. Whitefield 
 brought from England that evangelical fire and that 
 singular eloquence which God had blessed so greatly 
 in other places. Edwards came with his calm, closely- 
 reasoned sermons ; with his white heat — white as the 
 coldest snow — heat as of the most burning seraph ; 
 and the revival was kindled. During the same year 
 the Spirit of God moved influences far remote from each 
 other. It was the time of Methodism in England, of 
 Secession from the Church of Scotland, and of men 
 in the same Church — like John MacLaurin and John 
 
218 DAVID BRAINERD. 
 
 Willison. In Wales the river of life overflowed its 
 banks, and Charles of Bala, Howell Harris, and Daniel 
 Eowlands, were its great evangelists. Franke planted 
 Pietism, and Zinzendorf Moravianism, in Germany ; 
 and here, in America, the same breath touched souls 
 to the same life. We do not know the tidal laws of 
 God's grace : " The wind bloweth as it listeth ; " but 
 certainly wave after wave then rose from one great 
 central movement, and smote shore after shore, till 
 God's work resounded all abroad. 
 
 This revival was much needed, and was the answer 
 to earnest prayers. Many had come to college like 
 Brainerd, fresh from the baptism of the Divine Life. 
 What the students felt did not so deeply affect the 
 authorities of the college ; and on one occasion Brainerd 
 spoke of one of them most unadvisedly with his lips, 
 and having sinned, like Moses, suffered in his own 
 measure like him. His melancholy temper, his pas- 
 sionate sensibility, broke out into a great uncharitable- 
 ness. Words privately spoken were most unjustly 
 carried to the Professor against whom they were 
 uttered. Brainerd was expelled the college ; and 
 though he earnestly desired it, and afterwards made 
 the strongest acknowledgment of his error, he was 
 denied his degree. It is a most curious chapter in 
 New England religious life, and it is fully told, accom- 
 panied with original documents, by Dr. George Fisher, 
 in his Yale Centenary Sermon. The authorities were 
 wrong in persisting in their expulsion ; as Brainerd 
 was wrong in what led to that expulsion. He con- 
 demns his action frequently and severely in his diary, 
 and Jonathan Edwards speaks with judicial impartiality 
 of " his bitter zeal and rash uncharitable words." Such 
 
DAVID BRAINERD. 219 
 
 was this turning-point in the life of Brainerd. Its 
 effects were many and lasting. It gave a new tinge 
 to his melancholy, but it also brought the habit of a 
 new carefulness and a severer self-watchfulness. Want- 
 ing that fault, so sharply punished, he might not have 
 been the Christian he became, and very likely not a 
 missionary to the Indians ; for it is after this event 
 that we discern in him a greater tenderness for souls 
 in their weakness and sin. 
 
 As is often the case, the man whom men cast out 
 was chosen the more by the Master. Like Paul's per- 
 secution of the Church, which to the last haunted him 
 with its dark shadow, this sin of Brainerd comes up in 
 his far off forest prayers ; and in long after years of 
 remembrance it was a warning, a sifting, and an 
 humbling lesson of self-distrust, which lifted him the 
 more habitually to trust in the Lord. At first nothing 
 but a thorn, and one exceedingly sharp, at last it blos- 
 somed into the flower of a pure meekness, and a tender 
 self-abasement. 
 
 Now then, emptied of self, and cast out by others, 
 his Master had made him ready for the work He had 
 prepared for him. He refused other calls, gave up a 
 large sum of his own yearly to educate a young friend 
 for the ministry, and went to live his life among the 
 Indians — the aborigines of the American Continent. 
 
 The early Christian settlers found in them, as being 
 the only other inhabitants, their field of mission work. 
 John Eliot, called emphatically " the Apostle of the 
 Indians," gave himself for fifty years to their teach- 
 ing and conversion, by sermons, translations, constant 
 intercourse, and a noble Christian life. A tract pub- 
 lished in 1727, by Bishop Berkeley, bore the title, " A 
 
220 DAVID BRAINERD. 
 
 Proposal for the better supplying Churches in our 
 Foreign Plantations, and for converting the savage 
 Americans to Christianity, by a College to be erected 
 in the Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of 
 Bermuda." And in 1728 Berkeley went out in the 
 height of his fame, leaving the charms of his friendship 
 with Pope, Arbuthnot, Bolingbroke, and Swift, and of 
 his conferences on the highest themes at Court with 
 Butler, that he might devote himself to train young- 
 Indian lads as future ministers among their own tribes. 
 The whole story is of great interest, and is given with 
 fine feeling in Professor Fraser's life of the Christian 
 philosopher and apostle. The scheme broke down, be- 
 cause it relied on a Parliamentary endowment, which 
 was never granted. The enthusiasm of Berkeley, that 
 fired the most critical, not to say unbelieving, circles 
 in London, spent itself in three years' waiting in Rhode 
 Island ; during which also he was engaged in those 
 meditations which are contained in his characteristic 
 and most popular book, " Alciphron, or the Minute 
 Philosopher," published in 1734, and in which he 
 anticipates by two years the argument Butler elabo- 
 rated and made his own in his great " Analogy." 
 
 Brainerd, however, did more than Berkeley. Sup- 
 ported by a Scottish society, he went straight into the 
 forests and the swamps, and without the apparatus of 
 a college, entered on a work in which he had to be 
 baker, cook, builder, house-servant, as well as mis- 
 sionary. Kannaumeek, twenty miles from Stock- 
 bridge, was his first settlement. There, he tells us, 
 till he built a cottage, "I lodged on a little heap of 
 straw." No wonder the lonely consumptive man adds, 
 " I was greatly exercised with inward trials and dis- 
 
DAVID BRAINERD. 221 
 
 tresses all day, and in the evening my heart was sunk, 
 and I seemed to have no God to go to. Oh that God 
 would help me ! " Add to that a diet of fired cakes, 
 prepared by his own hand, or bread sour and mouldy, 
 brought from a distance of fifteen miles, as also living 
 now with the Indians (whom Edwards calls, and he 
 knew them well, the savages in the far distant wilder- 
 ness) in their wigwams ; or, again, what we doubt not 
 was an improvement, with a poor Scotchman, some 
 penniless man who, like one of the greatest of them, 
 Alexander Wilson, poet and ornithologist, had gone 
 out from home- starvation to find something as bad, if 
 not worse, abroad. We do not wonder that he needed 
 God's help in his utter chaos of body and soul ; some 
 angel-hand sent first to bake him a cake, as like Elijah, 
 he lay under his juniper-tree, and so to begin the refresh- 
 ing that would end in the still small voice of a divine 
 solacement to his wearied spirit. Then came the study 
 of the language, during which he rode twelve miles 
 to get a teacher's help. The sick, solitary man, had 
 indeed a stern beginning, and for long little or no 
 fruit. 
 
 Still he persevered. Meanwhile he shifted his field 
 of work to the Susquehannah river (musical with the 
 rhythm of its own waters and the poetry of Thomas 
 Campbell) and the Forks of the Delaware, not far from 
 Philadelphia. As he went on he had more success. 
 His, too, was the grand motto which Eliot wrote on 
 his at last completed Indian Grammar, " Prayer and 
 pains, through faith in Jesus Christ, will do anything," 
 and Eliot's experience was often Brainerd's in his 
 hardest times, " God steps in and helps me." It is a 
 curious fact that being in ignorance of the language, 
 
222 DAVID BRAIN ERD. 
 
 and employing an interpreter, so long as the interpreter 
 was a heathen no good followed, but the moment he 
 felt as a Christian the words he spoke, immediately 
 deep impressions were made. The sympathy of the 
 speaker helped to make the Word of God quick and 
 powerful. 
 
 His last and most successful work, however, was 
 at Croswoksung. There he spoke from the simplest 
 gospel texts. He saw that the more he preached on 
 the love of Christ the more the Indians were moved 
 and won. They despised all terror, knowing fear 
 neither of God nor of man, but they melted under 
 love. Often those men, who could brave death with- 
 out a tear, sobbed, and strange floods of weeping came 
 from their hearts, moved by the marvellous love of 
 the Great Spirit who had come to save them. But 
 Brainerd not only exhorted, he catechised, and lodged 
 the Shorter Catechism in the minds of those wild 
 Mohawks and Iroquois. He knew that in the swampy 
 ground of these Indian minds solid massive piles of 
 doctrine must be fixed if any great and lasting build- 
 ing was afterwards to rise. We trace him, in his 
 private journal, still wrestling for himself and his dear 
 hearers before God, and thence from behind the veil 
 coming forth bearing to them the blood of atonement 
 and the blessings of intercession. A great work was 
 done among them. Many were convinced, converted, 
 and baptized ; and long years of brave, renewed lives 
 often showed how the vices of the Indian had passed 
 away, while his fine native qualities had been grafted 
 into Christ. 
 
 Even though no such token from the Master had 
 been given to gladden his heart, such a life as that of 
 
DAVID BRAINERD. 223 
 
 Brainerd is never lost. The yearning soul, with all 
 its sombre melancholy, had its hours of celestial glad- 
 ness. Moreover, since that life has been laid open to 
 all in its most secret passages, it has been alike the 
 inspiration of the earnest and the rebuke of the care- 
 less. " The mill-streams that turn the wheels of the 
 world," says one, " rise in solitary places." In no more 
 solitary place could this well of living water have been 
 gathered than in the American forest, or the deeper 
 forest of Brainerd's spirit ; and few streams have moved 
 to finer issues, more saintly souls, than the sad, sweet 
 outpourings of his journal. We give, to represent 
 both parts of his work, its two last entries : " Spent 
 the day in overseeing and directing the Indians about 
 mending the fence around their wheat. Towards night, 
 was able to walk out and take care of the Indians 
 again. In the evening, enjoyed a very peaceful frame." 
 Here is his very last interview with his flock : "About 
 ten o'clock I called my people together, and after hav- 
 ing explained and sung a psalm, I prayed with them. 
 There was a considerable deal of affection among them ; 
 I doubt not, in some instances, that which is more 
 than merely natural." 
 
 What an unpretending close to a work in its real 
 qualities so sublime — diligent about a fence for the 
 wheat of his poor Indians — and in some quiet last 
 words folding his few sheep once more under the Great 
 Shepherd's care ! 
 
 Now he was altogether exhausted, and came to 
 Northampton, and to the home of Jonathan Edwards, 
 to die. The departure, as is usual in cases of con- 
 sumption, came with slow steps. But never was his 
 spirit more quick in its grasp and more full in its 
 
224 DAVID BRAINERD. 
 
 gladness. The breath around him in that home was 
 all he needed. There were sympathy, high conversa- 
 tion, and prayer with the great thinker and saint, who, 
 when he was a stranger, took him in ; and there was 
 also, what must have been an unspeakable solace to 
 the man who had lived alone in the forest seven years, 
 the young daughter of Edwards, Jerusha, whom he 
 loved, and whom he had betrothed. The noble face of 
 Jonathan Edwards would calm and elevate his spirit ; 
 the tender face of his daughter, eighteen years old, 
 would be as life from the dead to his heart. These 
 open wicket-gates of human love made easier the full 
 entrance into the divine love. He leaned on the 
 Beloved indeed. He was constantly uttering words 
 such as these : " Had I a thousand souls, if they were 
 worth anything, I would give them all to God ; but I 
 have nothing to give when all is clone." " There is 
 nothing in the world worth living for but doing good 
 and finishing GocVs luork, doing the work that Christ 
 did." " My heart goes out to the burying-place ; but 
 oh ! to glorify God, that is it ; that is alone all." We 
 need not linger on the ever-renewed joy. If there was 
 in other days the sublime monotony of melancholy, as 
 Robert Hall called it, there is now the more sublime 
 monotony of transport ; if aforetime he did business 
 on the great waters, now he has all but entered the 
 calm haven. At last, on October 9th, 1747, he passed 
 away in pace and in pacem. 
 
 He was only twenty-nine years of age — the age 
 also at which M'Cheyne, who resembled him in other 
 and more important points, died. He had fulfilled a 
 great life in a brief time. As William Arnot once 
 said to me, God sometimes takes His greatest saints 
 
DAVID BRAINERD. 225 
 
 early to Himself, as the photographer puts the pre- 
 pared plate a few moments before the light till the 
 impression of the face is fully stamped ; then removes 
 it suddenly to a dark room, and by and by brings it 
 out in the sight of all a finished likeness. So the 
 image of the Lord, stamped on a youthful soul, early 
 taken away, abides alone, and no change of after years 
 breaks its oneness or mars its perfection. A Brainerd 
 dying at twenty-nine has a spiritual charm which 
 would have faded away from a Brainerd dying at 
 seventy. 
 
 We remember well sitting on his tomb, in that 
 " burying-place to which my heart goes out," as he 
 said. It was the morning of a Sabbath, May 3 1 , 
 1863. The wide American continent was in the very 
 middle of the storm of its civil war ; but the church- 
 yard was lonely and hushed as when its fir-trees waved 
 in the old Indian forest, and was transfigured in the 
 early summer into all the glory of an Italian morning. 
 Other names, well known in America, were inscribed 
 around. But two names gleamed forth — that of David 
 Brainerd, on his altar-shaped tomb, moss-grown and 
 fir-shaded; and that of Jerusha Edwards, who died 
 six months after him, on the little headstone close 
 beside it. Next to the grave of Jonathan Edwards, 
 in Princeton, these two graves filled me most with 
 thoughts full of the pathos of human and of the sub- 
 limity of Divine love ; thoughts that abide in the heart 
 and linger in the memory when now the loud march 
 of regiments in the streets and the hushed line of the 
 wounded in the hospitals are willingly forgotten. That 
 great civil war ended in the emancipation of four 
 million slaves. It achieved a noble work, and it cost 
 
 p 
 
226 DAVID BRAINERD. 
 
 immense sacrifices. But even its work did not rise to 
 the purity and elevation of that which made Brainerd 
 a nobler soldier than any in the whole army, and its 
 sacrifices were surpassed by the self-denials of his soul, 
 with its sterner struggles, and the sufferings of his 
 body, with its daily dying. 
 
( 227 ) 
 
 X. 
 
 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 We are this evening to bring before you the story of 
 Robert Burns. It is nearly eighty-five years * since 
 he was laid in his Dumfries grave, and 122 years since 
 he was born in the a auld clay biggin" near Ayr. There 
 must be much worth in that man, to whose influence 
 years have added, and whose name a few years ago 
 was the magic word that united thousands of hearts 
 all the world over. We shall not forestall the varied 
 feelings which his genius and his character suggest, 
 but allow these to rise up naturally and with inspiring 
 or warning power as the story proceeds. 
 
 On the 25th January 1 759, in that clay-built and 
 thatched cottage on the banks of the Doon near Alloway 
 Kirk, Burns was born. Though the home was humble 
 enough, his father and mother were most admirable 
 specimens of the Scotch character. William Burns, 
 his father, came from the north-east of Scotland, and 
 from a gardener of a nursery of seven acres had become 
 a farmer of one hundred acres. From every account 
 given by his family and others who knew him well, 
 he was a remarkable man, a great reader, a constant 
 thinker, fond of discussion. Grave in character, 
 
 * This lecture was last delivered in 1881. 
 
228 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 rendered graver still by a constant battle with a 
 barren farm and an exacting landlord ; a man of deep 
 insight into character, thoroughly devout and pious in 
 life ; add to these features, warm affections, stubborn 
 sturdy habits, and you have the father of our poet. 
 Hundreds of such men have lived, and still live, as 
 great in character and power of mind as many who 
 have become famous, because of a readier and more 
 exalted power of expressing their thoughts, or some 
 public opportunity of making their character renowned 
 by their deeds. The sister of Burns, Mrs. Begg, who 
 died a few years ago, spoke of him (in a conversation 
 I had with her) with a reverence that sixty years had 
 not lessened upon her real feelings to her father. She 
 wondered people did not make as much of him as they 
 did of her brother. A girl of twelve when he died, she 
 used to read constantly to him in the declining period 
 of his health which preceded his death. Up to the 
 end he had never made a song. Burns' mother, again 
 (who sung with fine feeling), gave him a love of song 
 and her own look, especially those eyes which glowed 
 like chamber-lamps on a dark night. The daughter 
 told me, when an invalid, she grew very quiet, and had 
 always in her bed three books : Boston's " Fourfold 
 Estate," " Pilgrim's Progress," and the Bible. She 
 kept by these ; they were her old favourites, and they 
 were her last. 
 
 It was of such a father and mother that our poet 
 was born. It is generally from such homes that men 
 of great mark come. Whatever seeds of latent God- 
 given power may be in the mind, the kindly influences 
 of such an upbringing foster them into blade and 
 bud, while the daily toil, and often painful struggle 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 229 
 
 for bread, when they do not depress, excite courage 
 and patience, out of which comes manly independence. 
 There are many things in Burns which he drew from 
 other sources, but what he did bring from the home of 
 his father was a boon which gives his genius passport 
 to all hearts, his keen insight, unshrinking manliness, 
 and warm sympathy for labour and sorrow. Besides 
 his father and his mother there was an old woman 
 residing in the family, Jenny Wilson by name, who 
 poured iuto his young ears all sorts of tales and 
 songs concerning ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, 
 &c. But his mind was put under more regular train- 
 ing. William Burns had a determination to give his 
 children a good education. Burns, of course, learned 
 to read, and his two first books were " The Lives of 
 Hannibal" and " Sir William Wallace." The first 
 kindled a martial enthusiasm in him ; but he says, 
 " The tales of Wallace poured a tide of Scottish pre- 
 judice in my veins which will boil along them until 
 the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest." As the 
 years proceeded, he read all the books his father had 
 bought or borrowed for their common use. Such 
 books were strong nourishing food for his mind, stor- 
 ing up in it information, and exciting it to reflec- 
 tion and feeling. There were The Spectator, " Pope," 
 and Pope's " Homer ; " some plays of Shakespeare, 
 Locke on " The Human Understanding," Harvey's 
 " Meditations," the works of Allan Ramsay and Smollett, 
 and a collection of songs. These books young Burns 
 read eagerly, for " no book," says his most worthy and 
 intelligent brother Gilbert, "was so voluminous as to 
 slacken his industry, or so antiquated as to damp his 
 enthusiasm." The collection of songs was a great 
 
230 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 favourite. "That volume," says Barns himself, "was 
 my vade mecum. I pored over them during my work 
 or walking to labour, song by song, verse by verse, 
 carefully noting what was tender or sublime from 
 what was affectation or fustian ; and I am convinced 
 I owe to this practice most of my critic craft, such as 
 it is." Throw in here a competent knowledge of 
 French and a little knowledge — very little, to be true 
 — of Latin, and you have the book-learning of Burns 
 in his sixteenth year. 
 
 I am sure very few minds at school or college have 
 had such an education as Burns had. It was a true 
 education in contrast to instruction. Not the piling in 
 of facts on the mind, but the drawing out of faculties 
 from the mind. That is training, education, develop- 
 ment. Some one has said there is a perfect statue in 
 every block of marble, if we only knew how to hew 
 and dig it out ; and no doubt there are powers and true 
 capabilities in each soul, which, if rid of the surround- 
 ing matter, would appear noble and beautiful. Still, 
 books had here a Burns to read them. I do not 
 believe that a library will make a genius, though a 
 genius will be all the better for the library. The 
 electric spark is not created by the lightning-rod ; it 
 only draws it out of its hidden place in the dark 
 cloud. Burns' mental character worked on what he 
 had read, and shaped it. One says well, " Our strength 
 is measured by our plastic power." From the same 
 material one man builds palaces, another hovels ; one 
 warehouses, another villas. Bricks and mortar are 
 mortar and bricks until the architect can make them 
 something else ; the block of marble which was an 
 obstacle for the faltering and weak, becomes a stepping- 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 231 
 
 stone on the pathway of the strong. All these books 
 guided the mind of Burns, but especially that collec- 
 tion of songs. With the wonderful instinct of a 
 natural tendency, upon these he fastened ; they formed 
 the first mould into which his mind ran, and there it 
 ran till the latest hour of his life. As I look on that 
 awkward, swarthy, dark-eyed country ploughboy con- 
 ning over these old lays of Scotland, feeling their beauty 
 and power passing over into his own soul, and at the 
 same time carefully criticising their words and music, 
 I see thus afar off the poet-singer whose " Man's 
 a Man for a' that " and " Highland Mary " sound 
 through our hearts like a trumpet-blast or the wail of 
 a lute or asolian harp. 
 
 The scenery around Burns acted invisibly on him. 
 No common light of the earth and sky was in his 
 feelings in the morning as he went at his work, or 
 amid the pathos of gloaming ; and as he returned in 
 the splendours of the setting sun and starry skies, these 
 addressed themselves to an eye that first felt their 
 wonderful power, and then gradually learned to spell 
 them out into sacred writing till its meaning dawned 
 upon and lighted up all his mind. Everything in 
 Burns reminds us of the open air and free earth, as in 
 reading Scott's writings we feel the words are the 
 opening of a door that lets us into the midst of 
 nature. 
 
 All the while Burns was a grave-looking lad ; a 
 stubborn, sturdy something in his disposition hindered 
 him, as he thought and says, from being a favourite 
 with anybody. His nature grew slowly and silently. 
 Besides, there was much in his lot to make him pre- 
 maturely thoughtful, and to check the natural current 
 
232 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 of his gladness. His father's farm at Mount Olipliant 
 was a cold wet soil, and required hard working to 
 make anything of it. From his thirteenth year 
 Robert had to toil upon it from morning to night ; at 
 fifteen he was the principal labourer on the farm, and 
 relieved his father from holding the plough. Two 
 years before he had assisted in thrashing the crops of 
 corn. At this time he was constantly afflicted in the 
 evenings with a dull headache, which, at a future 
 period, was exchanged for a palpitation of heart. For 
 a few weeks in his eighteenth year he went to a 
 brother of his mother's to learn trigonometry. There 
 he fell in with smugglers, and saw something of their 
 lawless wild life ; frequently at this period, as money 
 was scarce with them, the factor would send them letters 
 which threw the whole family into tears. Amidst 
 such scenes Burns lived till he reached manhood. 
 Unconsciously he was laying up the ore that was to 
 be moulded by his sovereign genius into the current 
 coin of his immortal work. His father, and his 
 father's simply pathetic and sublime family worship, 
 he had only to paint in all the colours of affection and 
 reverence, and lo ! there is hung up for ever this 
 glorious picture of " The Cottar's Saturday Night." 
 His mother's old lay lies in the cells of his memory, 
 shaped in these tones of her who sang when he was a 
 boy, and long years afterwards he reconstrues the old 
 lay, passes it through the alembic of his own genius, 
 and you have the tear-bedimmed elegy, " Man was 
 made to Mourn ; " the witch-stories of the old servant 
 and the smuggler scenes in Carrick are fused together 
 in the impetuous heat of his burning fancy, and lo ! 
 " Tarn O'Shanter " glides forth from the dark night of 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 233 
 
 his brain into the morn of his ride regal. Hallowe'en 
 came round once a year, and Burns gives it an im- 
 perishable record, though it has well-nigh died out 
 from among the customs of the nation. Even the 
 factor's threatening letters are remembered, and honest 
 Luath in " The Twa Dogs " dooms the factor to sit for 
 his portrait. It is important to mark these things, as 
 showing that uncommon opportunities or scenes in 
 character are not needed as materials out of which 
 great works are to be made ; so wonderful is common 
 life, that it needs only to be seen in the light of 
 genius, and men turn from conventionalities and 
 glitter to the cottage and to the field-furrows, to 
 the joys and sorrows of the heart, with the impression 
 that here is power, because here is nature. That is 
 a universal rule. Let a man be true to his oppor- 
 tunities, and these are enough. That is another 
 interesting point in this preparatory stage which 
 carries with it a great lesson. Burns was all this time 
 fitting himself for his future work and fame, just as 
 in Sir Walter Scott's life we read of Border raids on 
 horseback, his visiting all the old castles and streams, 
 his living in farm-houses. All these incidents came 
 out at last in his poems and novels. As a companion 
 in these excursions said afterwards to him, " He was 
 makin' himsel' a' the time, tho' he maybe didna' ken 
 o't." So it was with Burns. During that seven years 
 from his thirteenth to his twentieth, when his life, as 
 he says, was as the cheerless gloom of a hermit, and 
 the unceasing toil of a galley slave, he was still 
 learning something of that fierce indignation against 
 tyranny and those sombre repinings over the lot of 
 poverty and toil in contrast with that of wealth and 
 
234 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 leisure. He was at the same time storing up the 
 materials which his genius was afterwards to build up 
 in poetry. It is thus with the mind as it is with our 
 earth. Long ago trees fell in the mighty primeval 
 forest and became hard as stone. But now men dig them 
 up and touch them with fire, and the old trees become 
 living again, and light up our hearths and cheer our 
 homes. So facts and scenes once living, but long ago 
 buried, lie shapeless and dark till genius, with memory 
 for a miner, digs them up and touches them with fire 
 till they light up and warm thousands of homes. 
 
 But it was not in the nature of Burns not to express 
 what was in him. The secret of his own powers was 
 at last discovered to him, and in the following way : — 
 ' ' You know our country custom of coupling a man 
 and a woman together as partners in the labours of 
 harvest. In my fifteenth autumn my partner was a 
 bewitching creature, a year younger than myself. My 
 scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her 
 justice in that language ; but you know the Scottish 
 idiom — she was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. In short, 
 she, altogether unwittingly to herself, initiated me in 
 that delicious passion, which, in spite of acid disap- 
 pointment, gin-horse prudence, and bookworm philo- 
 sophy, I hold to be the first of human joys, our dearest 
 blessing here below ! How I caught the contagion 
 I cannot tell ; you medical people talk much of infec- 
 tion from breathing the same air, the touch, &c, but I 
 never expressly said I loved her. Indeed, I did not know 
 myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her 
 when returning in the evening from our labours ; why 
 the tones of her voice made my heart-strings thrill like 
 an iEolian harp ; and particularly why my pulse beat 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 235 
 
 such a furious rattan when I looked and fingered over 
 her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and 
 thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualities, 
 she sang sweetly ; and it was her favourite reel to 
 which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. 
 I was not so presumptuous as to imagine that I could 
 make verses like printed ones, composed by men who 
 had Greek and Latin ; but my girl sang a song which 
 was said to be composed by a small country laird's 
 son on one of his father's maids, with whom he was 
 in love ; and I saw no reason why I might not rhyme 
 as well as he ; for, excepting that he could smear sheep 
 and cast peats, his father living in the moorlands, he 
 had no more scholar-craft than myself." 
 
 It was shortly after the family had removed to Moss- 
 giel, near Mauckline, that Burns, to help matters — foi 
 here again they were unfortunate — went to Irvine to 
 learn the trade of a flax-dresser. He was now about 
 twenty-three, and these were the first six months he 
 spent from under his father's roof. Up to this time, he 
 himself assures us, he had lived virtuously ; however his 
 mind might be perplexed by poverty or wearied by toil, 
 his conscience had no great stain upon it. But now he 
 learned two things that often go together — he learned to 
 sin and he learned to doubt ; a young soutar and other 
 like companions helped him on his downward way. I 
 mark it the more strongly, as the Irvine residence, 
 though brief, had an immense influence on the man's 
 after career and the poet's future writings. Conscience, 
 or at least deep respect for a father's example and in- 
 struction, or both, had kept Burns' passions in check ; 
 but now began to make its appearance that constant 
 
236 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 conflict of conscience with passion that makes us sad 
 amidst all our pride, and forces upon us, amidst our 
 most unrestrained admiration for the successes of his 
 genius, a most poignant sense of the immense failure 
 of his character. I am not here wantonly to point 
 the finger of scorn at a great mind's degradation, or 
 in narrow-mindedness to forget his temptations and 
 his misery, but in proportion to our appreciation of 
 the wonderful power of his writings is our sorrow, 
 that comes over the mind and at last settles down 
 upon it, as we mark step after step the tragedy of 
 Burns' life. If I wanted any antidote against the 
 worse part of Burns' poems and character, I should 
 need to go no farther than the kind but candid study 
 of Burns' life, dragged down to a degradation far 
 beneath his genius, and to a death too early for his 
 years. It is true, and this should not be forgotten, 
 that there was something in Burns' gifts that needed 
 to be watched against, else the vivid flashes of his 
 passionate imaginative genius would overbear reason 
 and conscience. " Certain of God's great gifts," says 
 Burney, " such especially as distinguished David, are 
 often associated with such susceptibility as expose to 
 more than ordinary trial." Nothing can be an excuse 
 or apology for him, yet by God's means it may be 
 turned to account, and made to produce the opposite to 
 itself. To some men's errors the world has been in- 
 debted for the richest lessons and ripest fruit. In the 
 condition of things a quick sensibility to physical im- 
 pressions is often associated with a moral elevation and 
 with a living conscience, infinite memory, and cease- 
 less will. Such persons are dear unto God, having 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 237 
 
 tasted of His grace and yet tarnished their garments. 
 Then burning shame, bitter tears, prostrate humiliation, 
 settled sorrow, and new hope render them often the 
 most memorable instructors. Hence many of David's 
 Psalms. Much of what Burney has said about David 
 can be said about Burns. 
 
 Perhaps no two men in the world have written songs 
 that are so taking ; sometimes in their passionate 
 earnestness torn out of their heart. Both men, the 
 one in the king's robes and the other in the plough- 
 man's frock, had hearts of almost the same mould. 
 Both, too, sinned deeply, and sinned in the same man- 
 ner, and both had bitter remorse. But David rose up, 
 obtained freedom, and, though with wasted heart and tear- 
 dimmed eye, again walked peacefully before God and 
 man. With Burns we find misery enough, for he was 
 too noble a being not to see whence he had fallen. His 
 deep sorrow is his lofty inspiration revealed. But, 
 alas ! the misery sometimes hardened his heart to 
 more sin, and sometimes made him laugh the louder 
 and drink the deeper to drown despair, if sometimes 
 it made him pray with bitter tears and read the Bible 
 with earnest inquiry ; but how much more, God. who 
 reads the heart, only can tell. His own epitaph on 
 himself is at once his severest condemnation. He who 
 reads it to purpose will understand Burns' errors to 
 profit. 
 
 * Is there a whim-inspired fool, 
 Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule, 
 Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool ? 
 
 Let him draw near ; 
 And owre this grassy heap sing dool 
 
 And drap a tear, 
 
238 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 Is there a bard of rustic song 
 
 Who, noteless, steals the crowds among 
 
 That weekly this area throng ? 
 
 pass not by ! 
 But, with a frater-feeling strong, 
 
 Here heave a sigh. 
 
 Is there a man whose judgment clear 
 Can others teach the course to steer, 
 Yet runs himself life's mad career 
 
 Wild as the wave % 
 Here pause, and through the starting tear 
 
 Survey this grave. 
 
 The poor inhabitant below 
 
 Was quick to learn and wise to know, 
 
 And keenly felt the friendly glow, 
 
 And softer flame ; 
 But thoughtless follies laid him low, 
 
 And stained his name ! 
 
 Reader, attend ! Whether thy soul 
 Soars Fancy's flights beyond the pole, 
 Or darkling grubs this earthly hole 
 
 In low pursuit, 
 Know, prudent, cautious self-control 
 
 Is wisdom's root." 
 
 But we must pass on, though the theme must come 
 in again and again in our lecture, as it did in his life. 
 
 On his return from Irvine, Burns settled down at 
 Mossgiel, a mile and a half from Mauchline. I re- 
 member my visit to that place, where Burns wrote 
 the poems that made him immortal. It is on a 
 bare upland, looking on one side far away over undu- 
 lating fields to Arran with its shattered peaks, and 
 on the other side to Loudon Hill, at whose foot, in 
 the fields of Drumclog, the Covenanters struck a 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 239 
 
 glorious blow for liberty. It is a very ordinary farm- 
 steading. The good woman of the house took me up 
 to the little garret-room (with a single pane of glass in 
 the roof), fit to hold only a bed, a table, and one chair, 
 where Burns penned at intervals of labour the lines 
 he had composed while holding the plough, wandering 
 in the woods or along the fields. From that little room 
 went forth those works whose dominion is now wide as 
 the world, from America's western backwood and Aus- 
 tralia's far eastern bush. I plucked a daisy also from 
 the field where his plough had turned up the one he 
 has immortalised and set as a star in the firmament by 
 poetry, and in another field I marked the spot where 
 the mouse had fled before him. 
 
 It was in this upland farm, amidst its ungrateful 
 toils, having £j a year for his personal expenses, while 
 he worked hard day by day from spring to winter — it 
 was here, and during the four years of his residence 
 here, Burns grew up into the perfect nature of his 
 genius, and flung forth with lavish hand the rich trea- 
 sures of his genius. Nor was this done without much 
 careful reflection. In his Memorandum Book we see 
 him carefully studying his former favourite writings, 
 from the standard English writers to the old minstrels 
 of Scotland, that he might learn the art of writing and 
 serving his apprenticeship to the craft of composition. 
 Time after time he walked forth by himself, sometimes 
 in the storm, that he might listen to the roar of the 
 wind through the planting, or down the river-side, 
 that, amidst the secret gentle scenes of nature, his soul 
 might be mellowed into her own tenderness. 
 
 All his senses were responsive to the sights and 
 sounds around him. " I have," he said when life was 
 
240 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 darkening, " some favourite flowers in spring, among 
 which are the mountain daisy, the harebell, the fox- 
 glove, the wild brier and rose, the budding birch, or 
 hoary hawthorn ; these I view and hang over with 
 tender delight. I never hear the loud solitary whistle 
 of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild cadence 
 of a troop of grey plover in an autumnal morning, 
 without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm 
 of devotion or poetry." 
 
 He gives a description of his own feelings when the 
 Muse Colia thus addresses him — 
 
 " I saw thee seek the sounding shore, 
 Delighted with the dashing roar ; 
 Or when the North his fleecy store 
 
 Drove through the sky, 
 I saw grim Nature's visage hoar 
 
 Struck thy young eye. 
 
 Or when the deep green-mantled earth 
 Warm cherished every flow'ret's birth, 
 And joy and music pouring forth 
 
 In every grove, 
 I saw thee eye the general mirth 
 
 With boundless love. 
 
 When ripened fields and azure skies 
 Called forth the reaper's rustling noise, 
 I saw thee leave their evening joys, 
 
 And lonely stalk, 
 To vent thy bosom's swelling rise 
 
 In pensive walk. 
 
 When youthful love, warm-blushing, strong, 
 Keen-shivering shot thy nerves along, 
 Those accents, grateful to thy tongue, 
 
 Th' adored name, 
 I taught thee how to pour in song, 
 
 To sooth thy flame. 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 241 
 
 I saw thy pulse's maddening play- 
 Wild send thee Pleasure's devious way, 
 Misled by Fancy's meteor ray, 
 
 By Passion driven ; 
 But yet the light that led astray 
 
 "Was light from Heaven." 
 
 But Burns was all the time deep in the study 
 of human nature. In his Mauchline and Tarbolton 
 debating societies he learned how to express himself. 
 Their themes of discussion were not indeed so elevated 
 and expansive as some of his own are. Here is a 
 specimen of their topics. " Whether do we derive more 
 happiness from love or friendship ? " " Whether is a 
 young man of common rank in life likeliest to be 
 happy who has got a good education and a mind well 
 improved, or he who has just got the education and 
 information of those around him ? " 
 
 The free discussion of such topics trained Burns to 
 that manly and matchless flow of speech which all 
 who knew him declared to be the most wonderful 
 among the wonderful things about him. And not 
 there only, but everywhere, his mind was active. At 
 kirk and market, among talkers about farming and 
 bullocks, and talkers about New Lights and Old 
 Lights, in the tavern and by the river-banks, in the 
 peat-bog when cutting fuel, and around the fireside 
 when at their meals, Burns' mind woke up and turned 
 all into improvement. Hence that other side of the 
 man's nature. He was not merely a passive or rap- 
 tured admirer of nature, as Tannahill, but a strong- 
 passioned man, full of benevolence and action. 
 
 Hence the wonderful range of Burns. His brain 
 was full lobed and his heart had in it many chambers. 
 
 Q 
 
242 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 Vehement scorn, gentlest pity, overawed adoration, hot 
 •passion, the sharpest-edged epigram, and the broadest 
 common sense — all were his. But now, on the eve of 
 writing what was in him, there came the new element 
 of sin, and with it alternate remorse and ridicule. As 
 has been often the case with unregenerate men and 
 passionate minds, deep inward sorrow has compelled 
 the utterance of the heart. Shakespeare's " Hamlet," 
 Dante's " Inferno," and David's Psalms prove this 
 fact. It is to these elements, joined with his ambition 
 and joy in the exercise of his ripening powers and the 
 growing sense of his greatness, that we attribute the 
 fact that while up to his twenty-sixth year he had 
 written very little, and that little much inferior in 
 matter and style, during the next fifteen months he 
 poured out at one heat nearly all his great poems. 
 
 The farm of his mind yielded fruit of all study, and 
 scarce a field but brought forth heavy crops. 
 
 These poems may be classed under seven or eight 
 heads, so varied are they in their range. 
 
 I. The earliest of his long efforts was his scathing 
 delivery on the Old Light ministers and opinions. In 
 these Burns allowed himself the utmost latitude of 
 expression. His religious principles were exceedingly 
 unsettled ; his character, he felt, was damaged ; ap- 
 plause greeted him from many quarters; and the 
 vehement pleasure of scourging his enemies — all these 
 gave force to this series of compositions. Coarseness, 
 profanity, wit, elegance, mingle together. 
 
 He used the flail most sturdily, and down came the 
 blow, no matter where it landed, resounding. Even 
 Burns himself, in later years, did not care to speak or 
 hear much about these pieces. They raised up many 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 243 
 
 enemies ; they committed kirn to the side of the pro- 
 fane and irreligious. They might unmask some hypo- 
 crites, but they threw a shield over many blackguards. 
 Satire is a useful weapon at times, but in the hands 
 of Burns it was like the restorer of some great paint- 
 ing ; while he removes the dust that hides its beauty, 
 he has well-nigh blotted out the matchless painting 
 itself. 
 
 2. Then come his humorous pieces. Satire slides into 
 humour. Different in their style, you have the satiri- 
 cally humorous in that extraordinary poem, " Death 
 and Dr. Hornbook," the kindly humour in " The Twa 
 Dogs," and the quaintly superstitious humour in the 
 " Address to the Deil." 
 
 " The Twa Dogs" is a gem. Such dogs as Cassar 
 and Luath, dogs who could talk to oneself, and so 
 kindly, might well, after such a natural dialogue, really 
 part, as Burns has told us they did — 
 
 " When up they gat and shook their lugs, 
 Rejoic'd they werena men but dogs ; 
 An' each took aff his several way, 
 Eesolv'd to meet some other day." 
 
 But of all his humorous pieces, the " Jolly Beggars " 
 is the most extraordinary. The only thing that re- 
 deems it from total repudiation is that kindly spirit 
 that makes us love man even in his lowest estate. So 
 far that is well ; but the ' ' Jolly Beggars " has another 
 side, which Burns knew well, in poverty, degradation, 
 shame, and death. 
 
 4. Passing from that side, we journey through to the 
 opposite side of Burns' genius. It is like going from 
 east to west with variety and element. 
 
244 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 The humorous has in it an element of affection, 
 else it would be only biting and bitter satire. It is 
 something between the vinegar of satire and the wine 
 of love and devotion. Here Burns' songs start up ; 
 they are the flowers of his epics. As in religious 
 poetry, so in secular, the epics are the most difficult. 
 How few good hymns are there ! The Bible has only 
 one David ; it has many historians, prophets, letter- 
 writers. Scotch literature has only one Burns ; it 
 has many writers in other departments. For what is 
 a hymn ? It must hold in itself the highest truth , 
 the deepest feeling, the finest imagery, the sweetest 
 and most stirring music, and that in the circle of a 
 very few lines. So with a song ; it must be truthful, 
 passionate, to fill the eye with its image and the ear 
 with its music, and it must be short. 
 
 Burns is eminent as a song-writer. The one passion 
 raging at the time, truthful and not affected, inspires 
 his song, tinges all nature with its colour, and floats 
 it along with its simple music. To take illustrations 
 from the songs written at other times. What a war- 
 blast, worthy of Bruce and Bannockburn, worthy of 
 Burns too, and more cannot be said, except worthy of 
 liberty and patriotism, is "Scots wha ha'e ! " What 
 a manly independence rings down the groove of every 
 line of " A Man's a Man for a' that ! " The highest- 
 felt gratitude is due to Burns for revealing his own 
 heart in that exquisitely elastic song, " Of a' the airts 
 the wind can blaw." Can we ever exhaust our 
 gratitude to the man who makes the dead start up 
 from memory into the light of renewed affection, and 
 the long-departed companion of our youth to come 
 again to our side as in boyhood's days, as is done 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 245 
 
 in " Auld Langsyne ? " But we pause. Each of 
 these songs and many others have crowned Burns 
 poet-laureate in the human heart and linked his 
 memory to those great foremost feelings of man- 
 kind that last from generation to generation, through 
 all classes and conditions, and flash from the pole to 
 the equator. 
 
 5 . Confining ourselves to that glorious fifteen months 
 of overflowing productiveness, we pass from the manly 
 yet tender love embalmed in his songs to that high 
 and sublime theme of pure and reverential sentiment 
 which will live for all time as " The Cottar's Saturday 
 Night." It was in a lofty hour that Burns rose to 
 this height. As Byron says of himself, so he might 
 have said of Burns ; had he kept his spirit to that 
 height, he had been happy. But the clay will sink 
 the spark immortal. The essence of a thousand such 
 scenes are distilled into this short but gifted poem. 
 It is his father, but recently dead, again comes up 
 before him — his weary toil, his spade, his mattock, his 
 hoes, his gleaming hearth crowned with love of wife 
 and children ; and his the hands that had held the 
 instruments of sore toil, and his the heart that had 
 rejoiced in the sweet comforts of the home fireside, 
 and who takes reverent hold of the " big ha' Bible" 
 and rises in affectionate, adoring love to the home 
 of Divine joy, where the fire is never quenched and 
 the circle is never broken. Oh ! how that song of 
 praise rises up as incense to Heaven, and carries with 
 it the hearts of those who sing. The cottage is turned 
 into a temple of the Most High. It is none other 
 than the House of God — it is the Gate of Heaven ! 
 Such a scene, passing from the pure flame of lofty 
 
245 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 devotion down to the genial, innocent, light of kindly 
 humour, lived so deeply in Burns, his poems flow out 
 so naturally, that we are lifted ere we are aware 
 from the gloomy walk or the fireside greetings to 
 glance into the very presence of God. Such a poem 
 does honour to the genius of Burns ; it has done more 
 than a thousand marble monuments to keep in affec- 
 tionate remembrance the character of Burns. Of all 
 his poems it is the one we could the least spare. It 
 is the best reply to his own satires ; it is an undying 
 monument to the ancestral piety of Scotland ; it dig- 
 nifies honest toil more than a thousand even of his 
 surpassing songs about rank and character ; and whilst 
 it makes us mourn over his fall, all the deeper it 
 reminds us that if Burns wrote only one " Cottar's 
 Saturday Night," he must have felt and loved it 
 thousands of times. 
 
 6. Nearly allied to this poem is his exquisitely 
 pathetic poetry. The room of the village-tavern is 
 hushed, the noisy laughter of boon companions has 
 died like crackling thorns, and Burns comes with the 
 morning to himself. Next day he is ploughing the 
 fields, full of pensive thoughts and dark musings, 
 when a mouse is startled from her nest in the ground. 
 The poet stops, looks at his brother-mouse with as 
 much sympathy as he had looked upon his brother- 
 man. The poet, the more he is a poet, passes out of 
 himself into all other beings, animate and inanimate. 
 Scientific theories and definitions are nothing to him ; 
 a sympathetic circle surrounds him — the star in the 
 firmament, the daisy in the field, the wild, angry 
 storm, and the gentle whispering breeze, from God 
 on His throne, down to all His creatures. What an 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 247 
 
 exquisitely truthful and original poem ! And so, again, 
 in the poem to the daisy. 
 
 7. Going further into another sphere, his Poetical 
 Epistles show a fine heartiness, his own determined, 
 stubborn independence, and his eager search for genuine 
 friendship. Listen to the stirring words in his ' ' Epistle 
 to Davie." 
 
 8. We pass by his poems which are mainly descrip- 
 tive, though these show his minute observation of 
 nature and his power in drawing her portrait, and 
 mark only one other kind of poems — those that mark 
 his strong common sense ; and as he speaks in these 
 in his own person, you see the true workings of his 
 mind. Every young man ought to have by heart his 
 celebrated " Epistle to a Young Friend." 
 
 Such, then, are the eight or nine various kinds of 
 poetical subjects that Burns treated. He could play 
 on nearly every string of the human heart, from 
 wildest fun to loftiest and purest adoration. But 
 what they are in variety is less interesting than what 
 they are in quality and character. What, after all, is 
 the secret of Burns' power ? — the common quality 
 which stamps what belongs to nature, the theme ? — 
 "The Cottar's Saturday Night" or Tarn O'Shanter's 
 midnight ride, with its Burns' mark ? I should say it 
 is manliness. He is never the poet to the exclusion 
 of the man. Had the man been more refined and 
 more religious, we should have been spared much in- 
 decency and irreligion, and we should have had a 
 better man. Nevertheless it is this that marks his 
 poems. In fact, Burns himself, and not the books he 
 read, the people he conversed with, his own soul, 
 such as it was. When he saw a thing, he saw it 
 
248 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 through and through, and with pen in hand he tells 
 you exactly what he saw. What he felt, he felt with 
 his whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. 
 
 Keen resolution, overwhelming sorrow, awestruck 
 emotion, whatever the feeling might be, you had it 
 as he had it, or rather as it had him. His book 
 is Burns himself. Hence the best way to study 
 his life is to take up his poems in chronological 
 order. The opposite to Shakespeare in this, who never 
 refers to himself, Burns is never tired referring to 
 himself ; and what is more, he never tires his readers. 
 For as Burns shows himself a man, few men ever 
 covered a larger area of humanity than Burns. His 
 sympathy spreads wide and deep, and in every opening 
 of his heart he is opening the heart of humanity. His 
 works have thus no professional look about them. He 
 wrote because he was possessed by the demiurgic force 
 of his ideas and impulses, and they carried him whither- 
 soever they listed. The whole moves as by a vital in- 
 fluence from within. One or two strokes, and you 
 have the daisy, the river-bank, the mouse, the man, 
 the landscape. How effortless everything in Burns 
 seems ! He passes at once from the human heart to 
 the heart of nature, puts a body upon his feeling, and 
 a soul into the scene around, making the one visible, 
 the other spiritual. Such was his genius, the power 
 of seeing right into the heart of things, and by virtue 
 of his intense sympathy entering into their very being, 
 that when he spoke, it was the thing itself that spoke, 
 and not another. 
 
 Hence the electric unexpected flashing from theme 
 to theme and from object to object. 
 
 It is very wonderful, and more so when you consider 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 249 
 
 the means Burns had at his command. Demosthenes 
 and Plato had that almost perfect instrument of ex- 
 pression, the Greek. Shakespeare and Milton played 
 a many octaved organ, the English tongue. What- 
 ever feeling they experienced, there stood a ready 
 instrument to interpret it and publish it abroad. But 
 Burns had only the limited, though, in its sphere, 
 intensely expressive, range of the Lowland Scotch 
 language. He had no Goliath's spear and buckler, 
 but only those David's stones from a brook ; no 
 curiously-wrought and well-adapted armour of the 
 Philistine champion, but only the Samson-like jaw- 
 bone of an ass. But with that vehicle of thought and 
 feeling he wrought marvels. It had indeed the same 
 power which every dialect has to those who know how 
 to use it. Our old Scotch Doric is a fit representation 
 of the Scotch Saxon character. It has words hard as 
 granite and soft as tears ; it has expressions that lay 
 bare character quaint and forcible ; and it has expres- 
 sions that speak love and pathos in tones that naturally 
 belong to them. Take these two words, pmvJcie as the 
 one, and glowering as the other, and where will you 
 find better in their different departments ? 
 
 The era of Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, Bacon, and 
 Jeremy Taylor was long .gone by. Literature in the 
 hands of Pope and his school had sunk into a clever 
 description of civilised life. Other poems had indeed 
 come close to nature. Such exquisite works as Gray's 
 " Elegy," Beattie's " Minstrel," Goldsmith's " Deserted 
 Village," and Collins' "Odes" prove that the electric 
 fire had not altogether disappeared ; but it came at 
 rare intervals and in feeble shocks. It was reserved for 
 Burns in Scotland and Cowper in England to inaugu- 
 
250 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 rate a new era, to bring back poetry to the human 
 heart, to the common earth arid sky, to the simple and 
 fervent language of daily life. Strange to say, both 
 poets appeared about the same time. Cowper appeared 
 in November 1785, and Burns' poems, in their first 
 edition, in November 1786. How different these 
 men, yet in many things how like ! Both loved Nature 
 in her common moods ; both had sly wit and slashing 
 sarcasm ; both wrote on the same lines in their poems ; 
 both differed much, but from different causes; both 
 died under a cloud, though of far different character 
 — Cowper, with his shrinking sensibilities and his 
 despairing piety ; Burns, with his impulsive sociality 
 and his turbid remorse. Yet " The Task" is not so 
 different from "The Cottar's Saturday Night " and the 
 " Holy Fair." The two most famous comic pieces are 
 the rides of John Gilpin and Tarn O'Shanter ; the last 
 written pieces are drawn out of the same deep foun- 
 tains of personal sorrow ! 
 
 These, however, whatever may be their likeness or 
 difference, were the men who regenerated English and 
 Scotch literature. Cowper preceded, and did some- 
 thing to prepare the way for, Coleridge, Byron, and 
 others. Burns had much hand in the impulse given 
 to Scott and Allan Cunningham. Hogg and Tanna- 
 hill drew directly from him. 
 
 But we return to the personal history. During those 
 months of poetical power in which Burns poured out 
 in molten masses the contents of his soul, he had been 
 fearfully disquieted. The intense action of his mind 
 in composition when in the grasp of his private 
 bitterness, soothed him ; but in the vacant hour the 
 fruits he had to eat from the things whereof he 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 251 
 
 was ashamed was bitter indeed, Callous, indeed, 
 Burns never was. Had he been, we could have had 
 no heart to write on him. Self-indulgent he was 
 one hour, but self-remorseful the next ; and the 
 effect of his conduct with Jean Armour, whom he had 
 exposed to a parent's wrath and a neighbourhood's 
 shame, made him determine to leave Scotland and 
 become a plantation worker or a negro-driver in 
 Jamaica. It was a gloomy season during which he 
 prepared to leave the land so dear to him by every 
 association. But to pay his passage-money he re- 
 solved to publish his poems. They appeared in the 
 year 1786 in Kilmarnock, and brought him twenty 
 pounds and the applause of the country-side. The 
 gloomy night that was gathering fast burst into a day 
 of fame and hope. Jamaica was abandoned, and Edin- 
 burgh was now his destination. There he went to 
 publish a second edition of his poems. As he went 
 he hummed to himself an old verse — 
 
 "As I came in by Glenap, 
 I met an aged woman, 
 And she bade me cheer up my heart, 
 For the best of my days were coming." 
 
 It is interesting to mark in the lot of men that when 
 the night is darkest some incident sent by God rolls 
 all their path into sunshine. The accidental dis- 
 covery of the first manuscript sheets of " Waverley," 
 written ten years before and laid aside for ever, deter- 
 mined Scott on finishing it, and originated that im- 
 raortal set of prose poems, the " Waverley Novels." 
 The discovery of the Bible changed Luther's whole 
 life. But the instances are too many to enumerate. 
 
252 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 Here was a new turning-point in Burns' life. It 
 brought him suddenly into the midst of renown and 
 rank. Three weeks ago he was skulking for fear 
 of a jail, his chest on the way to Greenock, and a 
 steerage passage taken out for the West Indies. 
 Now he hands down duchesses to dinner, and sits a 
 peer among the peers of fortune, learning, and taste 
 in the old capital of Scotland. It was a severe test 
 for any man, and Burns stood it well. He had in 
 his lonely garret gauged his powers, and had formed 
 an estimate of his productions. He had a natural 
 self-respect ami a fearless independence ; and so, when 
 he came to converse with men like Dugald Stewart, 
 Dr. Robertson, Dr. Blair, Henry Mackenzie, Henry 
 Erskine, he felt, and made them feel, that he was 
 every whit their equal, and in many points, by natural 
 endowment, their superior. His conversation, those 
 admirable judges declared, was the most wonderful 
 thing about him. Flashes of wit mingled with throbs 
 of pathos, broad and keen views of human nature with 
 wild, kindling enthusiasm, and all expressed in a style 
 so vigorous, that they felt the poems, so far from 
 exhausting his genius, were only the smallest part 
 of it. 
 
 This Ayrshire ploughman and peasant was a pheno- 
 menon, who, while his patrons took him out to fashion- 
 able circles, and trotted him out to show his paces, 
 made them feel that he was taking their measure, and 
 was never abashed or absurdly clownish in their com- 
 pany. There he sat among them with his farmer-like 
 frame, his thick black hair, his glowing eyes, his dark, 
 swarthy complexion, his firm-set lips, his whole look 
 of manhood and genius. But besides the great and 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 253 
 
 the fashionable he had other companions, and many 
 not of the best sort. He had taken that strong city, 
 Edinburgh, but he could not rule himself. The fire 
 of genius was too often laid on the altar of drinking. 
 About this time he says, " I know not how it is. I find 
 I can win liking, but not respect" It was very plain 
 how it was. Amidst his brilliant displays and warm 
 affections he wanted a great self-guiding principle. 
 Indeed, Oarlyle says in the memoir of his life, that up 
 to the day of his death he never grew to manhood in 
 taste. He was seeking pleasure, and was discon- 
 tented with his position. A man supported by religion 
 would have despised that round of sensuality, and 
 would have maintained, without constantly asserting, 
 his independence. 
 
 One other most interesting incident in Burns's stay 
 in Edinburgh was one to which it is probable he 
 never recurred. Among all the men he met, he little 
 knew a young boy, then fifteen years old, was destined 
 to be the greatest. Sir Walter Scott has given an 
 account of his meeting with Burns. It is preserved 
 in Lockhart's valuable account of their first and last 
 meeting. 
 
 The Edinburgh furor passed away. Burns returned 
 to Mossgeil with £600 in his pocket, £200 of which 
 he gave to his brother Gilbert and the family. His 
 mother, as he stepped in upon the family circle after 
 the Edinburgh fame, could say nothing more than 
 " Eobert ! " 
 
 After another idle winter in Edinburgh, which did 
 him no good, in 1788 he settled down at Ellisland, a 
 farm six miles from Dumfries, on the banks of the 
 Nith. He had married Jean Armour at last ; he had 
 
254 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 a few hundred pounds at his disposal, and he had a 
 fairer chance than most of prosperity in life. He 
 knew in what happiness consisted, and knew he had 
 its elements. And so again he resolved : "I have all 
 along hitherto, in the warfare of life, been bred to 
 arms among the light horse, the picquet-guards of 
 fancy, among the hussars and Highlanders of the 
 brain ; but I am firmly resolved to sell out of these 
 giddy battalions. Cost what it will, I am determined 
 to buy in among the grave squadrons of heavy-armed 
 thought, the artillery corps of solid contrivance." 
 
 He was now in his thirtieth year, and many bright 
 years seemed to be before him. But it was difficult 
 for any man, much more for Burns, to settle down to 
 plodding for even weeks, after his months of brilliant 
 idleness and vagrant fancies. Accordingly he was 
 wayward to settle down to his farm. The old proved 
 farmer is the best farmer. He had made a bad choice 
 in his farm ; it was miserably stubborn, and what it 
 did produce^ was not worth much. It had many fine 
 walks and views, but no good acres. He felt it was a 
 poet's haunt rather than a farmer's. So again in a few 
 months he added to the farming a gauger's employ- 
 ment, with ten parishes to look after. " I am now," 
 says he, " a poor rascally gauger, condemned to gallop 
 two hundred miles every week." But as a reason he 
 adds proudly and gaily — 
 
 u I ha'e a wife and twa wee laddies, 
 They maun ha'e brose and brats o' duddies ; 
 Ye ken yoursel my heart right proud is ; 
 But I'll sned besoms, threw saugh woodies, 
 Before they want." 
 
 The twofold charge over his barren acres and hi9 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 255 
 
 smuggling friends was too much. It took him from 
 home, led him to more joviality, and at last compelled 
 him to retreat from Ellisland to Dumfries, there to live 
 on his salary of £yo a year. We ask, and the question 
 arises in every mind, Why did not the friends and 
 patrons of Burns do more for him than a gaugership 
 with £jo a year ? Many answers may be given. What 
 is everybody's business is nobody's business, ^he man 
 who in4ife looks to public bodies of men doing him 
 justice, much less being generous, will often find him- 
 self forlorn and penniless. Take twenty men, each 
 with the kindest heart, and form them into a corpo- 
 rate body, and the corporate soul and conscience 
 seems gone. Besides, Burns was " ower-blate to seek, 
 ower-proud to snool." Samuel Johnson once pitched 
 from him a new pair of shoes laid over-night at his 
 lodging door for the use of the shoe-worn student ; 
 and Burns was as proud as Johnson. Very likely 
 his bold bearing in Edinburgh had offended men who, 
 had he been more deferential or less imperative, 
 would have come forward to help him. But best 
 reason of all, it was felt that it was difficult to help 
 a man who could well help himself. A man of 
 genius must study the multiplication-table and the 
 rule of three. No fallacy is more pernicious than that 
 your man of genius is privileged to be an idler or a 
 spendthrift. It is a false principle — it is a fatal prac- 
 tice. The men of greatest genius have always been 
 men of the greatest common sense. Shakespeare, 
 Milton, and others testify to this. Alas ! Burns did 
 not need patronage ; he needed something far better 
 and surer in a time of danger and strait — he needed 
 a prudent caution and self-control. Stern indeed is 
 
256 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 the great moral law. Burns placed himself in opposi- 
 tion to it, and in the conflict he, as all must, came off 
 beaten. 
 
 But after all, it was pitiful that Burns should have 
 had no other opening made for him, and it could have 
 been done if a true effort had been made. It is so 
 too often. The man of genius, being poor, fights long, 
 struggles with many difficulties, dies in impoverished 
 obscurity ; and then, when only the frail tenement that 
 has been fretted to death is left, when the worn-out 
 vesture of the imperishable spirit falls from it in decay 
 or is torn off by disease, men waken up, accompany 
 the body in thousands, shed tears over the grave — tears, 
 a few of which, if shed over the living heart, had 
 quenched many a sordid fear — and shout applause 
 over the car of death, the slightest whisper of which 
 would have called back the jaded and disappointed 
 spirit to joy and hope. Oh ! it is too often so in our 
 narrow lives. The death that takes from us a friend 
 quickens in us a sympathy over his struggles, and a 
 tear for his excellences, which, if shown more fre- 
 quently, might perhaps have kept him longer among 
 us, and certainly have made our fellowship more close 
 and generous. 
 
 But one lesson comes out here. Every man must be 
 his own patron. Heart within and God overhead. 
 " Commit thy ways unto the Lord, and He will bring 
 it to pass. Blessed is the man that trusteth in the 
 Lord." 
 
 During his stay at Ellisland, however, Burns had 
 not been altogether idle. "Tarn O'Shanter," perhaps 
 the very finest of Burns' poems, does much to redeem 
 him from that charge. Long simmering in his mind, 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 257 
 
 lie poured it out in one day. Mrs. Burns says he was 
 busily engaged in the morning in crooning to himself, 
 and perceiving that her presence was an interruption, 
 crouched with her little ones among the broom. The 
 children were presently attracted by the strange and 
 wild gesticulations of the bard. He was reciting very 
 loud, and with tears rolling down his cheeks, those 
 animated lines which he had just composed — 
 
 " Now, Tain, Tarn, had they been queans, 
 A' plump and strapping in their teens," 
 
 and so forth. This was a great feat for one day. His 
 Muse from beginning to end moves on without slacken- 
 ing speed, at a hot hand-gallop, without once drawing 
 breath. Pegasus carried Burns through it as nobly 
 as the mare Meg carried Tarn himself all through that 
 marvellous ride. 
 
 That noblest of his ballads, " To Mary in Heaven," 
 and that best of his drinking-pieces, " Willie Brewed 
 a Peck o' Maut," belong to this period. An excellent 
 man belonging to our congregation, now dead, had an 
 uncle whose farm lay near to Ellisland. He often 
 used to see Burns passing along the road on foot or 
 horseback, a careless, slouching walker, and an ungainly 
 rider, but noted for his deeply marked face, heavy and 
 melancholy, and his large black flaming eyes. 
 
 These days, however, did not last long, and in 
 1 79 1 he came into Dumfries. He came there with a 
 sense of disappointment. His gaugership, which 
 ranged from Caerlaverock Castle to Annan Water, led 
 him into all companies, and when at home he was con- 
 stantly exposed to the temptation of deep-drinking 
 and late hours. Then he became through his entku- 
 
 R 
 
258 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 siasm, rashly displayed, a marked man, to be shunned 
 by the friends of king and constitution ; and, last and 
 worst, his habits sauk lower and lower. It is a most 
 painful history — 
 
 " 'Twere Ions; to tell and sad to trace 
 Each step from splendour to disgrace ; 
 Enough, no foreign foe could quell 
 My soul, till from itself it fell." 
 
 His genius never through these last years rose 
 high or kept long on the wing ; soug after song, how- 
 ever, showed that the light of poetry was only hidden. 
 His very finest songs belong to this period. " Scots 
 wha ha'e " and " A Man's a Man for a' that," and some 
 150 more, show that force and cunning were not 
 departed from his right hand. Many a letter, too, 
 full of glowing sublimity, bitter sarcasm, or manly 
 comment, tell us what passed within. 
 
 At one time, when he was nearly shunned of all, a 
 young friend met him on the shady side of the street, 
 walking alone. He proposed to Burns to cross the 
 street. " Nay, nay, my young friend ; that will never 
 do," Burns said ; and then he quoted the old ballad — 
 
 " His bonnet stood ance fu' fair on his brow, 
 His auld ane looked better than mony ane's new ; 
 But now he lets 't wear ony gate it will hing, 
 And casts himsel' dowie upon the corn bing. 
 Oh were we but young as ance we ha'e been, 
 We should ha'e been galloping down on yon green 
 And linking it ower the lily-white lea, 
 And were nae my heart light I wad die." 
 
 This was now his habitual mood. Long after he 
 expressed it too truly in lines which were figured in 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 259 
 
 the life of Byron during the darkening down of his 
 own days — 
 
 " When ance life's day draws near the gloamm, 
 Then fareweel vacant, careless roamin, 
 And fareweel cheerfu' tankards foamin, 
 
 And social noise, 
 And fareweel dear deluding woman, 
 
 The joy of joys." 
 
 Indeed, there is niuch in these last years that re- 
 calls those of Byron. Byron had not poverty to fight 
 against, but that was not Burns' great difficulty. For 
 honest poverty he did not hang his head or break his 
 heart. But both had exhausted the springs of life, 
 and dragged down the nobler part of their nature 
 till they wearied of life. But we shall not linger on 
 this period. He had, in his own words, given away 
 slice after slice of his constitution, till but little re- 
 mained. He went to the Brow, on the shore of 
 the Sol way in Annandale. Professor Wilson says he 
 had his Bible with him in his lodgings, and read it 
 almost continually ; and he expressed to a friend his 
 deep contrition for having written some things he 
 regretted, and mentioned that he rejected with horror 
 the offer of £$0, made when he was poor, by a mis- 
 creant who wished to publish them. 
 
 Fond of nature to the last, a young friend was 
 about to let down the window-blinds to darken the 
 room in which he lay, into which the sun shone 
 brightly. Looking at her with great benignity, he said, 
 "Thank you, my dear, for your kind attention; but 
 do let him shine ; he will not shine long for me." 
 And it was but a few days after, in his house in Dum- 
 fries, early in the morning of a beautiful July day, the 
 
2 6o ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 2 1st of the month, he closed those glowing eyes for 
 ever on this earth he loved so well. 
 
 I have stood in that small upper room. I had 
 stood in the room where, thirty-seven years before, 
 he was born, and in that garret where, in the spring- 
 time of his genius, he had written poem after poem ; 
 but standing in that chamber of death awoke deeper 
 and more varied feelings. On these I shall not enter 
 — lessons I shall not draw ; for this lecture will have 
 been in vain if it has not conveyed its own most 
 impressive lesson by inference and deduction. 
 
 It is precisely in this part of our life that religion, 
 and above all the Gospel, comes in with its cure for 
 sin and sorrow. The problem and lesson of Burns' 
 life are most incomplete and unsatisfactory unless we 
 see how in these dark, downward times he thought of 
 religion. Listen to the words he addressed in 1794 
 to a true-hearted friend. ' ' Are you deep in the lan- 
 guage of consolation ? I have exhausted in reflection 
 every topic of consolation. Still there are two great 
 pillars that bear us up amid the wreck of misfortune 
 and misery. The one is composed of the different 
 modifications of a certain noble, stubborn something 
 in man, known by the names of courage, fortitude, 
 magnanimity ; the other is made up of those feelings 
 and sentiments which, however the sceptic may deny 
 or the enthusiast disfigure them, are yet, I am convinced, 
 great and component parts of the human soul — those 
 senses of the mind, if I may be allowed the expression, 
 which connect us with and link us to those awful 
 realities, an all-powerful and equally beneficent God, 
 and a world to come beyond death and the grave. 
 The first gives the nerve to combat while a ray of hope 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 261 
 
 beams on the field ; the last pours the balm of comfort 
 into the wounds which time can never cure." Some 
 time before he had written to James Candlish (the 
 father of Dr. Candlish), " I likewise, since you and I 
 were first acquainted, in the pride of despising old 
 women's stories, ventured on the daring path Spinoza 
 trod ; but experience of the weakness, not the strength 
 of human power, made me glad to grasp at revealed 
 religion." Elsewhere he says, " From the sublimity, 
 excellence, and purity of His doctrine and precepts, 
 unparalleled by all the aggregated wisdom and learning 
 of many preceding ages, though to appearance He was 
 Himself the obscurest and most illiterate of our species, 
 therefore Jesus was from God." We know that he 
 had family worship regularly at Mossgiel and Ellisland, 
 and if not that at Dumfries, on Sabbath evenings he 
 catechised his children. 
 
 Such, as far as we know, were his religious thoughts 
 and feelings. A man of essentially noble nature and 
 warm affections, he felt even to madness the degrada- 
 tion of his passions and the estrangement of his 
 fellows. It is sad enough to hear him speaking of 
 buying a pocket copy of Milton, that he might study 
 and fathom the pride of Satan. Angelic pride and 
 animal passion, there you have the secret of Burns' sins ; 
 aye, sin is always the cause of his sorrow. Such a 
 lesson on the need of a Divine Atonement to bring 
 peace, and Divine influence to supply power, when 
 remorse rages and passion is in the ascendant, when 
 misery beclouds and mirth bewitches the spirit, is not 
 to be read every day. Far be it from me to pronounce 
 on Burns or any man ; but our lecture on Burns will 
 not be useless if along with the lessons of friend- 
 
262 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 ship, patriotism, admiration of independence which his 
 name recalls to his admirers — and who can fail to be 
 such ? — the sympathising heart has little of the spirit 
 of Him who wept over sin whch does not pity rever- 
 ently, and yet truly learn the solemn truth that genius, 
 while it may ennoble misfortune, can never supply the 
 calm peace of innocence, and that applause can never 
 be substituted for that grace of God which hath 
 appeared unto men, and which teaches us that, deny- 
 ing ungodliness, we should live soberly, righteously, 
 and godly in this present world. 
 
 Enough on this subject, yet not more than enough. 
 Let the light of Burns' genius, while it shows us the 
 height to which it raised him, show us also the rocks 
 on which he foundered ; and let us repeat his own 
 earnest words, written as if he had anticipated the 
 future sitting in judgment on him : — 
 
 " Then gently scan your brother man, 
 
 Still gentler sister woman ; 
 Though they may gang a kennin wrang, 
 
 To step aside is human : 
 One point must still be greatly dark, 
 
 The moving why they do it ; 
 And just as lamely can ye mark 
 
 How far, perhaps, they rue it. 
 
 "Who made the heart, 'tis He alone 
 
 Decidedly can try us ; 
 He knows each chord — its various tone, 
 
 Each spring — its various bias : 
 Then at the balance let's be mute, 
 
 We never can adjust it ; 
 "What's done we partly may compute, 
 
 But know not what's resisted." 
 
XI. 
 
 W. B. ROBERTSON, D.D. 
 
 This day we and many with us are bereaved indeed ! 
 Had this sad hour come fifteen years ago, as we greatly 
 feared it would, this whole congregation would have 
 felt, as it cannot now, a sense of loss in the removal 
 of the noble man, the marvellous preacher, the tenderest 
 of friends in joy and sorrow, the ever glancing wit, the 
 genius, the man of God, the singular personality which, 
 in its completeness, made him a position all his own 
 in the Scottish pulpit, and one of the rarest men in all 
 Scotland. But fifteen years have brought their changes. 
 I am told that so rapid have they been that not many 
 more than a hundred remain who remember him in the 
 sweep and soaring of his power. With his death there 
 rise up in many hearts here the departure of their 
 clearest, to whom he, in this pulpit and in their homes, 
 was very dear, and now at last the electric presence, 
 the gleaming brilliance, the all-sympathising affection 
 that touched and gladdened old and young, have passed 
 away. There was no more remarkable man in Scotland 
 of his day than William Eobertson. Those who heard 
 him but ouce, retain the record of a charm and thrill, 
 strange and solitary in their experience ; and to those 
 who knew him in deep passage of friendship, he can 
 
264 W. B. ROBERTSON, D.D. 
 
 never be replaced. Ere we part to oar various lives 
 from that face that shone in this place, let us take one 
 lingering look at it once more, now darkening under 
 the coffin lid. His life reached its 66th year, four 
 years within the three score and ten, and had like 
 most lives, especially of mark, its three stages of pre- 
 paration, of work, of retreat from the old public toil, 
 of bearing of deepening pain, that too, being a prepara- 
 tion on a higher plane for the work of the life where 
 there is no death. 
 
 There were first his years of preparation up to 
 his 23d year. Few men have had a more enrich- 
 ing training. His boyhood's home was far more than 
 that of most a school of sense and piety and genius. 
 All the neighbours around the farm of Greenhill, 
 in the parish of St. Ninians, near Stirling, where he 
 was born, went to consult his father, as men used of 
 old to inquire of the oracle of God. He was one of 
 those massive, grave natures, of few words and of much 
 tenderness, which Scotland produced in large numbers. 
 He bore deep marks of the far back spirit of independ- 
 ence which made the morass of Bannockburn, that lay 
 beside his farm, the harvest field of national liberty ; 
 and higher still there was at the centre of his Christian 
 nature the fervour of the old Secession piety, caught at 
 its very hearth in Ebenezer Erskine's church in Stirling. 
 With these central qualities were combined the modern 
 breadth and discipline which only a college training 
 gives. And his mother had the deep passion and 
 music — sacred and inborn — which she gave to all her 
 children, but gave in richest measure to her second 
 son, William. That music, that finer spirit, often 
 trembled under the weight of a nature too finely 
 
W. B. ROBERTSON, D.D. 265 
 
 touched. And if her son had in rare balance both 
 spheres of emotion, and beginning from the pathos of 
 the minor key seldom ended without reaching the 
 major notes of hallelujah and triumph, still the domi- 
 nating element of his intellectual and spiritual nature 
 and make came from that gentle ethereal mother. This 
 made his deepest nature lyrical, and lifted it into a 
 higher rhythm. This was the leaven that leavened 
 the three measures of his gifts — intellect, emotion, and 
 action — and in greater breadth, and under a more 
 varied culture, made his sermons, and poems, and 
 prayers, and his whole life, the bread of life, and more, 
 the wine of life also, to many. In him the father and 
 the mother thus showed themselves alike in the singular 
 weight and balance of a life, measured in its dealings 
 with his fellow-men, and, for a man of his high-strung 
 temperament, kept him singularly free from mistakes 
 and blunders, as well as in the soaring wings that lifted 
 him up to the very gates of heaven in its impassioned 
 ecstacy and eloquence, and carried all souls with him. 
 That whole family of Greenhill, known as " the Holy 
 Family," had all the same touch of genius and grace. 
 The sister whom he loved more than any other in the 
 world, and who made the care of her brother and his 
 manse her chiefest joy, was finely kindred in womanly 
 depth and subtlety of spirit ; and now the only like- 
 minded surviving sister of the dear old home, who 
 watched and cheered him through the valley of death, 
 has her solitude cheered by the love and gratitude of 
 all who knew her tenderness to him who has gone, 
 and far better, by that great Love that assures her 
 dail} T , " Thy brother shall rise again." 
 
 Then came Glasgow College. A dear friend of 
 
266 W. B. ROBERTSON, D.D. 
 
 his in far-off years, and to the end, Dr. Edmond 
 of London, wrote me — " You send me heavy tidings ; 
 the genius lamp of the United Presbyterian denomi- 
 nation is quenched. Alas ! my brother ! But of 
 course we sorrow not so — nay, we rejoice. Strange, 
 but when I think of it, not strange, the first pic- 
 ture of our departed that came up to me when 
 I read your message, was of two boys, William 
 and George, in the Tyrones' Greek Class of Sandford, 
 which I also, a raw country lad, had entered, who 
 even then were shining as twin stars. I see them in 
 the bench they occupied, their fresh scarlet college 
 gowns covering their boyish forms." William rejoins 
 George after nearly forty years. " Sweet and gentle 
 George," Dr. Edmond adds, " beautiful and brilliaut 
 William, have now met again." 
 
 Under the shadow of the old St. Ninian's tower, 
 whence they looked out in the hours of the battle of Ban- 
 nockburn, a mile off, and heard its glorious tumult of 
 patriotism, the most of the family lie sweetly, life's long 
 Bannockburn over, and victory and liberty an inalienable 
 possession through their Divine King. Last Thursday 
 summer light streamed down and made bright and warm 
 the home where he sleeps well with his kindred. 
 
 Then came the Theological Hall, also a session 
 under Dr. Chalmers which left a mark on a spirit 
 as finely tempered as Chalmers' own, but more kin- 
 dred to the imagination of Edward Irving. To one 
 preacher, Dr. Candlish, he always said he owed much 
 for doctrinal power and oratorical urgency, though 
 Candlish was even more unlike Robertson than Chal- 
 mers, but your minister was always a hospitable soul, 
 full, as all such souls are, of a generous receptiveness, 
 
W. B. ROBERTSON, D.D. 267 
 
 and knowing, under all forms, men of his own power 
 and passion. But all this led him up to the greatest 
 influence of all — in Germany, under Tholuck and 
 Neander. There, at least, his essential genius found 
 its true kindred and home. For the Teutonic spirit, 
 chiefly in its old mystics — as also in Luther, alike 
 mystic in his passionate experience and evangelical in 
 his Christian doctrine, and again in the deep learning 
 and simple unconscious devoutness of Neander, and 
 even more in the romantic lyrical movements of thought 
 and feeling of Tholuck, so like his own — this German 
 spirit breathed its crowning life into every member of 
 his previous culture and made it in its atmosphere of 
 redemption stand up and go forward an exceeding 
 great army. Special inward tides and times of God's 
 visitation we know not. Great in expression, he was 
 greater in the possession and power of things he could 
 not express. But these doubtless there were, and we 
 can easily mark how the youthful enthusiasm became 
 concentrated and consolidated and breathed out a 
 fuller, nobler life. In these deserts — these lonely 
 places of his soul, far more than in all colleges or even 
 homes — the Spirit of God was with him till the time of 
 his manifestation unto Israel. 
 
 The second and main part of his life, in Irvine and 
 in his congregation, stretched during twenty-eight 
 years, from 26th December, 1843, to the day that 
 struck him down, never to be the same man again, in 
 1 87 1. Removed into a siding from the busy over- 
 crowding centres of toil and hurry, no place could 
 have suited him better ; and since David Dickson came 
 here two hundred years earlier, curious to mark, from 
 the same part of Stirlingshire, in this fine old centre 
 
263 W. B. ROBERTSON, D.D. 
 
 of Covenanting history and Ayrshire genius, another 
 may be mentioned among those who have walked these 
 Irvine streets — for Robert Burns, contrasted and yet 
 alike, came here also in his 23d year and toiled among 
 your grandfathers. Here, amidst its Sabbath-like still- 
 ness ail the week, and its weekly Sabbath's spiritual 
 rest and work in your homes and congregation, your 
 minister worked, taught, and grew. Apart from his 
 ministry, even John Gait did not mark more keenly 
 your village humours ; and James Montgomery left in 
 childhood, leaving him to live out a poet-life among 
 you ; and had he possessed his purer, loftier piety, 
 Robert Burns would have added the consecration to 
 the poet's dream. 
 
 From this heart centre, as the years went on, our 
 greater Scotch towns began to learn that a new vision 
 and prophet had been sent to our land, a man with 
 the learning of imagery in his love of Christ, and love 
 of souls of the old Covenanter, Samuel Rutherford, 
 with the trumpet imagery peals and magnificent pic- 
 tures of Edward Irving, but without the narrowness 
 which Rutherford got from his troubled times, and the 
 errors that Irving fell into from his fevered brain — a 
 man gathering all modern movements of intellect and 
 imagination to adorn the everlasting truth and great- 
 ness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That long time of 
 twenty-eight years, in the homely Cotton Row Church, 
 and in this Trinity Church, springing out of his brain, 
 and his own truest monument, he brightened. This 
 old town and district lent the breath of genius and 
 godliness, amongst its own streets, and lent a colour- 
 ing to your golden sandy hillocks, to the serene gleam 
 of the broadening Firth, and away up to the loftiest 
 purple Arran peak. 
 
W. B. ROBERTSON, D.D. 369 
 
 I used to come here for many a year, and the ever 
 genial affection, the easy abundant play of deepest 
 thought in theology, philosophy, and above all, art, and 
 in the glancing treatment of incident or expression, its 
 sacred beginning and closing of morning and evening 
 with prayers that bound and beautified the whole da}^, 
 his visits to the poor and the sick, his smiling notice 
 of every child, his shrewd talk with every man, his un- 
 resting brain, his overflowing heart, these abide and 
 shall abide till all years are done on earth, and shall 
 pass and live where change cannot cloud or sever. 
 And amidst all, there rose up before you a face, half 
 of a poet and half orator, with the eternal brightness 
 of that face of Shelley, with the resolute glow of thought 
 of Chalmers. There were in it the dreamy heavy- 
 laden eyes that looked betimes far withdrawn or flashed 
 out in vivid gleam of acute observation or of loving 
 regards. And over eyes rose and rounded the brow so 
 ample, so sweet in its curve, so princely in its bearing, 
 and beneath the lips that were the gates whence all the 
 soul came out in measured cadence or sharp accent. 
 
 One can never forget his life in his study, where 
 alone he filled his whole being with Divine truth and 
 influence, where the pathos and joy, the inward cries 
 and gladness, the fellowship with Christ, anointed him 
 apart for his teaching and outpouring of soul in this 
 place. For his teaching was in root intensely scrip- 
 tural, evangelical, and spiritual. He loved sound 
 words, and no one could better adorn Divine beauty ; 
 but the secret of his strength lay in his wrestling grip, 
 in the upspringing blessing of dawn and splendour from 
 the presence of God. Well conscious and heedful of 
 all the changing influence of the times that gave new 
 
270 W. B. ROBERTSON, D.D. 
 
 shape and proportion and expression to Christian truth, 
 he knew and loved best of all the eternal realities, 
 the redeeming and regenerating influences that came 
 into this world of sin and sorrow in Christ, at once the 
 Lord of all creation as well as the greatness of all atone- 
 ment and power. An abstract God of thought or of 
 law, a rhetorical God of imagery and fancy, he could 
 not live with nor live for, whether in himself or for 
 others. So, heart to heart, beat answering to beat, he 
 passed beyond the arctic region of an infinite law and 
 power, and the splendours of an infinite beauty, to 
 what could only be the home of his deepest needs, the 
 heaven of his loftiest aspirations, to the infinite of love 
 in the incarnate, crucified, and indwelling Christ. 
 You know well how the cross and resurrection of 
 Christ broke through upon this people ; the glories of 
 the Infinite Father, the comforts of the Holy Spirit, rose 
 up before you in all his sermons, in which angel-like 
 he bowed before God with veiled and silent face, and 
 Baptist-like pointed and cried, " Behold the Lamb of 
 God, which taketh away the sin of the world." And 
 as he did so there rose up also the mist-hidden hungry 
 wants of your hearts of sin and sorrow, coming up to 
 meet the Divine revelation so noble and so needed. 
 One of the great marvels of his teaching lay in this, 
 that he made man feel the near warmth of the heart 
 of Christ and long to come out of themselves and 
 get within its glow and its light. Oh ! it was a 
 ministry having all the three dimensions of a Divine 
 and human depth, and breadth, and height, and to 
 these is surely pledged the fourth, that of everlasting 
 length. 
 
 But as his life rung out its richest and most trium- 
 
W. B. ROBERTSON, D.D. 271 
 
 pliant music, there came in, startling and sudden, the 
 deep muffled notes of the muffled drum. An unex- 
 pected arrow of disease struck the soaring wing, and 
 for many a day it was broke, and could not indeed 
 bear again with so strong and prolonged a stroke. To 
 him also came in God's ways of dealing with him what 
 the prison was to Paul and a Patmos to John, and, 
 shall we add, the cross to the Master. I need not tell 
 you that sad story. Enough — pain nearly ended in 
 death — long hanging over the edge of Eternity — sepa- 
 ration from the regular work, and that in a moment 
 when life's harvest was thickest and busiest — the 
 silencing of that soul-like voice — the foreign retreat — 
 the sadness of distance from old friends and faces — then 
 the growing respite, but only for rare utterances in the 
 old measure — why go over this pathetic story ? — till at 
 length last Sabbath he entered into Heaven's own rest, 
 and his tongue is again loosed, and he shall no longer 
 say, " I am sick ! " 
 
 But kind things never failed him. Love of them 
 who loved him in the days of high sunshine, made 
 known in many a way, or word, and rare and munifi- 
 cent gifts, that filled his earthly cares, and, above all, 
 the love of the Master, who continued with him in all 
 his temptations, and so enriched him by His Divine 
 manifestations that, though in a new position, he used 
 to say he never felt happier, and so could well afford to 
 glory in God in the furnace, and to show to all how he 
 walked there in patience and possession of his soul with 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 Yet this, too, was in the hands of Him who leads 
 the blessed by a way they know not, and does all these 
 things to us and does not forsake us. This was but 
 
272 W. B. ROBERTSON, D.D. 
 
 the preparation, not amidst the splendour of young 
 hope and the unbounded elasticity of manly strength 
 for his life work in Irvine. It was the preparation, let 
 us believe — aye, we know it — in this sombre and often 
 secluded school of weariness and disappointment, for 
 a work more blessed than even the dear old Irvine 
 work — a work which after service led to suffering, but 
 now to a service better far, and rising only to larger 
 strength and joy. 
 
 Meanwhile, during fifteen years, what work he was 
 permitted to do in public had on it a baptism of Divine 
 freshness and power. And he himself lost no mood of 
 cheerfulness, and lived with a richer range of chas- 
 tened pathos and settled peace. The midnight brought 
 down to 'him, on his pillow of hard trial, light from 
 stars of promise and voices of Divine comfort he had 
 never seen or heard before in his glowing meridian ; 
 and so that life, great in its strength, was made greater 
 in its weakness, and all felt that in the Christian life, 
 as in that of Christ, Calvary, Gethsemane, Bethany 
 with its grave, sway men's souls from a purer height 
 and in nobler depths than Cana with its wine of 
 human joy, or Tabor with its Divinest transfiguration, 
 or even the ascension with its^ opening Heaven. But 
 now the beginning, the middle, the close of this poem 
 of God. His Divine work has rounded itself into the 
 perfect whole, and we feel that what we call his death 
 is only his life starting from a higher point and more 
 on its unending growth. " The rest," writes a dear 
 friend, " has come now, and the weary suffering is 
 over." He passed away quietly and very gradually 
 just before the afternoon bells began to ring. The 
 suffering look has worn off and the beauty of the 
 
W. B. ROBERTSON, D.D. 273 
 
 features has come out with the placid repose the tired 
 frame now enjoys. 
 
 His intercourse with his sister during these weary 
 weeks, by night and day, has been of the most tender 
 and spiritual as well as natural character. . . . All his 
 higher finer aspirations have, as his sister remarked, been 
 showing themselves during this time more than ever." 
 He said to another, " I am peaceful and joyful. I am 
 all unworthy in myself, but have the worthiness of the 
 Lord." To his dear friend, Mr. Taylor, he said, " I 
 have had a great deal of pain, but I have good pros- 
 pects before me. I am perfectly resigned either way." 
 A day or two before the end he asked to be read to 
 him the walk of Elijah and Elisha down to the river 
 Jordan, and the sundering of the two by the chariot 
 and horses of fire, one to the prophet's reward, and 
 the other to the prophet's work. It was difficult 
 for his sister to read it. We look up to-day to 
 the heavens where he has gone, and as we look up 
 we cry, " The chariot of Israel, aud the horsemen 
 thereof." 
 
 Your head is now taken from you. Half of the 
 hearts of many has gone with him, but the track of the 
 fire-course still fills the sky of memory. It was the 
 same fire that was first kindled far back in the old 
 home facing the Ochil Hills, and is now perfect in the 
 everlasting home where he stands high in bliss among 
 the hills of God. The fire that kindled the boy's 
 heart glowed far and wide in the man's work, a fire 
 that rose above all earthly brightness, and burned high 
 amidst all earthly sorrow, touched by a new life into a 
 song of unbroken thanksgiving, a service of perfection 
 in the new home and church above. We stand, and 
 
 s 
 
274 W. B. ROBERTSON, D.D. 
 
 the feeling thrills us as it did Bunyan when he joined 
 the pilgrims passing through the gates of the New 
 Jerusalem and saw no man behind, saying, " I have 
 seen ; I wished myself among them." 
 
 Meanwhile, let us, Elisha-like, take up the descend- 
 ing mantle and wrap it about us, and seek what he 
 prayed for as a double portion of his spirit. Let his 
 dear young colleague and successor, in whom his heart 
 rejoiced, and through whom you feel God has given 
 you another to richly feed and guide you in the Lord, 
 let him take fresh courage, and it shall be said of him, 
 day by day, as it was said of Elisha, " There is the 
 man of God who goes by us continually." And let us 
 in our various lot and life walk the more hopefully now 
 that the Holy God who never failed him will never fail 
 us. For it is not genius, nor eloquence, nor admoni- 
 tion, nor fame, nor even deepest human love, that are 
 God's best gifts. These are the hearts that love Christ 
 because of His great love to them. The likeness to 
 Christ the joy of His work. These are immortal, these 
 share in the everlasting greatness of Christ Himself, 
 these endure with Him who is the same yesterday, to- 
 day, and for ever. Nations, homes, and congregations 
 pass away, but redeemed souls abide; and may we 
 abide with them. 
 
 Dr. Eobertson as a Preacher. 
 
 We know no other preacher exactly, or indeed at 
 all, like Dr. Eobertson. He is so individual as to be 
 almost alone of his kind — and his kind it would be 
 hard to define. It would contain in it, as in a subtle 
 
IV. B. ROBERTSON, D.D. 275 
 
 and rare mixture, most fervent evangelical doctrine, 
 put in closest relation to the human soul, and with 
 full insight into modern thought ; and also a strange, 
 wizard-like dwelling among the ultimate truths of the 
 spiritual world, with a magical affluence of words, alike 
 picture and music. There is in him the perfervid 
 genius of the Scot — the old Scot who was also a bard ; 
 while his clear intuitions of both worlds — those of soul 
 and of sense — are those of the Teutonic Minnesinger, 
 who was also the singer of Divine love. Besides, there 
 is the thinker, whose thoughts come before us under 
 the handling of the artist, the artist in the high sense 
 of the man in whom the creative act is repeated by 
 which the symbol and the substance become one. 
 There are other relations in which Dr. Robertson 
 stands to those who know and love him well. On the 
 true and tender friend, the wit without satire, the 
 humorist without vulgarity, the many-glancing genius 
 full of ready memories and rich suggestions, we do not 
 here linger. We wish to get as near as we can to the 
 open secret ol the poet-preacher. 
 
 One thing that strikes us only in our last analysis 
 is, that all the pictures, full of change and vivid- 
 ness, of his imagination and emotion are encased and 
 dominated by a firmly set framework of order and plan. 
 The unexpectedness — the abandon — the abundance — 
 so seemingly boundless, so charmingly startling, are 
 governed by a severe inner order and balance. The 
 mightiest musician, in his most unlimited soarings or 
 unexpected subtleties, must, though he may not be con- 
 scious of it, be obedient to severest mathematical laws 
 of tone and time. 
 
 It may be a surprise to some to learn that Dr. 
 
2 7 6 IV. B. ROBERTSON, D.D. 
 
 Robertson's original bent was towards mathematics. 
 We have the same fact in the mental history of 
 Edward Irving, Thomas Chalmers, and Thomas Car- 
 ry le. Before they had broken oat in their individual 
 genius they had struggled with the exactest physical 
 laws of the universe. And we need not wonder 
 at this. Genius is not disorder — genius is the highest 
 order. 
 
 The world was only truly created when its huge 
 chaotic masses were drilled by the music of law and 
 spirit into their armies — their hosts in heaven and 
 earth. We are God's poem, as Paul says; and in 
 other measure, but as real manner, is the work of a 
 poet-preacher worthy of the same name. What is a 
 saint, but the man with the inner life set to the music 
 of highest deeds ! What is a poet-preacher, but the 
 prophet of spiritual things, mating these to the music 
 of noblest words ! It is, as at the beginning, the 
 breathing into the dust of the earth the breath of life ; 
 and so man, God's poem, is made. It is this principle 
 that accounts for the fact that the discourses of Dr. 
 Robertson, so full of tone and colour and movement 
 that the simplest see, and by their seeing pass into, 
 a new world, are to them, as also to the most refined 
 and profound, full of the best evidence of divine 
 realities, because these walk through his sentences 
 clothed so as to be seen, and speaking so as to 
 be believed. In Aaron's rod, the blossoms were as 
 divine as the rod itself; indeed the blossoms best 
 proved that it was the rod of God. The harsh sounds 
 of earth, modulated and harmonised, become sweet airs 
 that evidence the world of peace and perfection whence 
 they come. This effectually saves Dr. Robertson's 
 
W. B. ROBERTSON, D.D. 277 
 
 flowing eloquence from passing the line into tinselled 
 rhetoric ; while his plainest propositions have a colour 
 on their cheeks and a light in their eye that prelude 
 the coming idealism and poetry. The beauty of his 
 sermon is, as a French writer calls all beauty, " the 
 splendour of the true." The statue is not less but 
 more solid because, like Memnon's statue, the light 
 rings out from it in sister music. What, then, is 
 named imagination is, in Dr. Eobertson, the predomi- 
 nating power — and it is the power that makes you see 
 in clear form and modulation the inner reality and 
 harmony of the truth ; and he being " native and 
 endued to this element," it is curious to note how he 
 glides and carries you with him ere you are aware 
 across the threshold of what is around and within, far 
 upward into spiritual visions. Doors in heaven open 
 upon you as you are lifted up from the dingiest Patmos 
 of your pew, and pass in among the living creatures, the 
 soaring hallelujahs, till you stand entranced for a season 
 too brief, but never forgotten, before the beatific vision 
 — the sight that makes all things new. It is the 
 fairy tale true in the highest experience. The child 
 wanders a step or two into the forest, and all trans- 
 forming influences come upon him, and upon all the 
 marvellous region. The young man opens his eyes, in 
 obedience to the prophet, and sees the divine armies 
 and victories near him and in him ; while around him 
 are still the hard hostilities of his troubled fight. 
 All thus becomes concrete — nothing is abstract, in Dr. 
 Eobertson's sermons. He is dramatic when life passes 
 before him as a tragedy of weakness, of sorrow, of sin, 
 where the soul, with its many passions, is placed along- 
 side of the Saviour with His infinite mercies, and at last 
 
278 W. B. ROBERTSON, D.D. 
 
 ends in some saddest miserere of defeat or upspringing 
 song of redemption. He is lyrical when he tells out 
 what he himself sees and sings, and so most per- 
 suasively teaches. Sometimes it is the lyric of a little 
 child, with its broken, groping cry ; sometimes the 
 lyric clothes itself with the shining robes of imagery, 
 and the uplifted trumpet-tones as of an angel. 
 
 This leads us to the thought that Dr. Robertson is 
 not so much oratorical as oratorial. As he speaks, the 
 preacher finds his moulds of expression in the subtlest 
 and most soul-like of all the fine arts — music. But 
 we hardly dwell even for a little upon this analogy of 
 music, with its inner measure and balance, its following 
 out, through all variations, the unity of the originating 
 keynote — as a many branched and leaved tree is but 
 the expansion of the strict skeleton of its ground-plan 
 — till we turn, as to a fitter and fuller analogy, to that 
 art in which all arts meet and find a home — archi- 
 tecture. His sermons are Cathedrals, with their care- 
 fully laid basis of Christian doctrine and fact deter- 
 mining the inner structure of the building ; the west 
 door leading in from the world, up through the three- 
 fold nave and aisles as of the one Trinity to the altar 
 of sacrifice and the Real Presence ; and ending in the 
 great east window as it lets in the flood of heaven's 
 light, while all around, beneath and above, are the far 
 recesses, dim crypts, and soaring arches. Then comes 
 sculpture, and places on each niche, or solitary eminence, 
 its saint, hero, prophet, adoring or abased ; and in by 
 many windows comes painting, and gives to the com- 
 mon light of day forms and histories and types of the 
 Christian life in celestial hues, rich in dark shade or 
 transfiguring brightness. Then a holy fragrance seems 
 
W. B. ROBERTSON, D.D. 279 
 
 to dwell in the air ; and, last of all, to fill, interpret, 
 and lift all into a divine significance, conies mnsic, 
 with its piercing cries of penitence — its calm melody 
 of faith — its marching song of the campaign — its 
 triumphant acclaims of the victory. 
 
 It is some such effect which several of his sermons 
 have so often produced. Take his unforgotten sermon 
 on ' ' They saw God, and did eat and drink ; " or his 
 sermon on another keynote, " Unto whom can we go 
 but unto Thee ? Thou hast the words of eternal life ; " 
 or that stirring description of Christian communion, 
 " Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to 
 another," &c. ; or his searching into the human con- 
 science, going in by its noblest doors, " He did not 
 commit Himself unto man, for He knew what was in 
 man." Dr. Robertson never acts as a spy, satirist- 
 like, upon the frail or foul hearts of his brothers and 
 sisters. He walks in prophet-like, full of insight, and 
 says, " What, alas ! do I see here ? " There are, we 
 know, other discourses which are even more noted than 
 those ; but these, to our great loss, we have not heard — 
 that on " John the Baptist in Prison," and the " Rain- 
 bow round the Throne," and the " Silence in Heaven 
 for Half-an-hour," and the " Shining of Moses' Face." 
 But though some are more deeply and loftily built 
 than others, yet the plastic hand is seen in all, and the 
 touch of the chisel proceeds from the cunning spirit, 
 that God has inspired with the wisdom of a Bezaleel. 
 To have heard such sermons is a joy for ever, a cup 
 of wine that gives a lasting gladness and a foretaste 
 of an everlastinsr Eshcol. 
 
 But to hear the preacher, and to see him as he 
 preaches, cannot be perpetuated. With the look of a 
 
2 8o IK. B. ROBERTSON, D.D. 
 
 poet — as also of an orator — in mould of brow, suggest- 
 ing Shelley ; in dimness of drooping eye, reminding of 
 Chalmers ; when he speaks 'tis " even as if an angel 
 sang, and as listening to the young-eyed cherubim." 
 As long as he moves on his hearers follow ; or if they 
 weary, it is because the pace is too swift, and the 
 scenes by their very splendour wear out the edge of 
 the keenest attention. Thus Dr. Robertson stood 
 many a year in Irvine, and now and again in other 
 places. It is a loss to very many that the lute-like, 
 organ-like music so well remembered can now be so 
 rarely heard, is now for the most part silent. Still, it 
 is better to remember such a voice than to hear others, 
 and the music abides though the musician is mute. 
 But I must stop, though the half has been left untold. 
 I thank, and I am sure many do, Mr. Guthrie for 
 gathering some of the fragments that fed so many 
 hundreds in the wilderness of their mind, heart, and 
 life. 
 
 As long as the pulpit has such preachers, and Chris- 
 tianity such expounders, the world will stop to listen, 
 and be drawn by a higher than an Orpheus-like music. 
 The grand, blessed peace with which Christ soothes, 
 litts up, and saves men will come through it still to 
 multitudes of the sick, the sad, the sinful ; and men 
 will cry out, " How beautiful are the feet upon the 
 mountains of him that bringeth good tidings ! " So our 
 noble friend and preacher came to many, and made 
 them glad. Now he is withdrawn for a little, we wish 
 him all the gladness of him who sits in silence at the 
 feet of the Preacher of preachers, the Comforter of 
 souls ; and we know that at this hour many are still 
 led by the undying memory of his magical words, and 
 
W. B. ROBERTSON, D.D. 281 
 
 are taking up his old loved work of leading others to 
 Christ, helped by the inspiration of his example, and 
 above all by that help of Christ that is needed by 
 the greatest, and never denied to the least of His 
 servants.* 
 
 * Printed during Dr. Robertson's lifetime. 
 
( 282 ) 
 
 XII. 
 
 THE REV. PRINCIPAL CAIRNS, D.D., 
 EDINBURGH. 
 
 It was said of Dr. Cairns in the United Presbyterian 
 Synod, when elected to be the Principal of its Theo- 
 logical Hall, that while he knew much that others did 
 not know, there was one thing he did not know, which 
 the humblest man in his own church and far beyond 
 it knew well, his own noble character. Esteemed 
 greatly from the very first, a growing reverence is 
 gathering round his name every year, and wherever 
 he stands up in any assembly or pulpit of the land. 
 We shrink, in his own spirit, from any detailed refer- 
 ence to him ; but praising such a rare man is an act 
 of gratitude to God and of encouragement to many. 
 
 John Cairns was born sixty-six years ago, near 
 Cockburnspath, in Berwickshire. His father and 
 mother were of the highest order of their nation — 
 hard-working, " grave livers," and as Wordsworth 
 singled out as the parents of the hero of his w Ex- 
 cursion," with their " plain living and high think- 
 ing," full of earnest love, and, best of all, lifted up 
 by the old Secession doctrine and piety into a divine 
 atmosphere. 
 
 Such parents stamped their own image of native 
 
THE REV. PRINCIPAL CAIRNS, D.D. 283 
 
 force of body and mind, as well as of Christian eleva- 
 tion and fervour, upon their children. The appear- 
 ance of the self-denying, devout home within, combined 
 with that of the German Ocean and the Lammermoor 
 Hills outside, meeting his youthful eye every hour, 
 has left indelible traces on Dr. Cairns' strong nature 
 to this day. 
 
 Another eminent Scotchman, totally different in 
 temperament and genius and life, had much the same 
 parentage and upbringing. Thomas Carlyle bore the 
 deep imprint of his father and mother, and their grand 
 unworldly Secession teaching and practice, to the last, 
 as well as the freshness of the Annandale streams 
 and moors, and the stretches of the Solway, and the 
 heights of Skiddaw. But here the likeness ends. Much 
 of the feverish, passion and doubt of Carlyle came from 
 his loosened hold of the original tendency. In Dr. 
 Cairns the old teaching, enriched by learning and har- 
 monised by thought, has imparted certainty and calm- 
 ness to bis life. Carlyle, however, never ceased to love 
 and respect his old minister, Mr. Johnstone of Eccle- 
 fechan, whom he considered to be the noblest priest 
 of God he ever knew ; and in the same manner and 
 measure does Dr. Cairns cherish the memory of his 
 old minister and friend, the Rev. Wm. Inglis of Stock- 
 bridge, whose sacred and sagacious character lies deep 
 in the old district to this hour. We have known, 
 moreover, a man of great mature faith who has risen 
 to wealth, and, better far, has grown in princely bene- 
 ficence, who never refers to the name of this his old 
 minister, who first touched his soul and admitted 
 him to the Church, without a glow of gratitude on 
 his cheek and a tear of reverence at his eye. 
 
284 THE REV. PRINCIPAL CAIRNS, D.D. 
 
 What determined the lad Cairns to turn from some 
 rural occupation we cannot say. But it is easy to see 
 how, with such a quick, large brain, and such spiritual 
 impressions derived from his home and congregation, 
 he went straight, as so many Scottish lads have done, 
 to study for the ministry. And, like those others, he 
 had to teach in village and town schools that he might 
 obtain the teaching of the College professors. Nothing 
 has more marked all his life than the inborn, unworn 
 courage, the silent unboasting independence, that has 
 raised him above all temptations of gain as well as of 
 earthly pleasure and ambition. If utter unconscious- 
 ness, and want of reference to what he is and has done, 
 is a note of truest nobility of character, alike human 
 and Christian, we know of no man higher than himself. 
 We know that this quality equally shone out before 
 others in his two predecessors in the Theological Hall, 
 John Brown of Haddington, and George Lawson of 
 Selkirk ; and yet in Dr. Cairns, as in them, it only 
 concealed — if, indeed, it did not intensify — a rock-like 
 firmness and enduringness of a character that knew 
 well what it had chosen for life, and that it had chosen 
 it because it was best and could last. 
 
 His University career in Edinburgh was one of 
 untiring industry : an industry that possesses him still. 
 A constitution of iron — of almost ascetic habit of living 
 — has indeed been once and again jeopardised, and 
 nearly succumbed to the too . long and unmitigated 
 strain. But this industry working upon a mind of 
 great powers raised him in the estimation of all to the 
 rank of the first student of his time in the University. 
 Unable to be superficial in anything — eminent in 
 Classical and also in English literature — the main 
 
THE REV. PRINCIPAL CAIRNS, D.D. 285 
 
 thought and bent of his powers went spontaneously 
 into Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy. None of his 
 teachers have left such clear and enduring marks on 
 his whole structure of mind and thought as Sir William 
 Hamilton. Modest under every influence, and yet in- 
 dependent of all, the great Professor of Logic, moving 
 in the line of his student's native tendencies, turned 
 them into known channels. Hence we trace, if also 
 to his own intellectual mould, yet deepening and widen- 
 ing it, his quiet unfailing avoidance — not dislike or 
 disdain (for all Dr. Cairns' passions are intellectual 
 passions) — of mere rhetoric as well as of a quasi-omni- 
 scient speculation. A severity of taste, a soundness of 
 intellect, makes all his imagery noble in its simplicity, 
 and all his reasoning strong through its moderation. 
 To Wordsworth among poets, and Butler among 
 thinkers, he was early attracted through his belonging 
 to the same lineage of mind. It is not wonderful, 
 therefore, that Sir William Hamilton gave his young- 
 student a great respect, and even affection ; and few 
 things in the life of his favourite pupil is better worth 
 remembering than the manner of his responding to, 
 and returning it, in a letter published by Professor 
 Veitch, in which he pressed on Sir William the claims 
 of personal Christianity. We must add, however, that 
 Sir William's reply was equally worthy of his modest 
 and truly noble character. 
 
 But we linger too long in this enchanted ground of 
 early hopes and studies. Dr. Cairns passed in usual 
 course to the Theological Hall, and crowned his student 
 career by a session at the University of Berlin. We 
 only mention, with regard to these closing preparations, 
 that he gained most from his reverend professor and 
 
236 THE REV. PRINCIPAL CAIRNS, D.D. 
 
 predecessor in the ministry, Dr. Balmer ; from his 
 noble father and friend, Dr. Brown ; and in another 
 field, and with fresh impulse proceeding from the new 
 surroundings, from that last of Church fathers, that 
 greatest Church historian, August Meander. 
 
 We well remember, at the distance of more than 
 forty years, our first sight of John Cairns, as we met 
 at the beginning of our first theological session. We 
 can see him looking in at the crypts of Wellington 
 Street Secession Church. His fame had preceded him ; 
 but this was our first curiously eager look at him. 
 Much taller than most, as grave-looking as any, with 
 jet black hair, with mildly but keenly shrewd eyes 
 under a cliff-like brow, strikingly resembling, as was 
 thought in those years, the portrait of a man he other- 
 wise resembled in much — Andrew Fuller. He had 
 even then the tight grasp of the hand that has shaken 
 indeed many since, and the sudden explosive laugh 
 shining out, shall we say, amidst the expanse of his 
 gravity. Many a talk afterwards we had with him on 
 Isaac Taylor, and John Foster, and Thomas Chalmers ; 
 but then, and even yet, next to Sir William Hamilton, 
 and higher because in a higher department, was the 
 charm and conquest over him of that most enduring 
 and passionate of all great religious thinkers — Pascal. 
 
 All this was in the year 1 840. Many things have 
 happened since then; but now, in 1884, looking back, 
 what a nobly-unbroken, ever-ascending career God has 
 given him to lead ! And looking at him, while much 
 changed in colour of cheek and hair, the nobler ele- 
 ments of an everlasting youth remain, and remain as 
 a fuller and sweeter attractiveness, the simplicity, the 
 kindness, the earnestness, the devoutness of the man. 
 
THE REV. PRINCIPAL CAIRNS, D.D. 287 
 
 Dr. Cairns passed on at once into his thirty-one 
 years' ministry in Berwick — truly a model ministry, 
 alike towards God and man, with its lovely, lofty 
 thoughts of divine things in his study ; with its lov- 
 ing, solicitous thoughts for his people, however far off, 
 in their sickness and sorrow, in their declension or 
 their victories ; in its massive, fervent instructions in 
 the pulpit ; in its thorough consecration of bodily and 
 spiritual strength to Christ and to souls. In Berwick 
 streets, in Berwickshire and Northumberland high- 
 ways, and from lanes, men eyed him and felt towards 
 him as of old they did towards Elisha as " the man of 
 God who continually passed by." 
 
 Amidst all he never lost the severe continuity of 
 study. No man stood so high among thinkers in all 
 Scotland as John Cairns. Men in all Churches knew 
 he had most modestly but signally risen above them 
 at College ; and when the Chair of Moral Philosophy 
 and of Logic in Edinburgh fell vacant, he might have 
 filled either with the unanimity and enthusiasm of all. 
 But he esteemed the Christian pulpit and the care of 
 souls — the meanest and most ignorant — a greater work 
 and honour than any other place of greater dignity 
 and influence. 
 
 Only one thing could part him from the ministry 
 of his congregation — that was, his appointment first in 
 1868 to the other ministry, that of the training of 
 the future ministers of his own Church, then in 1876 
 as Principal. Not that he limited himself during these 
 thirty-one years by thoughts and toils to his own con- 
 gregation. He has been from the beginning what 
 Burke called his son, " a public creature." He has 
 preached in almost every part of Scotland, where his 
 
2 S8 THE REV. PRINCIPAL CAIRNS, D.D. 
 
 presence and word were welcomed as a blessing from 
 on high ; and in every effort for God and man, in 
 company, in Union negotiations, in the Pan-Presby- 
 terian Council, in revivals on the one hand and Good 
 Templarism on the other, his labours have been abun- 
 dant. His intellect could grasp the principle of any 
 theme, and his temper could remain unruffled amidst 
 every irritating detail. Never self-seeking, nor aiming 
 at some party advantage, all on every side felt the law 
 of kindness was on his lips, and that they could safely 
 trust in him. The influence of many years has grown 
 to such a weight, and is felt to be so deserved and 
 unsought, that we know not another man in Scotland 
 who at this moment fills so large a space in the rever- 
 ence and trust of all religious men. 
 
 All this is the result of the many elements which 
 have created and sustained in its oneness and power 
 such an influence. Even the farthest off outsider feels 
 his influence as a man and a Christian — so transparent, 
 so gentle, so intelligent, and elevated is he. 
 
 Those nearer to him, and having a more learned 
 eye, mark the genuineness and power he has as scholar 
 and thinker. As a scholar, some may easily surpass 
 him in miscellaneous reading of books ; but Dr. Cairns 
 knows the best of books on the best subjects, and in 
 every language. Homer was his recreation after writ- 
 ing the biography of Dr. Brown. Tertullian or St. 
 Augustine go into his carpet-bag, and are his fellow- 
 travellers when he goes out for a month. To write 
 an Encyclopaedia article on Knox, he gave nearly half 
 a year to the reading and annotation of his greater 
 writings. To write a lecture on Voltaire, he read 
 volume after volume of his sixty. If he produced a 
 
THE REV. PRINCIPAL CAIRNS, D.D. 289 
 
 review of Sckleierinacher, or Rouse, or Strauss, it was 
 based on laborious, irksome reading thousands of pages. 
 We could instance much more of this sort that may 
 well rebuke and encourage other students. As a thinker 
 he is greater than as a scholar, for he has no learning 
 that he has not made his own by independent thinkiug. 
 Hence the measure, the moderation, as well as strength 
 and clearness of his reasoning — knowing well Hegel 
 and Schelling, as also Mill and Comte. On both sides 
 of the philosophical field his keen, often-tested sense 
 of the limits of human thought, beyond which all is 
 uncertain, as well as of its range, within which all is 
 certain, has placed him on sure ground between the 
 mystery of the known Infinite and the clearness of the 
 known Finite. Few men of his time, knowing so well 
 the materialistic and idealistic schools of thought, have 
 been so little moved by either. He has only gained 
 from either its special value, the keenness of observation 
 of facts of the one, the reverence of mysteries, equally 
 facts, of the other. 
 
 But his philosophical thought has always been allied 
 to his Christian thought. The true unity that under- 
 lies all thought — the divine harmony of reason and 
 revelation, is the keynote of his thinking and the 
 goal of his desires. Dr. Cairns might have possessed 
 all these qualities and not have been the great preacher 
 that men have so often felt him to be. His gifts of 
 learning might have enlightened, and his power of 
 thought might have conformed, but one thing is need- 
 ful to make a great Christian orator, and this, too, 
 Dr. Cairns had ; and it has given a tenfold value, 
 indeed a totally new value, to all else he had. That 
 mildest of men, as he moves on in quickening and long- 
 
 T 
 
290 THE REV. PRINCIPAL CAIRNS, D.D. 
 
 resounding march, kindles, like the cloud in Ezekiel's 
 vision, at last into a flame that explodes in vehement 
 passion of appeal or ecstasy, and then by accent, loud 
 and strong in its surge and wail, catches the old 
 unconsciously learned, but never-forgotten, rush and 
 sweep of the German Ocean of his early days ; you feel 
 as if, kindred in simplicity and power, some angry wind 
 were sweeping into your hearing and heart from the 
 old Lammermoor Hills. On such occasions the whole 
 man reveals himself. Thus we see what deep founda- 
 tions, what burning fires, lie beneath, and are ready 
 to break out from that subdued, watchful, childlike 
 exterior. There is the Rev. Dr. Cairns confessing the 
 deepest struggle and violence, the most pathetic cry, 
 the most high ecstasy of the human heart before 
 thousands. The man is transfigured into the orator 
 who shatters and melts other men ; but the orator is 
 still the man, simple and unconscious in the hour of 
 consternation as in that of friendship. When we are 
 at this point, we are sorely tempted to compare and 
 contrast the three greatest preachers of late years in 
 the United Presbyterian Church — John Cairns, John 
 Ker, and William Robertson. To do so thoroughly 
 and vividly would be a great lesson in sacred eloquence. 
 But though we have left much untold, we must, how- 
 ever abruptly, close with the earnest desire, that all 
 will unite in praying that a power of so great and 
 growing a Christian blessing may long be preserved 
 to this Church by Him who has so long given and 
 ordained it. 
 
( 291 ) 
 
 XIII. 
 
 REV. HUGH CRICHTON, D.D* 
 
 I have lingered before giving a sketch of Dr. Crichton ; 
 and, though I shrink from it, let me take with you 
 one steady look at the good man, ere we pass away to 
 ordinary duty. 
 
 Dr. Hugh Crichton was born in Old Cumnock, Ayr- 
 shire, on the 2d December 1797. His father and 
 mother belonged to, perhaps, the best of all classes, 
 that of daily honourable work, the protector and 
 trainer of character in shrewd sagacity and self-re- 
 specting independence. In his early home there were 
 also the affections of brothers and sisters, which came 
 out in mutual help in after years, and the advantages 
 of a godly upbringing. Ayrshire, moreover, still re- 
 tained men and women who had seen those who had 
 conversed with the old martyrs of the covenant. The 
 most prophet-like and memorable of their preachers, 
 Alexander Peden, lay in the old churchyard on the 
 slope above the down. Airsmoss, where Cameron fell, 
 was a few miles off, and traditions of that heroic Chris- 
 tian time quickened the spiritual atmosphere of the 
 country-side. Dr. Crichton's father carried out the 
 spiritual struggle of these men, and became a Seceder, 
 and, as such, took an active part in the origination of 
 
 * Dr. Graham was for some years colleague and successor to Dr. 
 Crichton. 
 
292 THE REV. HUGH CRICHTON, D.D. 
 
 a Burgher Church in Cumnock. There was in his 
 youth a remarkably eloquent and fervid minister, Mr. 
 Wilson, who encouraged the lad. Such were the re- 
 ligious influences that surrounded his boyhood and 
 rising youth ; and I have often felt, in conversation 
 with him, that these were the unconscious creation- 
 days of the earnest Christian and warm-hearted pastor 
 he became. 
 
 Besides these deepest home and church influences, 
 there was, all over that district, a wide intellectual 
 movement, full of genial qualities of all kinds. There 
 was a feeling produced by that scenery, exquisitely 
 varied in rural beauty and picturesqueness, yet border- 
 ing on wild moor and mountain ; and also the keen 
 Scottish study of character, not only in its nobler but 
 in its quainter aspects ; and these two elements became 
 audible in a dialect than which none is more graphic 
 and idiomatic in all Scotland. Nothing can illustrate 
 this point better than the poems of Robert Burns, 
 most of which were written a few miles from the place, 
 and a few years from the time, of which we now speak. 
 I mention this the more, because, in addition to his 
 deep piety, that breathed of old settled influences and 
 traditions, a most vivid feature in him was a humour, 
 and a vocabulary to express it, that occasionally in his 
 freer moods amounted to something like genius. This 
 humour was, as usual, a child of his loving and keen- 
 eyed nature, as was also its twin sister, sympathy ; and 
 unless when he was morally indignant, his utter scorn of 
 meanness and conceit was more or less mitigated by this 
 less severe quality. It was, therefore, with Dr. Crichton, 
 as with most others, and especially such as owe their 
 future direction and power to personal qualities more 
 
THE REV. HUGH CRICHTON, D.D. 293 
 
 than to acquired learning and skill, that the first and 
 deepest soil of youth and home gives flavour and colour 
 to the latest and ripest fruit. 
 
 It is a fine ambition in Scotland — at least it was 
 so in those days — that some one of the family should 
 be the scholar, and, better still, the minister. And out 
 of the quick masses of religion and thought in every 
 village it was almost certain that some piece would 
 develop into this highest form of life. The lot here 
 fell on the younger brother, as it so often does ; but, 
 as is so often also the case, as many can testify, the 
 elder brother works at home, to supply the needs of 
 the younger, who, in some Glasgow or Edinburgh 
 garret or parlour, is toiling his way through various 
 learning. Of no one have I heard Dr. Crichton speak 
 so affectionately as of his brother Adam, who helped to 
 hold the ropes when he went down into the mine of 
 knowledge ; and he did riot fail to repay the kindness 
 many years afterwards. I have no doubt that Dr. 
 Crichton's College years were full of geuuine work and 
 true acquirement ; though then, I suppose, as ever 
 after, he had no love of working hard for the outward 
 distinctions of learning, nor, in fact, did he ever de- 
 vote himself to learning for its own sake. But his 
 future literary work showed that, when he liked, he 
 could exert a mind that had absorbed much of what 
 was elevated and just in thought, and that could em- 
 ploy a style chastened and vigorous in expressing it. 
 
 From the College, the next step for those in our 
 Church who have given themselves to the ministry is 
 to the Theological Hall. In taking such a step, &> 
 question far more important than that of literary and 
 philosophical acquirements is that of personal religion. 
 
294 THE REV. HUGH CRICHTON, D.D. 
 
 I never heard Dr. Crichton himself speak highly of 
 his state and character, in relation to the holy and 
 loving God and Saviour. I have often heard him speak 
 most affectingly on this point with despondency and 
 in sadness. This humility and self-abasement lay a 
 great shaded depth, under the joy of his social move- 
 ments and the sweetness of his daily spiritual walk 
 and work. I believe it was this feature of his character 
 that would explain many of his irresolutions, but it 
 also gave a pure and touching charm of dignity and 
 tenderness to his whole life. After all, such a pro- 
 found and wide basis of humility before God is the 
 strength of all high and sweet character. It strikes 
 the roots of the soul far down into the perfections of 
 God, the atonement of Christ, and the helps of the 
 Holy Spirit ; and it can produce none other than fruit 
 like unto such grand and inexhaustible realities. So I 
 have no doubt that the heart of the young man went 
 to the Hall touched by the Lord. 
 
 Selkirk, with Dr. Lawson as Professor, was the first 
 school of the Prophets he attended ; but Dr. Lawson, 
 that Samuel-like sage, scholar, and saint, died after 
 his first year, and he went to study under Dr. Dick. 
 I do not think he owed much to Dr. Lawson. There 
 was no time sufficient for that unconsciously impressive 
 man, so like Neauder of Berlin in depth of learning 
 and piety, as well as quaintness of manner, to leave 
 the mark on Dr. Crichton he invariably left on those 
 who had been longer with him. But to Dr. Dick, 
 under whom he studied four years, at the time of life 
 when the mind is building up its house of thought and 
 principle in which to settle and work for life, he owed 
 in this respect, as has always seemed to me, more 
 
THE REV. HUGH CRICHTON, D.D. 295 
 
 than to any other man. In this result much was due 
 to the time, the teacher, and the scholar. The period 
 of Dr. Dick's professorship lay between an old pass- 
 ing era arid one slowly coming into being and power. 
 The Puritan, Marrowmen, Boston and Erskine setting 
 of Scriptural truth, both in system and in style, had 
 gradually passed up through John Brown of Hadding- 
 ton, and found its last genuine, though in many points 
 independent, representative in Dr. Lawson. Dr. Dick, 
 while embodying all the things most surely believed 
 among us, and these down to their details, put them 
 into a more compact form and in a more modern garb. 
 He adjusted their make and manner to the new habits 
 of thought and style. He himself was naturally a 
 man of clear, comprehensive, uncoloured style of mind, 
 severely and coldly classical, yet with occasional fer- 
 vours when he gave his spirit play, and always with 
 genuine manliness of thought and purity reaching to 
 elevation of taste. To a young mind with the ten- 
 dencies of Dr. Crichton such a man had a singular 
 attraction. He commanded respect, satisfied taste, 
 and had that similarity of powers, combined with the 
 superiority of a strong nature and cultured seniority, 
 which alike attract and mould others. This influence 
 of Dr. Dick was one very extensively exerted, and did 
 much to shape the thought and style of many refined 
 and devoted ministers who are rapidly passing away. 
 It remained with Dr. Crichton all through his ministry, 
 and with other causes made him either intellectually 
 or spiritually insensitive to, and uncognisant of, the 
 new shapes of thought and expression that are now, in 
 right and wrong ways, doing their work. To take 
 two extreme instances, on opposite sides : he was 
 
296 THE REV. HUGH CRICHTON, D.D. 
 
 utterly foreign to modes of thought represented by 
 Thomas Carlyle on the one hand, or John Henry New- 
 man on the other. 
 
 There was another school, though not called such, 
 though really so, in which Dr. Crichton was learning 
 his final lessons. The majority of our Divinity students 
 have to earn in leisure months the means of education. 
 This threw him into a family in East Lothian, where 
 he lived as tutor for years. It was a family high in 
 all generous and polished ways. The gentleman that 
 was always in him was there developed, and what that 
 meant in relation to him your memory can supply 
 as my words cannot. We have lost the original, and 
 no portrait, drawn however skilfully and lovingly, will 
 ever represent it. Some men are gentlemen in feel- 
 ing, and others in manner, and some are a little of 
 both ; but Dr. Crichton was so thoroughly both that 
 he gave us a new idea and a higher illustration of 
 what that grand old name means. I have often tried 
 to analyse it, but have always given it up, for it was 
 a charm compounded of many simples ; and after I 
 had carefully separated the elements, still the total 
 living effect was left unaccounted for. Whatever else 
 he was — devout, scholarly, even humorous — he was 
 always, within and without, the gentleman. He never 
 lost that fine essential quality, in his most joyful 
 moods of health, nor in his most vacant stammering 
 moods of disease. To rise so high in such an excel- 
 lence that one, on comparing him with many others, 
 feels he was not a whit behind any, and far beyond 
 nearly all, is a rare attainment and a most subtle 
 power. It was felt in his bearing in the pulpit, in 
 his walk along the street, in his most earnest tones at 
 
THE REV. HUGH CRICHTON, D.D. 297 
 
 a deathbed, in his most casual greeting in ordinary 
 life ; it charmed the old and the young, the rich and 
 the poor ; it made men of the world feel drawn to the 
 deeper and better things of his Christian piety ; it 
 made the good love the doctrine of God their Saviour 
 all the more because it was so adorned ; it made his 
 people proud of him, and his presence a joy and sweet- 
 ness to all. That highest of all fine arts can never be 
 lost to the world as long as our memories and hearts 
 preserve such a finished specimen as we had among us, 
 lending its grace to the greatest truths of the Gospel 
 as well as to the smallest intercourse of life. 
 
 Whether the fascination of such associations was 
 the prevailing influence or not I can hardly say ; but 
 he paused two years before going on to the work of 
 the ministry. I believe it did not increase his anxiety 
 in this matter ; but at last the deep religious element 
 asserted its power, and he moved on to a work which 
 was to be henceforth the burden and the blessing 
 of his life. I believe the pause in the stream only 
 gathered up its waters to flow forward more powerfully 
 in after work. 
 
 He was ordained over his first charge on the- 17th 
 of January 1 826, so that on the day of his death he 
 had all but completed forty-five years of his ministry. 
 Duntocher is a little village dependent on several large 
 mills, and situated on the banks of the Clyde, where it 
 has still the beauty of a river, without the grandeur of 
 the noble Frith it afterwards becomes. It was exactly 
 the place to satisfy his love of Christian work, his taste 
 for exquisite scenery, and his desire for progress in 
 thought and character. The twelve years he spent there 
 were perhaps the sunniest in his whole life. In spite of 
 
29 3 THE REV. HUGH CRICHTON, D.D. 
 
 much, broken health and its nervous depressions, he 
 had a still untouched fund of splendid vivacity and 
 spirits, and large spaces clear for study, work, and 
 enjoyment. Living in his manse, without wife or 
 children, all these years, and in the comparative re- 
 tirement of the village, he had time and strength for 
 thoughts that do not come to one in the work and 
 distractions of a large town, because they are driven 
 away by alien intrusions, or never take root in a soil 
 otherwise drained of its strength. When he was tired 
 of his studies, he could go forth, make the whole con- 
 gregation his family, and pour out his warm heart in 
 home after home ; or he would fill his manse with 
 troops of friends, who came to soothe his depressions 
 as an invalid, or to share hospitalities, which he dis- 
 pensed with the graciousness of a lord. And the man 
 was shown in his choice of friends. Alas ! they are 
 most of them, and long ago, dead ; but men of mark 
 they were in their day and place. They were men 
 like Mr. Smart of Paisley, perhaps the most majestic 
 figure I ever saw ascend a pulpit stair; Dr. Baird, a 
 man of wide knowledge, chivalrous spirit, and inborn 
 generosity; Dr. Beattie, with his rough and shaggy 
 sagacities ; Dr. Johnston of Limekilns, his oldest and 
 dearest friend, a man of most judicial temper of mind ; 
 Dr. Marshall of Kirkintilloch, the initiator of the 
 Voluntary Church controversy, whose public contro- 
 versial gifts and private pacific character alike dis- 
 tinguished his course and shaded its close ; Dr. 
 Somerville, the neighbour to Dr. Crichton in Dum- 
 barton, a man to whose industry, zeal, and wisdom 
 our Foreign Mission owes an immense debt ; Dr. Mac- 
 farlane, now in London, growing in power and useful- 
 
THE REV. HUGH CRICHTON, D.D. 299 
 
 ness with every year of his life. I could mention 
 others, but the kind of men he naturally gathered 
 around him was both an index of what he was, and 
 an increase of it in that surest and most stimulating 
 way of living impulse and suggestion. 
 
 But his great work was his work in the congrega- 
 tion. To feed it with food convenient and with the 
 finest of the wheat was the work of his quiet readings 
 and reflections. Then, week by week, he produced 
 those carefully composed sermons which still remain 
 buried in his beautiful neat shorthand, but which, 
 Sabbath after Sabbath, were translated out of it into 
 fervid affections, and live in the souls of many gone to 
 glory, and many still on earth. I believe the Dun- 
 tocher period was, as was natural, that of his most 
 resolute and rewarding study. Not a man naturally 
 fond of sentence- making, he must often have fought 
 bravely against his dislike. But he did fight and 
 overcome. There he became the preacher he was 
 ever afterwards. He had a firm, correct, spacious view 
 of the great truths of the Gospel, dealing neither in 
 speculation nor rhetoric, basing his teaching on God's 
 Word, building it up in orderly succession of doctrine, 
 experience, and practice, adorning it with a sparing 
 use of chastened, and sometimes lofty, illustration, but, 
 above all, breathing through it, in soul, voice, and eye, 
 most fervent and winning affection. Sometimes, through 
 weakness of body and treachery of memory, the wheels 
 of the chariot moved slowly ; but there were times 
 when few men could excel him in Scriptural authority 
 and unction, in solid sculptured pieces of thought, in 
 earnestness, now solemn, now gentle, and always 
 sincere. Then, as ever, the home- truth from which 
 
300 THE REV. HUGH CRICHTON, D.D. 
 
 he started, and to which he returned, was Jesus Christ, 
 and Him crucified. The doctrinal centrality and pre- 
 eminence, the emotional overwhelmingness, for convic- 
 tion, comfort, and growth, the practical supremacy of 
 the Gospel of the Incarnate Kedeeming Saviour, were 
 surely believed, deeply felt, and always preached by 
 him. He spake because he believed ; and through 
 the Spirit using such speech of His servant, many be- 
 lieved and were built up in their most holy faith. 
 
 The first time I ever saw and heard Dr. Crichton 
 was when I was a boy of ten years of age, in the 
 neighbouring town of Paisley. I have notes of the 
 services, given as a school exercise ; and looking at 
 them after the interval of nearly forty years, I can see 
 how thoroughly he was moulded in sentiment and 
 style at that time. I remember also the peculiar 
 charm, made up of kindness and devoutness, which he 
 exerted over all, even the young, then as ever. In 
 Duntocher he was also great as a pastor. In that 
 field his finest qualities came out unreservedly and 
 effectively. Physical depression might sometimes mar 
 the pulpit utterance and rob it of its power ; but 
 face to face, at the sick-bed and in the social circle, 
 he was always himself. I have already indicated that 
 specific gift God had given him, both by nature and 
 grace. He was supreme in this, and never more so 
 than when in Duntocher. There he used gleefully to 
 say he was prophet, priest, and king. He loved and 
 was loved, and these instruments of usefulness had 
 scarcely any abatement. 
 
 So time wore away, and God was fitting him un- 
 consciously, by experience, study, and work, for another 
 and more trying and richer field. It was on the 17th 
 
THE REV. HUGH CRICHTON, D.D. 301 
 
 April 1838 that Dr. Crichton was inducted as col- 
 league and successor to the venerable Dr. Stewart, 
 the first minister of Mount Pleasant congregation. 
 For nearly thirty long years Dr. Stewart had laboured 
 in this congregation, — from the time it was in the 
 Marble Rooms (now in the very heart of the town), in 
 Gloucester Street, till the Ark of the Lord was placed 
 in this stately church built for His worship. He was 
 a man of most vigorous mind and kindling heart, and 
 these brought to bear upon the great themes of the 
 Gospel, and well seconded by a manly presence and 
 resounding voice, stamped him a true orator by the 
 double token of nature and grace. He stands out a 
 great historical figure in our congregation. But now 
 he was worn out ; work of all sorts, schisms, old age, 
 had exhausted him ; and at last he sought for help. 
 The old Elijah's mantle — for he had much of Elijah's 
 bold and passionate bearing and speech — fell on one 
 who was eminently an Elisba ; one who loved to go 
 in and out, not among solitary places, but among 
 human hearts and homes. That Dr. Crichton came 
 here was owing to the singular providence that he 
 moderated most unexpectedly in his own call; and 
 curious it is to notice, that perhaps the only thoroughly 
 good result of the connection of this church with the 
 Presbytery of Glasgow was, that but for it he would 
 not, in all probability, have been our minister. 
 
 When he came he found Mount Pleasant then one 
 of three Scotch Presbyterian congregations, the other 
 two being Rodney Street and Oldham Street. He 
 found it weakened by division and dispirited by dis- 
 appointment. But he set himself to the work, and in 
 a few years, by his character and gifts, he brought 
 
3 02 THE REV. HUGH CRICHTON, D.D. 
 
 back the remnants of an earlier separation to the 
 old home, and gathered in fresh numbers. Mount 
 Pleasant became the best congregation of the denomi- 
 nation in England ; and though since that time many 
 other churches have sprang up around her, and five 
 directly from her ; though population flows to the 
 circumference, and she is now left in the centre ; she 
 has always maintained a most honourable position, and 
 will maintain it, so long as God has work for her to 
 do, and gives her grace to be willing to do it. In the 
 midst of his successful work Dr. Crichton was married 
 to one who made him a home indeed. Twelve years 
 since, some of us went to lay her in the same grave 
 where he now lies. Looking over the whole of their 
 united life, no one who knew them both could fail to 
 mark with what singular fitness she was made to be a 
 help to him. She had all the qualities that he had 
 least or almost nothing of — method, decision, manage- 
 ment, a power to plan and to carry out a plan ; and, 
 above all, she devoted herself to him with a cheerful 
 love and a self- surrendering devotion, that I shall not 
 say is rare, but was most beautiful to behold. Of their 
 two children, one of them is far off in China, and we 
 all pray that his father's God may be with him when 
 he hears of his sad bereavement. The other is with 
 us ; and she, with her husband, were blessings indeed 
 to him. And the love his wife gave was returned by 
 him ; I have heard him in declining years mutter her 
 name fondly in his dreams. All the more happy was 
 this strengthening affection, seeing, in the midst of 
 work, his occasional invalidism passed into one that 
 became more or less chronic. 
 
 It was a considerable trial for Dr. Crichton, at his 
 
THE REV. HUGH CRICHTON, D.D. 303 
 
 comparatively early years, and in the midst of his single- 
 handed success, to face the difficulties of a collegiate 
 charge. To have another man, who may be the very 
 opposite in temper, training, and tastes, put beside you, 
 in one of confessedly the most delicate of earthly re- 
 lations ; to share with another the same people's affec- 
 tions which aforetime were all your own, or, if he does 
 not share them, to feel it is certainly a misfortune, and 
 almost a sin, that they are still all your own ; to have 
 no choice of the other, who is so to affect your whole 
 position outwardly and inwardly, is a venture that needs 
 courage to face, and grace, as well as a kind providence, 
 to make good. Of course, this too, like everything, 
 has the other side : of the young man, full of inexperi- 
 ence, and buoyant with crude hopes, being put, though 
 with more of his own acceptance, in the same relation- 
 ship to his colleague and the congregation, and especi- 
 ally when the colleague has long and most deservedly 
 secured their affection. It is a happy thing that I can 
 thus speak at this hour, which sees this long relation- 
 ship brought to a close ; since, had it been otherwise 
 than as cordial, honest, and helpful as I can ever con- 
 ceive such a relationship ever to be, I should gladly 
 have passed by the theme. But, as I can testify, and 
 you all know, it was a connection that passed through 
 its various changes, from a more to a less strict col- 
 legiate, but in none of them passed into any change 
 of upright dealing and affectionate regard. Much of 
 this was owing to the all but unbroken wisdom of the 
 congregation, which felt more and more that the work- 
 ing out of the matter was best left in the hands to 
 which it properly belonged ; but very much, certainly, 
 came from one who was too sagacious not to know 
 
3 o4 THE REV. HUGH CRICHTON, D.D. 
 
 when undue interference was not needed, or would not 
 be relished ; too wise to expect any other man worthy 
 of being his colleague to be a copy of himself; and 
 too kind and pure-minded to do anything but what 
 was considerate and winning, or anything that savoured 
 of jealousy and suspicion. I have known many men 
 that I admire and love, but I can honestly say, after 
 long trial, that a man that I would rather choose to be 
 my colleague than Dr. Crichton I do not know to be 
 living at this hour. Now that he is gone, he has left 
 me to remember, and more and more desire to resemble, 
 a character of singular attractiveness, and a kindness 
 that grew richer every year to the end. Well may I 
 look up and cry, " My father, my father ! the chariot 
 of Israel, and the horsemen thereof!" May the Lord 
 God of the ascended Prophet, the great Head of the 
 Church, guard me now that I feel, by his absence, 
 strangely unprotected, and be with me, now he is away, 
 even to the end. 
 
 I shall not enter minutely into details, most impor- 
 tant in their relationship to spiritual results, but un- 
 interesting, and all the better for being so, from their 
 monotony of work and usefulness. I hasten over the 
 stages of widowed life and weakened strength, and 
 mark only the last shattered years. All these are so 
 fresh in your hearts, that I could only diminish their 
 interest by dwelling on them. Month by month the 
 good man grew feebler, losing memory, speech, some- 
 times thought, but never losing his godliness and his 
 gentleness. These grew sweeter under the shadows 
 of trial and the approach of his departure. At last 
 he walked very falteringly, and none eyed him but 
 with a look of love ; and the proud recollection of 
 
THE REV. HUGH CRICHTON, D.D. 305 
 
 brighter days was exchanged only for deeper respect 
 and reverence. He came to his old seat in the church, 
 and to the communion circle, surrounded by his noble 
 elders, who held up his hands and cheered his heart, 
 and by the beloved congregation that loved to see 
 the beautiful and hoary head and the thin, meek, suf- 
 fering face. He seemed to me, in these seasons, to 
 resemble the apostle John, who, when old and infirm, 
 was carried into the midst of his disciples, and all 
 he could say at last was, " Little children, love one 
 another/'' aud when asked why he said nothing else, 
 answered, " If that be done, it is enough." 
 
 But now the time came when Israel must die, and 
 it was told us that he was about to be gathered to his 
 fathers. As he drew near to the river, and touched its 
 cold waters, he felt for a little his heart fail ; but brief 
 and well-known promises of God, spoken by loving- 
 lips, fell upon his ear, and dropped with comfort into 
 his spirit ; and prayers, short, but most earnest, went 
 up to God, who heard and sent help to His servant in 
 his last need. In that home where his failing years 
 were spent, and now in these last hours, he was minis- 
 tered unto with a thoughtfulness that grew with his 
 growing infirmities, and knew nothing but to watch 
 and anticipate his every wish. I am sure it is only 
 expressing your truest and tenderest feelings to that 
 daughter, and to her husband, who gave the heart and 
 the care of a son to him, to say, " The Lord deal kindly 
 with you, as ye have dealt with the dead." At last 
 he touched the bottom of the waters, and doubtless it 
 was good. So, on the 14th of January 1871, and in 
 its seventy-fourth year, passed away a life of rare charm 
 and rich influence. 
 
 u 
 
306 THE REV. HUGH CRICHTON, D.D. 
 
 There was no need that he should leave us any words 
 of his trust in Jesus, or of his love to us and to all. 
 We know whom he believed ; and a blameless, humble, 
 devoted life speaks more truly than all, even the most 
 sacred words on a deathbed. We know how he loved 
 the flock over whom the Master had set him, and his 
 many friends, — and I know no man who had more, — 
 and words could not add to such a life of love. We 
 buried him in calm sorrow, because of our loss ; in high 
 gratitude to God, for his unspotted career, his rare 
 endowments by nature and grace, his rich harvest of 
 fruit; in sweet gratitude to him who was gone, for all 
 his words, and deeds, and prayers, so healing and help- 
 ful ; and with one sentiment in all hearts, " man, 
 greatly beloved." May we see him again, that his 
 heart and ours may rejoice. And now, could he speak 
 from yonder heaven, he would say, to those who have 
 chosen his Saviour and Master as theirs, " Be thou 
 faithful unto death, and thou shalt have a crown of 
 life ; " and to those who have not, or are turning aside, 
 " Work the work of Him who hath sent you into the 
 world : the night cometh when no man can work." 
 "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin 
 of the world." " Let the wicked forsake his way, and 
 the unrighteous man his thoughts : and let him return 
 unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him ; and 
 to our God, for He will abundantly pardon," 
 
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