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 ST. ANDREWS AND 
 ELSEWHERE 
 
BV THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Twenty-flve Years of St. Andrews: 1865 to 1890. Two vols. 
 8vo. Vol. I. i2f. Vol. II. 15J. 
 
 I. -ESSAYS. 
 East Coast Days ; and Memories. Crown 8vo. 3^. (xt. 
 Our Homely Comedy ; and Tragedy. Crown 8vo. 3^. 6</. 
 Our Little Life : Essays Consolatory and Domestic, with some others. 
 Two Serie;. Crown 8vo. 3^. dd. each. 
 
 Landscapes, Churches, and Moralities. Crown 8vo. y. 6ci. 
 Lessons of Middle Age : with some Account of various Cities and Men. 
 Crown Svo. 31. 6//. 
 
 The Recreations of a Country Parson. Three Series. Crown 
 Svo. 3^. 6d. each. 
 
 Leisure Hours in Town. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 The Commonplace Philosopher in Town and Country. Crown 
 
 Svo. 31-. 6</. 
 
 The Autumn Holidays of a Country Parson : Essays Consolatory, 
 
 ^sthetical, Moral, Social, and Domestic. Crown Svo. 3^. 6d. 
 
 The Critical Essays of a Country Parson. Crown Svo. 3^. 6rf. 
 
 II.— DEVOTIONAL WORKS. 
 " To Meet the Day " through the Christian Year : being a 
 
 Text of Scripture, with an original Meditation and a Short Selection 
 
 in Verse, for Every Day. Crown Svo. 4^. 6J. 
 The Best Last : with other Chapters to Help. Crown Svo. 3X. 6d. 
 What Set Him Right : with other Chapters to Help. Crown Svo. 3*. 6d. 
 Towards the Sunset : Teachings after Thirty Years. Crown Svo. 3*. 6d, 
 Seaside Musings on Sundays and Week-Days. Crown Svo. 3^. 6d. 
 The Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson. Three Series. 
 
 Crown Svo. 3^. 6</. each. 
 
 Counsel and Comfort Spoken from a City Pulpit. Crown 8vo. 
 
 3jr. 61/. 
 
 Sunday Afternoons at the Parish Church of a Scottish 
 
 University City. Crown Svo. 3^. 6,/. 
 Changed Aspects of Unchanged Truths : Eighteen Sermons 
 
 preached in the Parish Church of St. .Vndrews, N.B. Crown Svo. 3^.6*/. 
 Present-Day Thoughts : Memorials of St. Andrews Sundays. Crown 
 
 Svo. 3i. 61/. 
 From a Quiet Place : Some Discourses. Crown Svo. 5s. 
 A Scotch Communion Sunday. Crown Svo. 5^. 
 
ST. ANDREWS AND 
 ELSEWHERE 
 
 GLIMPSES OF SOME GONE 
 AND OF THINGS LEFT 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 'TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF ST. ANDREWS 
 THE RECREATIONS OF A COUNTRY PARSON' dr'e. 
 
 •( ^ 
 (X^-UI>-VU^ /CL-yx^t.J^ 'A-.jJCcKa.yti^c >\. ^><?-^\K 
 
 ^ 
 
 LONDON 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK : 15 EAST le"- STREET 
 1894 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
/H^ c1 
 
 Lt> 
 
 \-\Tn' 
 
 t^ 
 
TO THE DEAR MEMORY OF 
 
 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE 
 
 THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED IN TOKEN OF 
 
 THE WARM AND CONSTANT FRIENDSHIP OF 
 
 THIRTY-FIVE YEARS 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 HOW ST. ANDREWS GOES ON 
 
 PAGE 
 
 In South Street — Three Principals of St. Mary's College — The Lammas 
 Dance — Dancing Anathematised — The Hotels — -The Steam-Crane — 
 Visitors to the Churches — A Classification of Preachers — Afternoon 
 Services — Extempore Preaching — The Unexpected Bishop — The 
 Dedication of St. Cuthbert's, Edinburgh — A Truthful ' Gentleman ' 
 — Dr. MacGregor and Mr. Wallace Williamson — A Long-looked -for 
 Duty done— July ii, 1894 — A Jesuit — A 'Religious' Newspaper — 
 A Pilgrimage to Irongray — That Abominable Old Kipper — Keepers 
 of Swine — A ' Silly Buddy '...,..., 3 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 TWO DEPARTURES FROM ST. ANDREWS 
 
 Bet with Bishop Wordsworth — Illegal Titles — Recognition of Orders — 
 The Bishop's Christian Year — Criticisms — Traits of Bishop Words- 
 worth — Insufferable Rhymes— An awful Pronunciation — Dislike of 
 Rome — The Archbishop of Glasgow— Annals of Early Life — A Suc- 
 cessful Book suggested — Leaving Bishopshall — The Collects Admired 
 but not Imitated — The Bishop's Death — The Funeral — An Expec- 
 tant Churchyard — Principal Cunningham — Professorships Jobbed — 
 ' A Jined Member ' — His Time here — His Death — The Funeral — 
 The Funeral Sermon — The last Whitsun-Day .... 36 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 INCIDENT, ECCLESIASTICAL AND PAROCHIAL 
 
 PACE 
 
 At Farnham Castle — Poverty of the Clerg)'— Celibacy — A Privilege of 
 the Impecunious — Funeral Services in Scotland — Parochialia — A 
 Popular Young Preacher — Was it Jesuitical? — Lord Dufferin Lord 
 Rector — The Tremendous Speech at Reykjavik —Letters from High 
 Latitudes Reviewed — Lord Bute Lord Rector — His Rectorial Ad- 
 dress — His LL. D's — The Priory Excavations — An illustrious Evan- 
 gelical High Broad Churchman — Dr. Liddon's Death — What Keeps 
 the National Churches separate — Five Lies ..... 70 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ARCHBISHOP TAIT OF CANTERBURY 
 
 Dean Church's Opinion— Sir Daniel Sandford's — Dr. Liddon's — The 
 Lowest Depth Conceivable — High-bred Provincialism — Archbishop 
 Tait's understanding of Anglicanism — Did you ever see a Cathedral 
 before? — Singular Error in Bishop Wilberforce's Z?)^ — The Arch- 
 bishop's Troubles — Deteriorated Handwriting — Consequential about 
 the Legs — The Scotch Accent — Dux of the Edinburgh Academy — 
 Glasgow College — 4.30 a.m. — Oxford — Turned a Whig — And Epis- 
 copalian — Fellow and Tutor of Balliol — The Glasgow Greek Chair — 
 Master of Rugby — Dean of Carlisle — Bereavement — Bishop of 
 London — Lord Shaftesbury's Gulf opened — Archbishop — Addington 
 Churchyard — A Consummate Ass — Farewell . . . . .96 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 DEAN STANLEY OF WESTMINSTER 
 
 Dean Wellesley's Opinion — Qualification for the Episcopal Bench — 
 Infidelity — Ruin of Countless Souls— Arthur and Hugh— Could be 
 Provoking — The Finest Machinery in the World Not Used — Stanley 
 at St. Andrews — An Ecclesiastical Curiosity — The appreciative Cab- 
 man — The Welsh Grandmother— Arithmetic of Stanley and Mr. 
 Gladstone — Sick of a Missionary Meeting — Rugby School — Arnold 
 — Oxford — Growing Broad — The two Successful Books— Deanery of 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Carlisle — Canon of Canterbury — Oxford Professorship — ' Fiendish 
 Folly and Stupidity' — Dean of Westminster— Marriage — Elected 
 Pope — Perplexity — Infallibility — Magus Muir — Too Liberal Inscrip- 
 tion—The C.C.C— His Death— Thou Miserable Idolater— The 
 Procession in the Parish Church of St. Andrews . . . .117 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 HUGH PEARSON 
 
 The Memoir — Sonning Church and Vicarage — Letters — First seen at 
 Edinburgh — An Anonymous Correspondent — No that Ennocent — 
 Stanley and Pearson at St. Bernard's Church — Kingsley — Dr. Guthrie 
 — Wonder of George Gilfillan — Vealberfoss — Hungry Scotsmen — 
 78 Great King Street — Shrove Tuesday, 1864 — Sonning — ' A placed 
 minister ' — ' We had Veitch to-day ' — Ash Wednesday — Mr. William 
 Longman's Lenten Dinner-party — Sonningin May 1877 — Windsor — 
 The Deanery — Walk above the Slopes— St. George's Chapel — Lord 
 Wriothesley Russell — Order of the Garter — Stanley and Pearson at St. 
 Andrews — A memorable Evening — A memorable Forenoon - To 
 H. P. at Windsor, May 1881 — Dean Wellesley's Conversation — 
 Stanley's Death — H. P. offered Deanery of Westminster — The 
 Graves of Stanley and H. P, ....... 143 
 
 CHAPTER VH 
 
 OF A WILFUL MEMORY 
 
 Unavailable Power— A Terrible Faculty — The Intruding Poem — Sir 
 David Brewster — Suggestive Prayer — The Auld-Licht — Awful Praise 
 — An Unblessed End — Appalling Adjectives — The Stolen Penknife 
 — A Lamentable City — Hear, hear, during Prayer — A ' Charity ' 
 D.D. bemuddled — Mr. Henley's Writings — A True Poet — The 
 Famous Author Towser — A Rural Family — An Unyielding Noncon- 
 formist — Onything Tempin' ? — Omnipotent in Little Peddlington — 
 Burnt a' to bits — Faraday's rebuke of Light Talk — No Very Weel 
 Conneckit . . . . , . . . . . . i7j 
 
X CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE NEW LITURGICS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Church Service Society — Its Aims — Its Book of Common Order — 
 Dissatisfaction with Public Prayer in Scotland — A Striking Prayer — 
 Current Exaggerations — Vulgar Irreverence — 'One Sheep' — Prayer- 
 Book and Surplice unknown to Scotch Episcopacy — Timidity of 
 First Reformers— Courage of Dr, Robert Lee — Not Conciliatory — 
 'Most Reverend Brethren' — Public Prayer always a Form— The 
 Spirit not in this Place — Preposterous Requirements — Read Prayers 
 — Persecution of Dr, Lee — Attempts to Terrorise — The Personnel of 
 the Church Service Society — Dr. Lee's Prayer-Book — Euchologion — 
 Its Growth — Morning Service — Arrangement of Churches — Private 
 Communion — The Worship of the Ideal National Church — Prayer 
 Liturgical and Nonliturgical —From many Sources . . •195 
 
 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 HELPED BY NATURE 
 
 A Month's Rest— Unreasonable Men— A magnificent Strath— Ross-shire 
 Scenery— School-Girls— ' Little Devils '—Imperfect Moral Govern- 
 ment—' Oanyboaddy ! ' — ' Bawth ' — Inefficiency of Alpine Scenery — 
 Wordsworth's Resort — Ben Wyvis 231 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 GROWING OLD 
 
 ' Younger every Day ' — A Gracious Critic— The Autocrat— 'This Time 
 Thirty-Four Years'— A Wearied Preacher— An Octogenarian Dis- 
 appointed— ' Seeing ourselves'— A Chief-Justice without Pecooliari- 
 ties— Julius Caesar— Disadvantages of a Diary— No Evening Work — 
 A Lad that is Gone 244 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SUNDAYS THERE 
 
 PACE 
 
 To Church — Innovations — Desperate glad it's no me — Preparing for 
 Sunday — 'Promiscuous Dancing' — Presbytery Smashed — ' Aboon 
 a' prejudice ' — A horrible Church— Chalmers's P'irst Style — ' Preach- 
 ing ought to be Uninteresting' — Its Practical Result — 'Middlin' — 
 ' Sham Reverence ' — Where Prayer Goes ..... 258 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ALWAYS SOMETHING 
 
 'Sin Tandrewce' — A Great Orator — A Pleasant Marriage — Sure to 
 Come — The Dark Ages — ' The Noblesse ' to be Ruined — Fanciful 
 Fears — Childe Harold a Humbug — The Haill Rickmatick — Sorrows 
 Departed — A Pathetic Memory ....... 274 
 
 THINGS LEFT 
 
 ONE'S REAL LIFE IN THE LATTER YEARS 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WHEN WE GET OUT OF THE WOOD 
 
 When the Ship Comes Home — A Hope which will not Deceive — 
 Troubles Recorded and Described-- How They Went Away — A 
 Happy Illusion — Modest Hopes— Great Elevation — A famous Line 287 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 JUST A NOVEMBER MORNING 
 
 A Country Road — Robert Burns— Alloway Kirk — Rich and Poor — ' No, 
 
 no, no ! ' — An Ayrshire Church — An Improved Service . . . 296 
 
xii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 NOT TOGETHER 
 
 FACE 
 
 The Filaments— Breaking Down— The Continuance of the Race— Indi- 
 vidual Experience — An older Successor — ' Them at Home ' . . 303 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ONLY ONE 
 
 The Judgment of M.N. — A mortal Trouble— Little Cares — Aaron's Rod 
 
 — A Self-conceited Fool — One's Thorn . . . . . .310 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THAT PERIODICITY OF SENSATIONS 
 
 Loch Awe and the Dead Sea — St. Conan's Tower — Post-Time — 
 Writing one's Letters — A Weary Task — Unreasonable Correspon- 
 dents — Anonymous Letters — Touting for an Unpaid Article . . 319 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 READ AFTER A GENERATION 
 
 Dr. Chalmers — 7%^ SouPs C(7;;/?zV/— Helpfulness —Doctor Richard 
 Sibbes — A Famous Book — ' Reputation, riches, &c.' — Dr. Vaughan's 
 Text 32S 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 NOT FOR US AT ALL 
 
 The Palms of Ayrshire —Always in the Enjoyment of Ample Means — 
 A great Archbishop —Washing the Feet — The 'Son of Perdition ' 
 charming— The Tragedy of Modern Life— Her Last Half-Crown — 
 
 Counting the Cost — Falsetto Appeals for Money— Insane Cravings 
 
 The Duke at Drumlanrig— A much-missed Man .... 335 
 
CONTENTS xiii 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THAT SUNDAY MORNING 
 
 PACE 
 
 A Red Town — The View from the Terrace — A Workhouse Service — 
 An Exceptional Congregation — The Hymns and Prayers — The Ser- 
 mon — A Prince of the Church preaching to Paupers — The Text — 
 The Blessing — The Chapel of Farnham Castle — Bishop Words- 
 worth's Ordination — The Young Priest's Sermon to his Bishop . 347 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 WOULD YOU CHANGE? 
 
 ' An Account of the Sermon ' — ' He had no Plan ' — Diverse Sermons — 
 Preaching to Children — Great Wealth — Great Popularity — High 
 Rank — 'The Common Wretches that Crawl the Earth ' — Things are 
 Balanced — Judiciousness of St. Paul ...... 355 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 OF SAYING GOODBYE 
 
 Half made up of Partings — An Enviable Faculty — Places where one has 
 Lived — Friends Departed — When one Goes — Getting over Things — 
 Did he remember ? — Part quickly ....... 3^4 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 Pictures of Those Gone Before — Froude and the Autocrat— A Flood of 
 Memories — Universal Praise — ' My dear Tennyson ' — A Lingering 
 Illness— The Reasons of 'These People '—Froude Beloved— Mr. 
 Hatch's Estimate of Life— Doubtful Reciprocity— The Granite- 
 Edinburgh— Position of a Bishop— The Last Goodbye— The Auto- 
 crat's Letters— Writing a Pleasure— His Books— A Broad Churchman 
 — The Parsee in Church— A Pleasant Evening Service— Another 
 Volume 372 
 
MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 ^J- 
 
CHAPTER 1 
 
 HOW ST. ANDREWS GOES ON 
 
 Standing at the door of the Post-office, in the drenching; 
 rain of this gloomy August day, one looks right across 
 the famous street upon St. Mary's College. In that old- 
 fashioned house Tulloch lived for thirty years. It was of 
 that house Stanley spoke when he said, ' I have got into 
 St. Mary's College, and I am happy.' There, through a de- 
 parted summer a little boy abode with his mother, who in 
 after-time was to be Lord-Rector of the University ; and 
 in a grand inaugural address to state (among other life-like 
 particulars) how, as a child he used, in that garden, ' to 
 play, and eat unripe pears.' Words were added, which in 
 graceful and distinguished form conveyed the assurance 
 that the little marquis suffered just like humbler people. 
 
 To-day (so it was) I thought I saw a tall figure, care- 
 lessly arrayed, coming across that street with long slow 
 steps, and carrying a great handful of letters. I heard the 
 voice say, ' My letters take up all my strength now.' For 
 it had come to the latter days. Never in this life was any- 
 thing more vivid than that glimpse of the friend departed. 
 Of a sudden he was gone : and an alert little figure in a 
 
 B 2 
 
4 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 short black coat and a large wideawake was standing by 
 the post-office window. A kind bright face : very keen 
 but entirely good-natured : thp very youngest living man 
 of his years. That was Principal Cunningham, who came 
 to Tulloch's empty chair ; and who held it for too short a 
 time. 1 read the great words of Christian hope over each, 
 when laid to rest in our grand churchyard. 
 
 And now, I have gone into the old house, and talked 
 with the new Principal. We walked together along the 
 beautiful shady path, worn of one's frequent feet through 
 these short years. No man could more worthily hold his 
 place than Principal Stewart : and it was strange and 
 touching to me to see him there. For when I came here, 
 this time twenty-nine years, he was but a hopeful youth, a 
 student of this College whose Head he is to-day. He was 
 indeed the Admirable Crichton of his day ; and no man 
 has surpassed his record. He was the first who read the 
 lessons in church for me : and I have briefly told his story 
 elsewhere.' He had risen high then : risen by merit and 
 by nothing else : and we, who fancied we had helped to 
 make him, were proud of him. But now he has got to the 
 very end of his tether. He appears to me still to be one 
 of my boys : but I see plainly he looks a good deal older. 
 I should not like to enquire what, in that respect, he thinks 
 of me. 
 
 The world is beautiful yet, though one is some months 
 older than Luther, Knox, Chalmers, lived to be. No words 
 can express the blaze of green grass which I see, when I 
 
 ' Twenty-five Years of St. Andre-Ms \ Vol. I. pp. 183-4. 
 
HOW ST. ANDREWS GOES ON 5 
 
 look up from this page through these windows : golden - 
 green now in the sunshine, and shaded in parts by young 
 oak-trees. St. Swithin, once Bishop of Winchester, has 
 been unpitying : we have passed through a summer of con- 
 tinual drenching showers. And these, ruinous to the ripen- 
 ing corn, make the grass over our sandy soil a marvel. 
 The famous Links are a glory to see. 
 
 We have had, this week, our Lammas holidays : they 
 come according to the old style : and on one of them the 
 terrible down-pour hardly ceased at all. Happily, the 
 great day was fine : the day on which, from old time, there 
 is dancing in the open air. It is ever a pleasant sight to 
 me, in this country where there is too much work and too 
 little play. Under the western gable of the parish church 
 is a gravelled expanse, on which two hundred may foot it 
 together : the orchestra, in which a great drum was most 
 prominent, was set against the sacred wall itself I saw 
 no earthly objection. The music was hearty : the time was 
 marked : the dances were those of Scotland : the young 
 folk danced beautifully. Decorum and propriety were per- 
 fect. It must have been fatiguing to dance so actively on 
 that freshly-gravelled ground : but the dancers were equal 
 to it all. I would they had looked more cheery. But 
 they took their pleasure seriously, and even sadly ; as is 
 the fashion of the race. Still, I remarked, with satisfac- 
 tion, that when I caught the eye of a young couple, alertly 
 tripping, the healthy young faces brightened into a smile : 
 as assured of the approval of their minister. 
 
 I could not have believed, but for recent experience, 
 
6 IMEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 that any rational being could have condemned that inno- 
 cent gaiety. But when I lately expressed a sympathetic 
 approbation of such a spectacle, a worthy man, profoundly 
 ignorant of Scotland, warned me that such sentiments 
 might probably give offence. Not, assuredly, to any mortal 
 whose approval I desire. Not to any mortal with whom 
 I ever exchange a word. I can, indeed, recall a sentence 
 which appeared to be spoken at me : though not to me. 
 I was at a gathering of good folk, interested in missions to 
 people far away. A very self-sufficient and pragmatical 
 youth, of rough aspect, said to another who was seated 
 next to myself, ' Can any Christian dance ? ' The lad, 
 thus addressed, answered, briefly, ' Why not ? ' The self- 
 sufficient youth rejoined, ' Whenever I see people dancing, 
 I say to myself. You are dancing over hell ! ' Such were 
 the words : I heard them. No authority was quoted ; the 
 youth seemed to regard his own as sufficient. I fancied 
 he was under an impression that he would draw me to 
 take some notice of him : which I did not. I should just 
 as soon have replied to the utterances of a braying ass. 
 
 This is the season of visitois. The little city is even 
 fuller than it can well hold : the many hotels are crowded. 
 They are, all of them, extremely good. One, of great 
 height (I .say it not without pride) possesses a lift, which 
 carries you smoothly up by hydraulic power. Here is 
 indeed a link between this remote place, and the great 
 world : b)- which we gencrall)' understand London. The 
 pleasant proprietor and his cheerful partner in life took 
 me up and down on one of the earliest days the lift was 
 
HOW ST. ANDREWS GOES ON 7 
 
 available ; as assured of my hearty sympathy, and know- 
 ing that certain folk are pleased with a little thing. For 
 more than a year past I have watched, with profound in- 
 terest, the rising of another hotel : which is, architecturally, 
 by far the most monumental building erected here since 
 long before the Reformation. A great steam-crane seized 
 up huge stones, weighing three and four tons :. swept them 
 through the blue sky, and dropped them in the place, to a 
 hair's-breadth, designed by the builder. It was a wonder 
 of ingenuity : to see it at work was fascinating. Simple- 
 minded wise folk, not ashamed of their simplicity, stood 
 and gazed upwards. And to the writer, that beautiful 
 piece of Italian architecture, strongly flavoured with the 
 true Gothic spirit, and towering to seven stories in height, 
 has a special charm. For in this gray city, it is the soli- 
 tary edifice of old red sandstone : the contrast is delightful : 
 but, above all, it is the red rock of central Ayrshire, the 
 very first I remember : it is the red rock of unforgetable 
 Dumfries, where I was a youth in my beautiful country 
 parish. Nobody, save the writer, either knows or cares 
 that these red bays and aixhes have been carried, bit by 
 bit, to this East Neuk of Fife, from that region of Scotland, 
 far away in the South- West, which Mr. Murray's Handbook 
 for Scotla7id very justly states ' is the scene of The Recrea- 
 tions of a Country Parson' 
 
 In the old days, this household was always in Perthshire 
 at this season. But there are no children now who must 
 have change from St. Andrews in the holiday-time : and 
 a more than aging man has not the strength for the weary 
 
8 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 journey to this place on Saturday, and back again to the 
 Highlands on Monday, after the Sunday here. Let mc 
 earnestly counsel any clergyman, placed as one is here, not 
 to attempt the like. After seven successive Sundays thus 
 arranged, }'0U will find yourself much more weary at the 
 end of the so-called holidax' than you were at its beginning. 
 But a good deal has been said elsewhere upon this practi- 
 cal question : and it will not produce the smallest effect 
 till urgent necessity interv^enes. How wisely Archbishop 
 Tait, working himself to death, dilated to me on the in- 
 fatuation (such was the word) of somebody else over- 
 working ! Yet the Sundays were always uplifting : are 
 just as uplifting now. After ever so many years, it abides 
 (to some men) the most interesting of all work, to preach 
 to a large and hearty congregation. I confess it, quite 
 frankly ; and am not in the least degree ashamed to do so. 
 Last Sunday the parish church in the morning and the 
 little St. Mary's in the evening were each a heart-warming 
 sight : plain buildings both, but the great thing about any 
 church is the congregation ! And the parish church (as 
 the reader has been told) can seat 2500. One wonders, in 
 the little place, where the mass of people comes from. 
 The uplifting in praise of these voices is comely : as was 
 remarked with authority long ago. Many unknown friends 
 cheer one by letters saying they were interested and helped. 
 I never forget how good Dean Ramsa)-, when he gave me 
 his twentieth edition, said simply, ' You kiK^w I am not 
 conceited ; but I am thankful and pleased.' Surely the 
 befittin''- attitude of mind. It has been said, of such a 
 
HOW ST. ANDREWS GOES ON 9 
 
 congregation, ' a cheering, but a humbling sight.' Preachers, 
 who can be called preachers, will understand. And never 
 dnce does the thought intrude, which was once frankly ex- 
 pressed by a very popular man departed. A friend of 
 mine stood with him at his vestry window, and they two 
 looked out on the multitude thronging in to worship. My 
 friend never spoke to the preacher save that once. But the 
 preacher (he was a young man) seized my friend's arm, 
 nervously ; and said, in a nervous tone, ' All these people 
 are coming to hear Hie ! ' Which ought never to have 
 been said ; never thought. And in fact it never is. In 
 absolute reality, }'ou never think of yourself at all. 
 
 One has often thought that the vital division between 
 fairly-attractive preachers is a simple one, easily discer- 
 nible by the Philistine intelligence. It is quite marked. 
 On one side of that line are the preachers who always 
 interest a congregation, and commonly have the church 
 where they minister quite full. On the other side they 
 stand who always have the passages crowded when they 
 preach. Very few are these last ; and their selection 
 appears arbitrary. In some cases it certainly is so. The 
 writer is not numbered among them. On some quite 
 exceptional occasions, when circumstances and not he 
 brought together that multitude, he has ever felt, pain- 
 fully, how tired the people must be, and has had a strong 
 desire to beg them to go away. He has been well aware 
 that it was not worth their while to stand, for an}'thing he 
 had to say. This is said sincerely. As long as people 
 are comfortably seated, he does not mind about keeping 
 
lo MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 them. But he has two or three special friends who ahvays, 
 year after year, draw a congregation which overflows into 
 the passages. This as regularly as they ascend their 
 pulpit. I note that this does not make them happy : it 
 makes them anxious. They would not like it to cease. 
 I know them so well, that they talk to me frankh- ; and 
 they are perfectly sure that I rejoice in their eminence. 
 Well I know the words : ' It will all collapse ! ' ' Onl\- for 
 a little while.' ' In two or three )'ears the church will be 
 quite empty,' It was pathetic when Chalmers, on his 
 final visit to London, noted in his diary the signs of his 
 lessening popularity. ' Nobody in the chapel when we 
 went in : but full, with a few in the passages, when service 
 began.' I suppose the only Scotch preachers who regularly 
 crowded the passages in human memory have been 
 Chalmers, Guthrie, Caird, MacGregor. They deserved all 
 that came to them. I do not even name the vulgar and 
 irreverent buffoons who have sometimes, for a little space, 
 drawn a crowd of human beings with small sense and no 
 taste at all. They are not preachers. 
 
 If a man has this gift of outstanding attraction ; and 
 if he be placed in the midst of a sufficient population from 
 which to draw ; the size of the church is a negligable 
 quantity. Dr. Guthrie's Edinburgh church was small, but 
 he would have crammed the largest church all the same. 
 Dr. MacGregor's holds 3000 ; but it is just as crowded as 
 it would be if it held a few hundreds. One can but say 
 there is a magic about such good men, which is not given 
 to ordinary mortals. And it was only by trial the)- found 
 
HOW ST. ANDREWS GOES ON n 
 
 out that they possessed it. Or did they grow up, inwardly 
 knowing what strange power they were to wield .'' This 
 is certain, that youths have gone through the University 
 in confident anticipation of that which never could be. 
 One of the stupidest men I ever knew said in my hearing, 
 ' I should never have gone into the Church if I had not 
 felt it was in me to preach much better than Caird.' A 
 homely Scot said to me, of one who was a seventh-rate 
 student and a preacher of no rate at all, ' He thocht they 
 wad be stannin' in the passages when he cam' oot ! ' In 
 the language of some plain folk, to ' come oot for the Kirk ' 
 means to receive orders. 
 
 I do not know how it may be with other preachers ; 
 but in one's own experience there is nothing whatsoever 
 which so strongly impresses it upon one that the years 
 have slipped away, as one's changed feeling towards after- 
 noon services. When I was a lad at the University, the 
 afternoon service was the great one. Then a preacher 
 had the crowded church ; and he gave his best sermon. 
 The morning sermon was probably extemporised from a 
 few lines of manuscript : the afternoon one was fully 
 written, and read. But, as the old Fifer said of Chalmers' 
 reading (which was very close), * it was fell readin' thon ! ' 
 The word fell has no equivalent in English speech. I was 
 present, ages since, in the house of dear Dr. Craik of Glas- 
 gow (one of the first men of his da}- in Scotland), when the 
 story was related. ' Ye divna like readin',' was remarked 
 to one expatiating with enthusiasm on Tom's preaching : 
 they called him Tom then. The answer, given with 
 
12 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 much intensity, was, ' Ay, but it's fell readin' thon ! ' 
 ' What does fell mean ? ' asked a gentle English curate. 
 Craik's answer, given in a single word, glowed with feeling: 
 huvos ! He was a great Greek scholar. The meaning 
 conveyed was Dt'eadfid ! Tremendous ! OverivJiehning ! 
 Smashing ! The word means all that and more. And 
 Chalmers' reading was all that and more. The mere 
 physical vehemence was terrible. It is a wonder he 
 lived to sixty-seven. As for the morning service, it was 
 quietly got through. I remember a great Glasgow preacher 
 saying, somewhat irreverently, 'I'm on the slack rope in 
 the morning, but on the tight rope in the afternoon.' The 
 thing was done under quite different pressure of steam. 
 A homely farmer said to me of a ver)' great preacher in- 
 deed, ' The forenoon is jist a shoot-by.' Scrambled through, 
 somehow. Yet these enthusiastic orators needed it, to 
 work themselves up. One of the most outstanding uttered 
 in my hearing the paradox, ' A man can only preach once 
 on a Sunday. But to do that he must preach twice.' We 
 are much quieter now, in the regions I know : which ap- 
 pears a change much for the better. For I remember 
 when you feared the orator would burst a blood-vessel ; 
 he so bellowed and flew about. A saintly old lady said 
 of one such, quite truly, ' He barked like a dog.' Then, 
 unhappily, men who had nothing whatever of the genius of 
 Chalmers or Caird, could try to exceed their physical vehe- 
 mence. When Chalmers wrote in his diary, ' Preached in 
 the Gorbals this morning, and exceeded' ; it must have been 
 something tremendous. ' I never saw a human being in such 
 
HOW ST. ANDREWS GOES ON 13 
 
 an excitement,' were the words to me of a fine old cavalry- 
 officer, describing his only glimpse of Chalmers. But, as 
 a boy, I remember vividly the declaration of a rustic : 
 ' Oor minister is a grand preacher ! Div ye ken, he whiles 
 comes oot wi' a roar just like a bull ! ' The vulgar idea 
 was as of the Sibyl : inspired, possessed. Just look at 
 Sir David Wilkie's picture of John Knox preaching at 
 St. Andrews from the old pulpit of my church. And 
 then, specially strange, this overwhelming vehemence 
 rigorously demanded by a grave and unexcitable race : in 
 all other things distinctly impatient of any display or 
 feeling. 
 
 Of old, the morning service was (as it still is) at eleven 
 o'clock : the afternoon service at two, or a quarter past 
 two. Evening services were exceptional. Now, the ser- 
 vices tend to be morning and evening ; and the afternoon 
 service tends to dry up. The congregation is small : some- 
 times a mere handful. This, even where the church has 
 been quite full at morning service. For certain of the 
 clergy it is well that the taste has thus altered. For an 
 aging preacher is really unequal to afternoon services ; 
 even where his strength is fairly adequate to morning and 
 evening. Each second Sunday, the writer ought to preach 
 in the afternoon ; and though the congregation looks 
 sparse, being scattered over the great place, it well de- 
 serves the best one can give it. The number would be fairly 
 respectable in a small building. Accurately counted, on 
 three of my successive afternoons last winter, it varied from 
 430 to 480. At my last such service, it approached 700 : 
 
14 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 which is more than the unforgottcn ' two or three' And 
 it is the special service of many young folk who deserve 
 the very kindest consideration : good maid-servants who 
 will not be able to come to church in an evening till people 
 change their Sunday dinner-hour. But, after the heavy 
 pull of the morning church, where the worship ends at 
 12.30, at 2 P.M. one is in such a state of painful exhaustion 
 that the duty cannot be faced much longer. My last ex- 
 perience made me say that I should never again preach in 
 an afternoon. Here, indeed, is the unmistakable warning 
 that one has grown old. It is a very painful trial to go 
 through a service, feeling every word beyond one's strength. 
 It is awful to read your sermon, watching for sentences to 
 leave out, because you really are unequal to saying them. 
 
 There is indeed a way of getting over that painful 
 sense of sinking ; but I strongly counsel my brethren not 
 to try it : even if thc)^ be capable of it. For it takes out 
 of you terribly : and you suffer for it afterwards. It is to 
 preach extempore. That will warm you up. That will 
 stick the spurs into you. You will be compelled to have 
 all your wits about you. And ^•ou must give your hearers 
 the very simplest and most earnest statements you can, of 
 what we all need so much to know : of what we forget so 
 soon. The worship will be hearty enough : never heartier. 
 But it is shortening your time of work and life. It is not 
 your duty to do so, and you will not get the smallest thanks 
 for doing so. You will come home ver\- jarred and irritable, 
 and you will find it hard to slccj) that night. You will 
 take gloomy views of things next morning. And )-ou arc 
 
HOW ST. ANDREWS GOES ON 15 
 
 just as really bound to obey the laws of health, as to obey 
 any one of the Ten Commandments. There are good folk 
 who fail to take in this manifest truth. 
 
 Other inconveniences attend this way of struggling 
 through duty for which you are not fit. If you are an aged 
 worker, you will not greatly care about them. At any 
 time, it is well to talk away in that informal fashion when 
 you are perfectly at home : when you are speaking to old 
 friends : when you are counselling those who have heard 
 you many times before. A few days since, I got through 
 my afternoon service, being dead-beat. I ought to have 
 lain down to sleep when I went away to church. For the 
 ■morning service had been killing. Some would say up- 
 lifting. No doubt it lifted up. But then it dropped one 
 down. The hearty music cheered some little. An Oxford 
 youth read the lessons, remarkably well. Then, with just 
 a few lines written, the sermon of twenty-five minutes : from 
 a most elementary text, never discoursed from before. 
 One soon saw ten or twelve clerics, listening more or less 
 critically : the younger of them probably thinking that 
 they could have done better themselves. For that one did 
 not care at all. But really when, after service, one of the 
 most outstanding Bishops of the Anglican Communion 
 walked into the vestry and introduced himself in the most 
 brotherly way (the very pleasantest of men), even a man 
 long past the days in which self-conceit is tolerable could 
 not but think that it had been well the Prelate had heard 
 one for the first and last time when more like one's self 
 A drawback of being surrounded by well-bred people is, 
 
i6 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 that nobody tells you when you have got on lamely. 
 Whereas I once knew a most eminent preacher whose 
 elders were of so unpolished a class, that one of them would 
 pat him on the shoulder, and say, with entire candour and 
 probably with entire truth,' Ye werena jist yersel' the day, 
 sir ! ' Even eminent men are unequal. Untold years 
 since, a man who attended St. George's church in Edin- 
 burgh took a friend with him to hear Dr. Candlish, who 
 was then esteemed a most outstanding preacher. But 
 coming forth, the brief criticism was, * Very waff to-day.' 
 What xvaff means, I do not distinctly know. But I 
 gathered that the judgment was extremely depreciatory. 
 
 However that might be, the Bishop came home with 
 me, and sat a while in this room, brightly talking. I have 
 rarely been more interested in any man's conversation. 
 Very dignified and fine-looking, but absolutely frank and 
 outspoken : pretty close to the ideal of what one in his 
 office should be. I will not indicate who he was. But I 
 may say he is the son of a Bishop, and the nephew of a 
 Bishop. Sad to say, his visit to this sacred city was but 
 from Saturday to Monday. He confessed, truly, that so 
 short a stay was ' disrespectful to St. Andrews.' When he 
 departed, I turned up the Men of the Time, diud found he is 
 nine years younger than myself. We were old friends when 
 he went : we found we had a host of common friends. I do 
 not think I shall ever see him again. But that may be a 
 vain fancy : as others have been. 
 
 Telling of this present time which is passing over, it is 
 absolutely necessary here to take up a link, dropt else- 
 
HOW ST. ANDREWS GOES ON 17 
 
 where ; and to finish a story which I never thought to finish 
 at all. It is a pathetic story to myself, if it never proves 
 such to any other soul. 
 
 I ha\-e related ' how my dear and old friend Dr. 
 MacGregor, who is and has for long time been the 
 outstanding preacher of Edinburgh, wrote to me on 
 January 5, 1889, that St. Cuthbert's church, the huge and' 
 hideous building in which he ministered, was to be pulled 
 down and replaced by one worthier : adding, with authority, 
 ' You must come and open the new building.' To this 
 date, I have been asked to officiate at the opening of 
 loi churches and organs, 70 churches and 31 organs : and 
 a wearied mortal must learn resolutely to say No. But in 
 this case that could not be. And I replied that should 
 both of us be permitted to see the completion of the grand 
 church designed, I should esteem it a great honour to 
 minister at its dedication. When I wrote this story, more 
 than three years had elapsed : for legal difficulties had 
 arisen : and I said that the foundation-stone was to be laid 
 by the Lord High Commissioner, the Marquis of Tweed- 
 dale, on Wednesday, May 18, 1892. Then, probably, two 
 years more (the church was far advanced when the 
 memorial stone was laid) : but it was added, ' I shall hope 
 to be allowed to see the day, still equal to a great function': 
 I mean equal so far as I ever was.' I wrote with some 
 little show of lightness of Dickens' constant Please God, in 
 making engagements only a short way in advance : and 
 I did not say to anybody that I felt as sure as ever of 
 
 ' Ticenty-five Years of St. Andrews : Vol. II. pp. 322-3. 
 
 C 
 
i8 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 anything that I should not be here when that dut\- came 
 to be done. MacGregor is a good deal my junior. The 
 consecration fell happily on his birthday, July ii, 1894. 
 He was sixty-three : but looked about forty. 
 
 I vividly recall the laying of the stone. It was on the 
 day before the opening of the General Assembly. The 
 morning had been one of drenching rain : but there was 
 beautiful sunshine throughout the function : which began at 
 4 P.M., and lasted more than an hour. Dr. MacGregor 
 gave an address, in his very best style : recalling the as- 
 sociations of that ground through twelve centuries. And I 
 remember well how I thought that never once, in my long 
 experience of the Kirk, had I heard prayer made more 
 beautifully or fitly, than by Mr. Wallace Williamson : who is 
 MacGregor's colleague in the weighty charge of the vast 
 parish and congregation ; and who is, in an absolutel)' dif- 
 ferent line of excellence, just as admirable a preacher and 
 pastor as the great orator himself ; not second, indeed, to 
 any man among the Scottish clergy. Whatever Lord 
 Tweeddale does, is done with admirable grace and dignity : 
 and the ever-charming Marchioness scattered flowers on 
 the huge stone. The building went on, month by month : 
 the vast monumental structure arose in as conspicuous a 
 j5osition as any in Edinburgh : vehement difference of 
 opinion was expressed as to its beauties, a thing perfectly 
 certain to occur in Scotland in such a case. But the 
 architect was a man of high eminence : he had confidence 
 in himself, and was heartily supported : and the verdict is 
 fairly unanimous in his favour now. He had not indeed a 
 
HOW ST. ANDREWS GOES ON 19 
 
 free hand. Most of us desired to see a grand Gothic 
 church. But it was judged well to preserve the spire of 
 the previous structure ; and so the new one had to be 
 Palladian. Then it was necessary to provide for a con- 
 gregation of about 3000 : hence galleries had to be. And 
 the new St. Cuthbert's, occupying twice the ground-space 
 of the preceding one, arose in a crowded churchyard. 
 
 In such a case, delays are inevitable. But, finally, the 
 day of the Dedication was fixed : already named. I wrote 
 my sermon, every word of it, for the occasion : as was fit. 
 For never in my little life, save when giving my closing 
 address at the General Assembly and when preaching in 
 Glasgow Cathedral at the Centenary of the Sons of the 
 Clergy, have I been called to duty quite so conspicuous. 
 No such occasion, in connection with the Church of Scot- 
 land, has been in Edinburgh in the memory of living man. 
 And even a preacher who has served for long, and is get- 
 ting tired, could not grudge the preparation, to his very 
 best, of a discourse which could never be preached but 
 that one time. Commonly, such an incident would be a 
 waste of the failing strength. And a carefully-written sermon 
 is delivered a good many times : of course, in a good many 
 places. Even in one's own church, I have said that such 
 a composition is to be held as new after four or five years. 
 Nothing can be sillier than to make any mystery about 
 this. There are exceptional cases. The beloved and 
 never-forgotten Liddon told me he never gave a sermon 
 twice in St. Paul's. But thirteen sermons served him for 
 a year there : and each appearance was historic. Quite 
 
20 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 dififerent from the position of an over-worked parish priest, 
 who, besides the endless pastoral and other work of a large 
 parish, must preach twice each Sunday all the }-ear round, 
 and a third time each Wednesday from Advent to Easter. 
 Let it be said, that though you give quite new discourses 
 continually, persons will be found to declare that all are 
 old, and very old. And people who are always unscrupu- 
 lous, are specially unscrupulous in what they say about 
 things like these. Quite latel}', a man making an attack 
 upon the present writer, being obliged to admit that the 
 sermon the previous Sunday morning was not wholly bad, 
 went on to say that ' a gentleman ' told him that he (the 
 gentleman) heard it that morning for the twentieth time. 
 I never contradict falsehoods about myself from some 
 quarters. But I was interested in the statement of that 
 truthful ' gentleman.' I write at the end of all written 
 sermons the place and time of their being delivered. That 
 discourse was given that morning for exactly the tenth 
 time. Wherefore none living could have heard it twenty 
 times. And if the 'gentleman' had indeed heard it 
 exactly half as often as he said, he must for several years 
 have followed me all over Scotland, from Aberdeen in the 
 North to Edinburgh and Glasgow in the South. For a 
 good many of our large towns had listened to that 
 careful composition before it was published. It is too 
 plain that there arc extreme Protestants who will alwaj-s 
 make a statement to the prejudice of one who differs from 
 them in matters ecclesiastical, with little enquiry as to its 
 truth. Such persons ma\' not know that the statement is 
 
HOW ST. ANDREWS GOES ON 21 
 
 false when they make it. But they could ver)- easily find 
 out that it is false. And men of whom one would have 
 expected better act in this way. I lately read in a quite 
 respectable periodical an account of an incident in the 
 parish church here, which was false in every detail. I 
 once found that a decent man was putting about a long 
 story touching an intimation made from the pulpit in the 
 same place, the point of which was that I called my 
 church-officer ' the Sacristan.' I had never once done so 
 in my life. I cannot count the occasions on which I have 
 read, in newspapers which favour Nonconformity, that I 
 preach in lavender kid gloves. Never once, in my 
 lengthened pilgrimage, have I preached in gloves of any 
 material or colour known among men. Not long ago, I 
 read a circumstantial statement that the Bishop of Win- 
 chester had set up a crucifix in the chapel of Farnham 
 Castle. I think I know that beautiful place of prayer as 
 well as mortal can. Not merely have I worshipped there, 
 morning and evening, times immemorial ; but many times 
 in the quiet day, abiding under that venerable roof, I have 
 gone alone into that peaceful sanctuary, for a restful season 
 there : not indeed always finding it. I need not say there 
 is no crucifix there ; and never has been. 
 
 We were abiding far away, at Strathpeffer in magnifi- 
 cent Ross-shire, when the great day came. It is a long 
 journey to Edinburgh. The railway from Strathpeffer at 
 8.15 A.M. Dingwall, Inverness, Forres. The Highland 
 railway carries you for long in view of the Cairngorm 
 mountains, where were vast expanses of snow even under 
 
22 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 a blazing July sun. Through historic Killiecrankie : and 
 now from Perth to Edinburgh by beautiful Glenfarg, and 
 the miraculous Forth Bridge. Edinburgh is nine hours 
 and a half from Strathpeffer. It is a much easier and 
 shorter journey from Edinburgh to London ; and that by 
 three diverse ways. But it was delightful to be housed 
 under the dear MacGregor's roof: surely never man was 
 more happily placed in this world. With that immense 
 popularity out-of-doors, more than enough for an)- man's 
 portion, that happy home besides, and that perfect sym- 
 pathy. Blazing green was the look-out from my window ; 
 ah, those thick trees ! And the little party at dinner was 
 of the men but for whom the new St. Cuthbert's had never 
 arisen. MacGregor himself; his colleague Williamson ; 
 Ballant)Mie, son of the true genius who wrote Castles in the 
 Air; Forrest, who added the business faculty. How happy 
 they were, in the success of a long and trying work ; how 
 magnanimously each sought to give the merit to the 
 C/thcrs. It was as pleasant a sight as these eyes ever saw. 
 This was Tuesday, July lo. Next day, Wednesday, 
 July II, was the day some thousands will never forget. 
 The birthday : as recorded. Early, with MacGregor and 
 his wife, to see the church. Of course, the only wa\' in 
 which it is possible ever to get a new church opened at all, 
 is to resolutely open it before it is quite ready. But St. 
 Cuthbert's, only a workshop yet, to be entered with covered 
 head, was quite wonderful. And before the great function, 
 onl)' a keen architect's eye could have discovered an\thing 
 lacking. At noon, the sky grew black, threatening a 
 
HOW ST. ANDREWS GOES ON 23 
 
 thunderstorm. All the pleasanter when the afternoon 
 proved one of the brightest sunshine. They understand 
 the proprieties, here. The service was ' at the hour of 
 prayer, being the ninth hour,' quite the most convenient : 
 and grandly sanctioned. That the regular congregation 
 might not be crowded out, admission was by tickets, for 
 which the demand was vast. When MacGregor and I 
 arrived, at 2.15, great crowds were gathered in the church- 
 yard, and round each door. I will not forget the sun 
 blazing on the green trees : magnificent Princes Street on 
 one hand, and the stern Castle rock towering just above 
 us. As for the Dedication service, nothing more impres- 
 sive has been seen in Scotland. Yet not a suspicion of 
 sight-seeing : the multitude was devout as great. But 
 even the great place could hold but a portion of the con- 
 gregation which would fain have been there that day. 
 They were nervous and anxious, those who were to 
 minister : though happy too. The vestries will never be 
 so crowded any more. The Magistrates, in their official 
 garb. More than a hundred clergy, in their robes, walked 
 into church in procession. The dense mass of people 
 arose, as the twenty-fourth psalm rung out : the great choir 
 duly placed in the chancel. The organ is temporary : but 
 it was quite adequate. Dr. Marshall Lang of Glasgow, 
 Ex-Moderator, and I came last. Immediately before us 
 the two ministers of the church. We were honoured more 
 than was due. But that day one did exactly as one was 
 told. Long ere the psalm was ended, which passed, at Ve 
 gates, into the famous Edinburgh tune, we were all in our 
 
24 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 places. Among those in the chancel were five IModerators 
 of the Kirk. Our present Primate, Professor Story, who 
 would fain have been there, and whose presence would 
 have been specially pleasant to many, was detained in 
 England. Never has there been Moderator who held the 
 place more worthily. I was at the North end and Dr. Lang 
 at the South of the beautiful Holy Table of white marble, 
 the gift of Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Williamson to the glory 
 of God and in loving memory of a little one who is even 
 as the angels now. One hardly likes to mention such a 
 thing here. But it was a costly gift : as such ought to 
 be. Not for centuries has the like been set in any parish 
 church in Scotland. MacGregor and Williamson were in 
 their stalls, at either corner of the great chancel, which is 
 duly elevated. The dense mass of the congregation was a 
 thing to remember. None of us were quite sure how we 
 should be heard in the great untried edifice. It was soon 
 made plain that the acoustics were all that could be desired. 
 Of course, feeble tones would be inaudible in a place so 
 huge. But when MacGregor's telling and pathetic voice 
 filled every corner as he read the opening sentences of 
 scripture, and then the fine prayers of dedication, it was 
 felt that the question was settled. 
 
 The Holy Table, and such vessels as were new, were 
 dedicated by the Ex-Moderator with as much grace and 
 solemnity as the like was ever done anywhere. What one 
 felt, very deeply, was the awful reality of seriousness with 
 which all who ministered did their part. The service went 
 on. The music thrilled one through. The choir numbered 
 
HOW ST. ANDREWS GOES ON 2f 
 
 fifty, and every voice was a telling one. It was touching 
 when that multitude stood up, and said the Apostles' 
 Creed as though each one meant it. Of course, on such a 
 day, the Te Deiini ' with intention of thanksgiving.' The 
 Lessons were magnificent : i Chron. xxix. 1-25, and Rev. 
 xxi., and worthily read. The Intercessory prayers were 
 most touchingly read by Williamson. The Anthem could 
 not by possibility have been grander : it was the Hallelujah 
 Chorus from TJie Messiah. As Dean Ramsay wrote, long 
 ago, ' There will never be another Hallelujah Chorus.' 
 Both the ministers of St. Cuthbert's appeared to me that 
 day as men inspired. 
 
 One is quite lifted above trepidation, at such a time : 
 though the nervous strain is great. When the verger came 
 to conduct me to the pulpit, the brief record of the time 
 says ' Not nervous, but strung up.' All of us who ministered 
 are accustomed to large churches, and know their ways. 
 I found at once I could be well heard by all who were not 
 deaf, without any extreme effort. The printed order gave 
 a beautiful and befitting Prayer before Sermon : to which 
 I could not but add the Collect for the Day. For it was 
 Lord of all pozver aud viigJit : Jenny Geddes' Collect : 
 which Stanley told me he never would preach in a Scotch 
 kirk without reading before his sermon. The silent atten- 
 tion of the congregation was inspiring. And those un- 
 known friends had my very best. At the ascription which 
 closed the sermon, the great multitude reverently stood up : 
 juxta laudabileiu EcclesicB Scotice reformatcB formam et 
 ritum. And a voice, loud as from numbers not very 
 
26 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 easily numbered, rolled Eastward God of Bethel, to 
 Haydn's grand Salzburg. Then MacGregor, standing in 
 front of the Holy Table, said the Blessing. The congrega- 
 tion stood as the procession retired, now in reverse order. 
 Dr. Lang and I went first, who had come last. 
 
 I had repeatedly been told, by good folk who knew 
 not how unspeakably revolting to me is any irreverence 
 in church, that my text was to be 'I will pull down my 
 barns, and build greater.' My answer was, that I would 
 not tell them what my text would be, but that most as- 
 suredly it would not be that. As a matter of fact, the text 
 that day was the grand motto of the Church of Scotland : 
 the famous Nee tamen co7isuinebatur. Most human beings 
 know that the scutcheon bears the Burning Bush : and you 
 read these words below. We do not, however, announce 
 our texts in Latin. It was Exodus iii. 2, ' And the Bush 
 was not consumed.' When all was over, I met many kind 
 words. And the friendly Scotsvmti came and got the 
 manuscript. It was very different in aspect from dear 
 Dean Stanley's, given to the same great paper long ago 
 when he first preached in the parish church of St. 
 Andrews. He appeared a bright youth who came for 
 that awful piece of penmanship. But when he received 
 it, his countenance clouded over. Ne.xt morning, the 
 sermon was published word for word as spoken. There 
 was not one misprint. Only my division into paragraphs 
 was ignored. The composition was printed right on : 
 which, to me, always gives a heavy look. But only very 
 big folk have their paragraphs regarded. 
 
HOW ST. ANDREWS GOES ON 27 
 
 The service lasted just two hours. The sermon took 
 twenty-five minutes. And all this story which I have now 
 related was compendiously summed up in the statement, 
 before the leading articles : ' The new parish church of 
 St. Cuthbert's, Edinburgh, was opened yesterday by a 
 dedication service, which was attended by about three 
 thousand people, including a large number of clergymen 
 from every part of Scotland.' Nothing said of my 
 sermon pleased mc more than certain lines written to 
 me by one of the first men in the Kirk : which showed 
 how thoroughly he had taken in my intention. I omit 
 words of far too kind appreciation : but I copy these : 
 ' So full of tenderness for those who love the old ways, 
 and yet so powerful in its defence of the older and better 
 ways in which we are trying to walk.' I will confess 
 that even one who has served these forty-three years, and 
 met much to cheer as well as a good deal to take down, 
 felt such praise worth having. 
 
 I am aware that an outstanding public man, on an 
 occasion when I spoke tenderly of the ways of the 
 Kirk of my boyhood, which I have humbly helped, in 
 my degree, to change for the better, hastened to state 
 that I was ' a Jesuit' He ought not to have made the 
 statement in the presence of a good-natured slight ac- 
 quaintance, who (before I had time to cut him short) told 
 me so. What I said was said in absolute sincerity. 
 And very moderate perspicacity might have discerned 
 that there is no inconsistency. As matter of fact, I am 
 Not a Jesuit. But the outstanding public man spoke in a 
 
28 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 fashion which was both uncharitable and silly. What 
 he said (not, I am sure, quite believing it) vexed me not at 
 all. And when next we met, I took him by the hand quite 
 cordially. I sometimes take people by the hand (in chilly 
 fashion) whom I cordially dislike. 
 
 Let it be recorded that on that sacred ground. Christian 
 worship has been offered, in most diverse ways indeed, for 
 more than twelve hundred years : a longer time without 
 a break than on any other ground in Scotland. One fact 
 shall be related in the very words spoken on that day : 
 
 ' There is a touching continuity with centuries gone, 
 even about the material fabric of the great and stately 
 church which has been dedicated this day to Almighty 
 God, and to His worship through His Son and by His 
 Spirit. Every stone that was in the vast building now 
 removed has been built into these walls : even as, when 
 that church arose a hundred and twenty years since, every 
 stone of the old church of the middle ages was incor- 
 porated in the fabric that was rising. I know that there 
 are strong souls which would smile at this as a sentimental 
 fancy. To many, the fact is beyond words touching. And 
 the tie is real to generations which are gone. \Vc have 
 " spared these stones." ' 
 
 A bit of a sermon may be quoted, for once. And I 
 request each reader of this page to repeat, to himself, the 
 unforgctablc verse from which those last three words are 
 taken. Very slightly adapted, of necessity. 
 
 All concerned in St. Cuthbert's parish were thankful, 
 that beautiful evening. A great party gathered in Mac- 
 
HOW ST. ANDREWS GOES ON 29 
 
 Gregor's kindly house ; and one heard things never heard 
 before : the heart-breaking difficulties through which the 
 work had been carried triumphantly. Brave and determined 
 Scotsmen had done their part, both bravely and patiently. 
 Just a few. The writer has no more valued friends than 
 those with whom he had the high privilege to be associated 
 in that solemn function. And not without deep feeling 
 and true thankfulness did he, grown old in his vocation, 
 take in that so the duty had been done which he was 
 asked to do, five years and a half before. ' It had pleased 
 God.' And not till the duty was done wms a word said to 
 any of the feeling with which that long engagement had 
 been thought of A needless fear : like very many more. 
 But the likelihood had been. 
 
 Next morning, away back to Ross-shire, far away. To 
 an untravelled soul, a great journey. From MacGregor's 
 door to that of the temporary home at Strathpeffer, twelve 
 hours exactly. North of the Grampians, drenching rain : 
 tropical. The ways of the Highland Railway are leisurely. 
 However late the train may be, abundant time appears to 
 be taken for friendly talk between the authorities of each 
 little station, and those in charge of the rolling stock. It 
 is pleasing, when you are not in haste, to find that the 
 railway serves the end of maintaining brotherly relations 
 between human beings. And the little station, where not 
 a soul got up or down, must be lonely to abide in. But I 
 tried to make it a resting day, and I read over my sermon 
 in print with at least as much interest as any one else 
 ever did. 
 
30 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 That discourse was received with extraordinary favour. 
 Its aim had indeed been to conciliate. It did not how- 
 ever please everybody. For in a few days an anonymous 
 soul sent me a ' religious ' newspaper, in which I beheld 
 myself described as * one of the arch-ritualists of Scot- 
 land.' It was sad to see the bitterness of spirit which 
 the writer of the little document showed. But I am always 
 willing to learn : and while not regarding general abuse, 
 I was struck by a statement of fact. It was said that my 
 sermon was ' without Christ.' Had the case been so, I 
 should indeed have been penitent. But glancing through 
 the composition, I found the Blessed Saviour expressly 
 referred to fifteen times. And I really think that the entire 
 sermon was saturated with one great remembrance. I will 
 confess, at once, that one accusation, three times made 
 with incredible acerbity, is absolutely true. It is, that 
 I am an ' old man.' So I am. It does not vex me in the 
 very least degree to acknowledge the fact. And I re- 
 member it every day of my life. 
 
 Since its consecration, the great St. Cuthbert's has never 
 been opened for worship without being densely crowded. 
 It is magnificently serving the purpose for which it was 
 built. And its uplifted ritual is warmly approved by all 
 whose approval is worth having. It is not merely that 
 propriety and dignity characterise all the wa\s of the 
 stately church. But the warmth of spiritual heart and life 
 is there. 
 
 I was greatly touched when a youth, belonging to 
 St. Cuthbert's congregation, brought me, as a memorial of 
 
HOW ST. ANDREWS GOES ON 31 
 
 that opening day, a beautiful bit of carving in oak, of his 
 own handiwork. It is the head, in profile, of Cardinal 
 Newman : a perfect likeness. The youth would not tell 
 me his name. But his work is placed where I see it 
 continually. 
 
 A good many incidents have occurred throughout this 
 month of August, now drawing to its close, which give one 
 heart to go on, though sometimes wearily. The history of 
 the time says, * These things should cheer more than they 
 do. But they only make one feel that God can take a very 
 poor weak soul, and make it somewhat helpful to people 
 far better than itself.' Which was written in very sincere 
 humility. 
 
 Quite the outstanding fact must have its record here. 
 It brings the record very near to the present hour. For 
 this is Monday, August 27, 1894. And the letter is dated 
 August 21. I do not give the whole of it. It is from the 
 Bishop of Winchester : who had made a raid into Scotland 
 to his old friend Sir Emilius Laurie : once Bayley, Rector 
 of St. George's, Bloomsbury, and designated by Lord 
 Palmerston to be Bishop of Worcester. The letter was 
 written at Maxwelton : whose braes are generally known to 
 be ' bonny.' 
 
 ' Where do you think I went yesterday ? Over the 
 Rootin' Bridge to Irongray ! Yes, it was quite a pilgrimage : 
 and I took it all into my eye and heart, not without emotion. 
 The minister, who has been there ever since you left, was 
 very kind to Laurie and myself. The drawing-room is a 
 pretty little room. The study took me most. But a window 
 
32 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 looking into the garden has been added since you left. I 
 saw the grand beech-trees — one wofully maimed last 
 winter : the one which has your initials on it. The stable, 
 where was the horse on whose patient head you wrote 
 once, is pulled down. Then to the church : which is 
 like most Scotch churches : airtight, watertight, just 
 tolerable and no more. The vestry I regarded with 
 peculiar interest. How small the Holy Table looked ! 
 The pretty churchyard is made hideous by deformed 
 and incongruous monuments. Of course I saw Jeanie 
 Walker's grave,' and thought Sir Walter Scott's epi- 
 taph a little stilted. The view up the valley is serene and 
 lovely. 
 
 * But the atmosphere of that place glowed and sparkled 
 with you. I am not prepared to say that it quite came up 
 to my expectations. The glamour of your style puts it 
 a little out of perspective. All is so small. The garden 
 so tiny. I think of the cat which might be swung in the 
 domain. But I daresay it looked big to you then : and it 
 was big enough for you to delight orbis tcrranim from, and 
 to let me and others find you out.' 
 
 I am a little ashamed to give the picturesque and over- 
 kind words of the kindest and most sympathetic friend I 
 have found in this world ; or ever can find. The very best 
 of men tends to think others as good as himself. Near 
 thirty-six years have gone since I left that sweet place, 
 which a predecessor there called The Land of GosJicn. 
 ICven Carlyle, not easily pleased : ' I know Irongray well : 
 
 ' Jeanie Deans : lie' en Walker. 
 
HOW ST. ANDREWS GOES ON 33 
 
 a beautiful place.' * And it was all I had, or for a while ex- 
 pected ever to have. Wherefore one made much of it : made 
 believe some little. The garden, after all, is three quarters 
 of an acre, surely. The glebe is a respectable estate of 
 twelve acres. And such a place, as Mr. Dorrit remarked 
 of the Marshalsea, though it seem small at first, grows 
 larger when you know it very well. Very seldom have 
 I seen the place since I came away ; and never have I 
 preached in the little kirk at all. 
 
 ' Boyd was once minister of Irongray, who is now in St. 
 Andrews : Boyd, that writes : ' such were the further words 
 of the great Thomas Carlyle, addressing the humble author 
 of this page. I have related the facts : in so far as I well 
 could, elsewhere. And how gentle, and kind, the austere 
 sage could be ! Fatherly is the word to express what I 
 found him. I fancy no mortal could express more keen 
 dislike, and contempt, in words. Some of the smartest 
 were spoken, never written. Few abide more in one's 
 memory than his allusion to one of the mighty of this world, 
 who, instead of letting the dust return to the earth as it 
 was, had fought against that law, and caused that he should 
 be embalmed, at great cost. What, said the philosopher, 
 in scorn : What, that abominable old Kipper I 
 
 A kippered salmon is one which by skilful use of salt 
 and pepper, and divers spices, is preserved for future use. 
 The imagery was singularly unpleasant. 
 
 Two facts more, in our real and simple life. 
 
 The lamp-posts of the city have just been painted 
 
 ' Twenty-Jive Years of Si. Andrews: Vol. II. p. 119. 
 
 D 
 
34 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 Venetian red : the upper part white. The effect is bright 
 and cheerful. They were du.st-coloured before. Now you 
 remark them : which before you did not. They are a 
 sensible pleasure to some quiet souls. 
 
 Further, this day, a man of striking aspect, a stranger 
 in the place, accosted the writer, hat in hand : and said, 
 ' Are you A. K. H. B. ? ' * Such indeed arc my initials,' was 
 the reply. Then the stranger uttered words of cheering 
 tone : adding, ' How am I to come to know you better .-' ' 
 Well, if you attend church regularly, you will hear most 
 of what I have got to say.' The grave answer was, ' Forty 
 years ago I heard all that can be said : and you can add 
 nothing to it.' His name, he added, was ' of no conse- 
 quence.' So we, together for that minute, parted for ever 
 more. 
 
 It may here be said, that it is extremely uncertain how 
 preaching may actually impress people. That unknown 
 friend, had he come to church just for once, might not have 
 liked me at all. Indeed, a sermon may give great offence, 
 where no offence is intended. A youth, preaching in a 
 parish church which was once my own, took for his subject 
 the famous Swine that perished in the lake. He likened 
 the possessors of those animals to men who cherish and 
 practise sins, knowing them to be such. Then, address- 
 ing the congregation, he said, ' I fear, much, that I am 
 addressing "keepers of swine.'" The good old clergyman 
 who told me the story, forty years since, went on, solemnly, 
 ' You know, everybody there keeps his pig : and they took 
 it personal (s/c), and thought of ducking him in the river.' 
 
HOW ST. ANDREWS G0!E» ON 35 
 
 If the youth had possessed much discretroiTTlie would 
 have avoided the sentence which wounded susceptible 
 natures. But his lack of judgment has recalled another 
 case. 
 
 Two friends of mine, eminent ministers of the Kirk, 
 were walking along Princes Street in Edinburgh, when 
 they met another : a saintly man. He began at once to 
 speak of the great work then going on in the beautiful city 
 through the agency of certain zealous but quite illiterate 
 evangelists. ' All humbug,' said one of my friends : to the 
 horror of the saintly soul. The other spake no word. 
 But by intently gazing with his eyes, and by lively gestures 
 with his hands, he conveyed the impression of a warm 
 sympathy with the tale which was being told. The brief 
 talk past, the speakers and the actor parted. Whenever 
 it was certain the saintly man was beyond hearing, my 
 friend, hitherto silent, opened his lips and spake. The 
 words were but two : ' Silly buddy ! ' 
 
 It was not entirely fair. That graceful pantomime 
 distinctly tended to mislead. 
 
 B 2 
 
36 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 TWO DEPARTURES FROM ST. ANDREWS 
 
 Never but once in my life have I made a bet. It was 
 with Bishop Wordsworth. The dear and saintly man 
 records, in his autobiography, that when he went to 
 Oxford he made a resolution, and kept it, never to have 
 a pack of cards in his rooms. And betting, he adds, was 
 practically unknown. Yet, when an aged Bishop, vene- 
 rated of all, he insisted upon this transaction with a 
 minister of the Kirk, just twenty years his junior. The 
 bet was upon an event in the ecclesiastical world of 
 England : concerning which, mainly through the informa- 
 tion supplied by the beloved Hugh Pearson, I sometimes 
 evinced a degree of accurate knowledge which startled the 
 Bishop. The admirable Prelate lost. The amount which 
 I won was not great : but, being somewhat increased, it 
 bought a very pleasing photograph of that good man in 
 his robes, and put it in a pretty oak frame. For many 
 years, it has stood on the mantelpiece in my study : and 
 it will do so as long as I can keep it there. Beneath the 
 picture is written, in the beautiful handwriting which 
 abode to the very end, Charles Wordsworth, Bishop of 
 St. Andrczvs. He always wrote the Saint in that wa)'. 
 
TWO DEPARTURES FROM ST. ANDREWS 37 
 
 That title was one of the very few points on which the 
 Bishop and I did not entirely agree. And his position 
 was singular, on this question. He said that as we in the 
 National Church had no Bishops, it was for our advantage 
 that the Bishops of the eminently-respectable Episcopal 
 Communion should assume territorial titles : thus prevent- 
 ing their being appropriated by Rome. But Rome cared 
 not at all for any such thing. In a little, the Pope an- 
 nounced that he had restored the Hierarchy, as before the 
 Scottish Reformation : and appointed an Archbishop of 
 St. Andrews. To my surprise, Bishop Wordsworth came 
 to me and proposed that we should get up an indignation 
 meeting, and protest against this insolent usurpation. ' It's 
 an illegal title,' said the Bishop, with great animation. I 
 see the beautiful and refined face flushed with unwonted 
 wrath. ' So it is,' was my reply. ' And so is another too, 
 connected with St. Andrews. Try to get presented at 
 Court under either, and you will find out.' Then I ven- 
 tured to add, that in these days it was undesirable to raise 
 such questions. Let the Pope arrange his own Church as 
 he thought desirable : no Protestant cared a straw, no 
 Protestant was a penny the worse. There was no need to 
 inform the Bishop that the Pope did not recognise any of 
 us as within the Fold of Christ. To him, the orders of 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury are even as those of that 
 Ayrshire country minister concerning whom a Scottish 
 Bishop, the son of a minister of an extremely small dis- 
 senting sect, said to a popular Earl, 'Your lordship might 
 just as well receive the Holy Communion from your 
 
38 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 butler, as from j-our parish minister.' In the presence of 
 the ancient Church from which we all originated, all 
 clerical persons not in communion with Rome stand on 
 exactly the same level, with no credentials at all. 
 
 One would think that this needed not to be said : to 
 any educated person. But quite lately, a devout woman, 
 a member of the Episcopal Communion in Scotland, said 
 to me that her co-religionists had the advantage over 
 us in the National Kirk. ' The Roman Catholic Church 
 recognises our orders : it does not recognise yours.' I 
 hastened to correct the singular misapprehension. But it 
 was excusable in her. For Lord Lyndhurst, being Lord 
 Chancellor, contradicting old Lord Eldon, made exactl}' the 
 same statement as to Rome's recognition of the Anglican 
 Church. And the Chancellor's adoring biographer, Sir 
 Theodore Martin, seemed to share the belief Lord Lynd- 
 hurst was not a theologian : though he was Second 
 Wrangler, and a marvel of acute ability. But that the 
 Lord Rector, for three years, of the University of St. 
 Andrews, should know no better, was sad indeed. The 
 Decrees and Canons of Trent form a volume which is by 
 no means recondite, I doubt not the University librar)- 
 has various copies of it. And whoever studies it may 
 know what is the authoritative teaching of the Church of 
 Rome just as well as the Pope knows it. 
 
 It was a touching thing to mc that when the l^ishop 
 called at this house, he alwaj-s left a card on which he had 
 written Bishop Wordszvorth : thus recognising the legal 
 situation. The card he left elsewhere was cn":raved ; 
 
TWO DEPARTURES FROM ST. ANDREWS 39 
 
 Bishop of St. Andrezvs, Dtmkeld, and Dunblane. For a 
 good many years, in writing to him, I gave his legal desig- 
 nation. But even a Roman Bishop addresses me as the 
 Reverend Doctor : though in his belief I am not such. And 
 Cardinal Manning, till he warmed up to my dearest 
 CJiarles, wrote my dear Bishop to one whom he could not 
 regard as a Bishop at all. Thinking, too, of the venerable 
 and saintly man himself, deserving any possible honour : 
 thinking of his invariable kindness and sympathy : in the 
 latter days, whenever he was in England, I addressed my 
 letters to the Bishop of St. Andrezvs. Indeed, in Scot- 
 land, life would not be tolerable if we always put in 
 words what is our actual opinion. Very few, indeed, of 
 any Church, have been to me what that revered and be- 
 loved man was : and in this house he was always treated 
 exactly as if a Bishop of the Church of England. But, 
 as the Pope said to the Bishop of Gibraltar that he under- 
 stood he was in that diocese, so Bishop Wordsworth fre- 
 quently stated that he knew he was a Dissenter in Scot- 
 land. Once, coming home with him from a meeting for a 
 benevolent purpose, I expressed my regret that not one of 
 our good dissenting ministers had been present. 'No,' 
 replied the Bishop, sorrowfully : ' I was the only dissent- 
 ing fellow there.' Even such were his words. He was 
 well aware that the representatives of the National Church 
 in this city held him in at least as reverent affection as 
 any mortal in his own Communion. 
 
 That dignified portrait, in the historic sleeves (very 
 recently known in Scotland), is not the only memorial 
 
40 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 in this room of the dear Father in God departed. Close 
 to my left hand is another : much prized, and very pathetic 
 to see. It is the copy of the Christian Year which lay 
 upon his table, and was looked at daily for sixty-three 
 years. The Bishop left among other directions : ' Gift 
 Book to be presented after my death in vienioriani : To 
 Doctor Boyd : Christian Year, 1S28.' On the fly leaf is 
 written: ' C. Wordsworth: From my dear Father : 1829.' 
 The Bishop died on Monday, December 5, 1892. The 
 book came to me on December 13. And it lies on my 
 table just where it lay on his, so long. It is covered with an- 
 notations, of extraordinary interest : all in the clear beautiful 
 handwriting. ' First came out June (July) 23, 1827, when 
 the author was in his thirty-fifth year.' Then, ' The first 
 Edition 500 copies. The second, November 1827, 750 
 copies. The third, March 1828, 1250 copies. Total 
 number of Editions, 140. Of copies 305,500, between 
 1827 and April 1873. 95 Editions in the author's life- 
 time.' The volume I possess is of the Fourth Edition. 
 On another page, ' It is worthy of remark, that Hebcr's 
 Hymns (1828), and James Montgomery's (1826-27), were 
 published at the same time as this volume.' A quotation 
 from Dean Stanley : Keble, ' who, if by his Prose, he 
 represents an Ecclesiastical party, by his Poetry belongs to 
 the whole of English Christendom.' On another page, 
 ' After the Second Edition, a further addition was made 
 concerning the so-called State services, the Form of Prayer 
 to be used at Sea, and on Ordination : Six in all. There 
 was also added an Index of first lines.' 
 
TWO DEPARTURES FROM ST. ANDREWS 41 
 
 The remarks which are appended to nearly every poem 
 show a keen critical faculty : and certainly the severe 
 taste of the scholar who wrote Latin verse as did hardly 
 one of his generation is continually apparent. Not all that 
 is said is praise : though praise is often expressed very 
 warmly. Vix satis bene occurs more than once. Of the 
 famous poem for Advent Sunday : ' A noble composition : 
 combining the sublimity of a chorus of ^schylus with the 
 grace and rotundity of the most perfect of Horace's Odes.' 
 But just the Sunday after : ' Ends rather abruptly ; and 
 the last two stanzas do not fit in well with what goes 
 before, nor indeed with the services of this Sunday. They 
 belong rather to the 3rd of Advent : which again has no 
 treatment that is sufficiently appropriate.' Christmas Day : 
 ' Scarcely equal to the occasion.' St. Stephen's Day : 
 ' Scarcely successful' St. John's Day : ' Disappointing as 
 a tribute to St. John : though with touches of much 
 beauty.' Circumcision : ' Eather stiff and prosaic' Second 
 Sunday after Epiphany : ' An exquisite poem : as Arch- 
 bishop Trench, my old class-fellow at Harrow, has justly 
 called it.' Yes : old class-fellow. In a pugilistic encounter, 
 the future Bishop knocked out certain of the future Arch- 
 bishop's teeth. Let me add only St. Andrew's Day : 
 ' Tender and elegant : but rather deficient in power and 
 concentration.' 
 
 Bishop Wordsworth turned into exquisite Latin verse 
 certain portions of Keble's classical work : Quce ad clerum 
 pertinent : necnon carvien niatutinian et vespertiiium. The 
 dainty volume, bound in white and red, contains also 
 
42 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 Bishop Ken's Morning, Evening, and Midnight Hymns. 
 The Preface is dated Sand. Andreapoli : hi Fest. S. Andrece, 
 MDCCCLXXX. It had been well, if the Bishop had 
 written the inscription for the spot where Archbishop 
 Sharp died. And, on the fly-leaf, in the familiar cali- 
 graphy, Viro Reverendo Andr. K. H. Boyd, S. T. P. 
 hoc quantulumcunque bon(B voluntatis pig7ius Intei-pres 
 dedit in fest. Nat. Doni. 1880. One does not presume to 
 criticise one of the chiefest scholars of his day. Only it 
 may be confessed that to some it appeared as though 
 the dancing Horatian verse hardly beseemed the solemn 
 subjects treated. But I fancy Bishop Wordsworth would 
 not have condescended to imitate the rhymed Latin 
 verses of mediaeval days. He was extremely particular in 
 such things. When a Scotch Bishop of Irish Presbyterian 
 up-bringing began to sign his name in a new fashion, all 
 his own, some here remember how Bishop Wordsworth 
 said, ' I don't mind about his presumption : you must 
 settle about that : but the signature is dog-Latin.' 
 
 The birthday was August 22. I never forgot it while 
 he lived : saw him if here, wrote to him if elsewhere. The 
 last he saw here was Monday, August 22, 1892. He was 
 eighty-six. His look, and his little ways, come back 
 vividly : the beautiful refined face : the stately presence. 
 He was six feet four inches in his prime. There is not a 
 man on the English Bench who looks ever}' inch the Prince 
 of the Church more fully than did Bishop Wordsworth. 
 I see him walk into this room with a hearty salutation : 
 bent a good deal towards the end, and with the great hat 
 
TWO DEPARTURES FROM ST. ANDREWS 43 
 
 on his head till he sat him down. I see him playing 
 tennis with Dr. MacGregor : flying about like a boy, though 
 close on fourscore : and hopelessly smashing the presbyter. 
 I see him examining the pulpit of the parish church the 
 day before he preached from it : complaining of the narrow 
 door, but saying ' I wall steer in.' Fear had been expressed 
 as to tearing the lawn. One present, a Wordsworthian, 
 said ' Down to the vale this water steers.' He always 
 met with an approving smile any quotation of his uncle's 
 words. I see him sitting at the dinner-table, suave and 
 cheerful : always the velvet cap in the latter years. I see 
 him lying on the sofa in his library towards the end : often 
 in great pain : but seeming to forget it as he roused him- 
 self to lively talk : sometimes, with fatherly affection, holding 
 one's hand for a while. I hear him say, of one he had met 
 here : ' I was interested in your friend : a respectable dull 
 man.' I see one who was in a few days to be Moderator 
 of the Kirk (it was not myself), going down on his knees 
 and asking the Bishop's blessing. A tried man, yet hope- 
 ful and cheerful : his faith in God was very real and 
 strong. Vividly I recall his miscalculation of the profits 
 yielded by the humble writer's many volumes : he had 
 thought thousands where hundreds were all : and very good 
 too. He did not wholly like Liddon : though he acknow- 
 ledged the great preacher's power. His usual remark was 
 that he wondered such solid preaching was so popular. 
 One of our most distinguished Professors, on the other 
 hand, thought Liddon extremely tiresome : declaring of 
 a sermon on Eternity which he heard at Oxford, that he 
 
44 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 believed Liddon wanted to give people an idea how 
 long eternity would be. Then the saintly Liddon did 
 not like the Bishop ; any more than he liked Arch- 
 bishop Tait. I never forget how Liddon implied the lowest 
 point to which humanity can sink. ' I don't regard the 
 Archbishop as a clergyman at all, but just as a Scotch 
 lawyer.' On a recent occasion, I deemed it fit to convey 
 this humbling fact to a specially brilliant and renowned 
 Chief- Justice. But thegrcat Judge, far from being humbled 
 in the earth, smiled benignantly ; and spoke of the un- 
 reasonable prejudices of the best of men. More than once, 
 Liddon said, with apparent seriousness, that it was doubtful 
 whether Wordsworth was a Bishop at all. The reason was, 
 that (under very pressing circumstances, of which the Bishop 
 often spoke to me quite frankly) he was elected to the 
 office by his own vote. It was suggested that even sup- 
 posing this to be uncanonical, surely consecration, conveyed 
 with assured validity, made everything right. But Liddon 
 shook a doubtful head. No human being, who knew Bishop 
 Wordsworth even a little, could for one moment have re- 
 garded him as a self-seeker. But for an adherence to principle 
 which to many appeared Quixotic, he might have been 
 anywhere. Vividly it comes to me how one day when I 
 was sitting with the inestimable Dean Church of St. Paul's 
 (who put away from himself the very highest place, for 
 which none but himself could have called him unfit}, the 
 Dean said, 'When I was a young man, if you had asked 
 any well-informed person who was the coming man of the 
 Church of England, the answer would have been Charles 
 
TWO DEPARTURES FROM ST. ANDREWS 45 
 
 Wordsworth.' Nephew of the Poet : Son of the Master of 
 Trinity who would have been a Bishop too but for testify- 
 ing against wrong-doing in a Prime Minister (there were 
 no half-penny papers then, or that Prime Minister would 
 have been kicked out with speed) : Brother of the great 
 Senior Classic who was Bishop of Lincoln : Uncle of the 
 Bishop of Sarum who could be half-a-dozen Professors : 
 Tutor and friend of the Double First who was to be 
 Prime Minister as often and as long as he pleased : it 
 was not a poor Scotch Bishopric with the legal status of a 
 Nonconformist that was the place for him ! But he 
 * played his cards very badly ' : how often one has heard 
 the words said ! But then Charles Wordsworth was abso- 
 lutely incapable of that which is called playing one's cards 
 at all. He had no arts at all. He knew nothing but to 
 do right : what he was perfectly sure was right. What 
 was to come of it was the concern of the Great Disposer. 
 You might think Bishop Wordsworth impracticable if you 
 would : you could not but reverence him. If there was 
 an honest man on God's earth, there he stood. Pope did 
 not write ' An honest man's the noblest work of God.' 
 But he might have done it. 
 
 It should have been said, recording the Bishop's criti- 
 cisms of the Christian Year, that at the end of the much- 
 worn volume there is given a short list of Insufferable 
 Rhymes : seven in all. The list indicates a severe taste. 
 One cannot defend God and azved : nor unheard and 
 spared. Homes and Tombs may be regarded as a per- 
 missible half-rhyme : like good and blood in one of Tenny- 
 
46 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 son's most famous verses. But lines and signs, and even 
 priest and ceased, seem to me (a phrase frequent on the 
 saintly man's lips) to ' leave nothing to be desired.' No 
 rhyme of Keble's is anything nearly so insufferable as the 
 Cockney daw7t and morn which stood at first in the May- 
 Queen, and which is somewhat awkwardly evaded still. 
 Here it may be recorded that Wordsworth welcomed the 
 first appearing of the great poet. Writing to his brother 
 Christopher on September 4, 1829, he says : 
 
 * What do you think of Tennyson's Prize Poem (Tim- 
 buctoo) ? If such an exercise had been sent up at Oxford 
 the author would have had a better chance of being rusti- 
 cated — with the view of his passing a few months in a 
 Lunatic Asylum — than of obtaining the prize. It is cer- 
 tainly a wonderful production ; and, if it had come out 
 with Lord Byron's name, it would have been thought as 
 fine as anything he ever wrote.' 
 
 The pronunciation of the Name of the Almighty is a 
 great difficulty to many in this country. I have heard the 
 word said, many times, in a manner which was indeed 
 * insufferable.' One occasion comes back. I was present 
 at a school-examination, where a little boy was reading a 
 Bible lesson. In a high sing-song he read ' And the 
 Loard Goad ' said or did something. But an examiner 
 broke in, ' My little man, you must never say Loard Goad. 
 Always say Lurrd Gudd.' 
 
 It would not have been well to intervene upon the spot. 
 But it appeared to me as quite certain that if you must 
 choose between the two renderings, the small boy's was 
 
TWO DEPARTURES FROM ST. ANDREWS 47 
 
 the preferable. There was reverence. But the other, 
 snapped out with extreme rapidity, in the manner 
 which musicians call staccato, was abhorrent in a high 
 degree. 
 
 I have written much of Bishop Wordsworth elsewhere,' 
 and am not to repeat what has already been said. I can 
 remember nothing but good of him : and I held him in 
 such reverence and affection that I was not likely to say 
 anything but good of him. I record, gladly, that he was 
 quite pleased with everything that was said of himself It 
 may be recorded here, as a singular fact, that his dis- 
 approval of the Church of Rome was intense : quite 
 transcending the sympathy of ordinary members of the 
 Reformed Church here. Everybody knows that it is so 
 likewise with his brother, the great Bishop of Lincoln. 
 This appeared very strange. No vulgar anti-popery lec- 
 turer could be keener against the Ancient Church : which 
 good old Dr. Muir of Edinburgh often called, speaking to 
 me, ' That mystery of Iniquity ! ' Of course. Bishop 
 Wordsworth's nature was so sweet, and he was so really a 
 holy man, that he could not have said anything malignant 
 or unfair. Anything vulgar could not have come from 
 his lips : never was more high-bred gentleman. Yet one 
 recalls instances of the unbending line he took. He would 
 not meet a Roman priest. Several such are among the 
 most welcome who ever enter this house. And in all plea- 
 sant parochial gatherings of a social character, no man 
 meets a heartier reception than the cultured and genial 
 
 ' Twenty-five Years of St. Andrews : passim. 
 
48 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 Oxonian who ministers to those in this city who hold the 
 ancient way. Our Lord Rector, the Marquis of Bute, is a 
 Roman CathoHc. The Captain of the Royal and Ancient 
 Club is the same. No mortal objected. Several years 
 ago, I met, not for the first or second time, the stately 
 Prince of the Church who bears the (illegal) title of Arch- 
 bishop of Glasgow. It was under the hospitable roof of 
 Dr. Burns, who de facto possesses the ancient and beautiful 
 Cathedral of St. Kentigern, that I met the Prelate who 
 doubtless holds that the Cathedral is his de jure. Never 
 did men, set in visible contrariety, get on so pleasantly. 
 The grand old Archbishop, a truly-magnificent presence, 
 told me he had never seen St. Andrews : and asked me 
 if I would put him up if he paid it a visit. More than 
 delighted : it need not be said. It was found the Prelate 
 could only come in the morning and go in the evening. 
 Straightway on returning home, I went to the Bishop : 
 said what interesting guest was coming : and asked him 
 to come and lunch with him. Tulloch, it need not be said, 
 was charmed to come. But the dear Bishop was unbend- 
 ing. ' I won't meet him,' was the downright reply. I 
 expostulated : pointed out that Archbishop Eyre was one 
 of the best of men, held in high honour all over Protestant 
 Glasgow. It was vain. It would be an extraordinary 
 experience for me, I urged, unworthily representing the 
 National Church by law Established, to walk along South 
 Street to the Cathedral with the Roman Catholic Arch- 
 bishop of Glasgow on one hand, and the Scotch l'"piscopal 
 Bishop of St. Andrews on the other. ' I know \'ou would 
 
TWO DEPARTURES FROM ST. ANDREWS 49 
 
 like it,' was the severe reply. ' But I won't do it.' As 
 things turned out, the Archbishop could not come. His 
 visit remains a thing in the future. But I saw how un- 
 bending Bishop Wordsworth could be, when he thought 
 principle involved. Mr. Gladstone had found that out, 
 many a year before. 
 
 The Bishop was impatient even of light speech on 
 such matters. I once related to him how an extremely 
 illiterate anti-popery lecturer called upon me, to speak of 
 getting up lectures here. My reply was that I had read, 
 in the papers, reports of various lectures against Rome 
 which had been given over the country by the little 
 Organisation which he represented : that I feared the lec- 
 turers were indeed Jesuits, highly-paid by the Pope to go 
 about making Protestantism ridiculous : and that I could 
 not possibly countenance them. On this the lecturer 
 departed. But the Bishop thought that jocular treatment 
 of the subject was inadmissible : and that all attacks on 
 Rome ought to be encouraged. I am obliged to confess 
 that I know of no attacks on Rome which are less likely 
 to affect m}^self, and many more, than those which the 
 admirable Brother of Lincoln has managed to introduce 
 into his Commentaries on Holy Scripture. But the one 
 thing lacking in the fine Wordsworth nature, from the 
 great poet onward, was the sense of humour. Yet it was 
 not wholly lacking either. Looking back, I cannot re- 
 member a solitary characteristic of the Bishop which I 
 could wish other than it was. I remember no fault in him 
 at all. And in his Autobiography, he quotes, wM'th entire 
 
 E 
 
'50 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 good nature and enjoyment, the profane parody of a verse 
 which is classic : if classic verse there be : 
 
 There lived, beside the untrodden ways 
 
 To Rydal mere which lead, 
 A bard whom there were none to praise, 
 
 And very few to read. 
 
 That first volume, Annals of My Early Life, 1806- 
 1846, came straight from the Publishers, with only an 
 engraved inscription. But a letter speedily followed : the 
 Bishop was at Rydal at the time, as he was twice in the 
 very latest years. ' You got my first volume, sent from 
 the aiithor. Please to add in yours, WitJi kindest regards! 
 I cut out the words : and they form part of the book now. 
 The volume, of 420 pages, was written by the Bishop in 
 just two months. No doubt there is a good deal copied 
 in it : prize compositions and the like. But it was wonder- 
 ful work for the man of nearly eighty-four. And it 
 cheered the present writer to attempt work long shrunk 
 from. In October 1889, I had bought Personal and 
 Family Glimpses of Remarkable People, by the son of the 
 great Archbishop Whately of Dublin : and on Halloween 
 the record stands, ' It suggested a volume. Twenty-five 
 Years of St. Andrews, 1 865-1 890.' An encouraging reply 
 came from Mr. C. J. Longman. But an overdriven man 
 had not courage to begin a task which would never be 
 finished. On Tuesday, October 21, 1890, the history of 
 the time says, 'Out 1.40, and visiting hard all afternoon, 
 ending with Bp. lie has written \'ol. I. of his Auto- 
 biography in two months. Cheer for me. I may manage 
 
TWO DEPARTURES FROM ST. ANDREWS 51 
 
 my Twenty-five Years yet.' In fact, the first volume was 
 not begun till September 3, 1891. And by hard work it 
 was finished on November 3 : Bishop Wordsworth's time 
 exactly. I had to write in hours snatched from continual 
 duty. And but for the kindest encouragement coming 
 from the dear friend at Farnham, to whom the book was 
 dedicated, it could never have been written at all. I never 
 had dedicated a book before. And this was my twenty- 
 eighth volume. It seemed fit now. And it enabled a 
 reviewer in a Scotch dissenting publication to suggest that 
 I desired to advertise the fact that I had a friend who was 
 a Bishop. The idea had not indeed entered my mind. 
 But I felt that such a dedication was liable to that objec- 
 tion. My second volume was begun on March 8, 1892, 
 and finished on May 25. The last pages were written in 
 the University Club at Edinburgh, after returning from 
 the little Conclave which nominated Dr. Marshall Lang for 
 Moderator. Awful blasts of drenching rain battered the 
 window of my little room ; and it was pitchy dark. Such 
 a book is written as with one's hands tied. At every step 
 one is tempted to say a little more than ought to be said. 
 If one wrote recklessly, widely read indeed would such a 
 book be. You can say only a quarter of what }-ou know. 
 Yet now, looking back coolly, I see sentences which I 
 should leave out. It would be stupid affectation not to 
 say that the volumes met a quite-wonderful fa\-our ; both 
 from the critics, and from very many unknown friends. 
 One anonymous correspondent did indeed condemn mc 
 with much asperity. But the closing lines of his letter 
 
52 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 shook my faith in his judgment. 'Another overrated 
 author, misnamed a poet, has just passed away, and we 
 hope that his works will follow him to oblivion. We refer 
 to the late laureate, Tennyson.' 
 
 It was a pathetic incident that such a man as Bishop 
 Wordsworth, having passed fourscore, had to leave the 
 beautiful Bishopshall, with its pleasant garden. Quite 
 frankly, he said he could not afford to keep that large and 
 handsome dwelling, which had been built for a College 
 Hall. Invent portum, he had written concerning it, making 
 sure that there he was to live and die. And he told me, 
 with pride, that there is not an English cathedral city 
 where the palace is so outstanding in the view from a 
 distance, as his house was in the finest view of St. 
 Andrews, from the road that makes southward towards 
 Anstruther. Such a man ought not to have known what 
 it is to be pinched, in these last honoured days. Yet no one 
 ever heard a murmur from him. He found a pretty house 
 on the Scores, looking on the Bay ; and called it Kilrymont. 
 The thing he regretted most was that he could no longer 
 find space for the half which had come to him of the 
 grand library of the old Master of Trinity. Here, as I 
 remember at Perth, long ago, he had his great store of 
 beautifully- written sermons in a large iron box. ' If the 
 house took fire,' he said, ' this would be thrown out of the 
 window.' And it was looking at that mass of manuscript 
 that I hear him say, as if to himself, ' Yes, there will be a 
 good deal of trouble when I die.' It may here be said 
 that he was nervous in preaching, though he did not look 
 
TWO DEPARTURES FROM ST. ANDREWS 53 
 
 it. He appeared perfectly self-possessed. The voice was 
 beautiful. The manner was perfect. Very simple and 
 earnest : but extremely dignified. 
 
 I cannot but say, that he felt when Bishop Eden died, 
 and he did not succeed as Primus of the Scottish Epis- 
 copal Church. I said to him that he had done so much, 
 that at fourscore he deserved rest. Of course, he was 
 beyond all comparison the most eminent man among the 
 Scottish Bishops. No, he said : that was not the meaning 
 of it. And he added, repeatedly, that his friendly relations 
 with the Church of Scotland displeased some. Notably, 
 the terms of close friendship with Tulloch, Milligan, and 
 myself. I cannot believe it. None of us ever pretended 
 to be Presbyterian save as accepting, conscientiousl}^ the 
 Church government which the Scottish nation, or a large 
 part of it, chose to have. We were National Churchmen : 
 and could with entire good faith have been so though the 
 National Church had been Episcopal. And we saw the 
 evils of Presbytery, because we lived under it : even as 
 Liddon, living under Episcopal government, saw the evils 
 of Episcopacy. I never forget the great preacher's solemn 
 words : ' I tell you, I dare not plead for Episcopacy on 
 grounds of expediency. I see many evils in the working 
 of the system. But I suppose God knows how His Church 
 is to be governed.' We believed that Presbytery is 'founded 
 on the Word of God, and agreeable thereto.' But we did 
 not believe that any form of Church government is so 
 exclusively right, as to make all others vitally wrong. 
 
 Many are the books which the good Bishop gave me : 
 
54 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 almost all bearing a graceful and kind inscription in Latin. 
 The most costly bears an English inscription : ' With 
 kindest regards and best wishes, from One of the 
 Revisers.' It is the magnificent edition of the Revised 
 \''ersion of the Bible in five great octavo volumes, 
 tall and broad-margined, full-bound in stately but simple 
 purple morocco. A grand book, and a gift much-prized. 
 The Bishop was one of the company which revised the 
 New Testament : but his keen ear for the music of 
 English prose made him keenly disapprove the lamentable 
 degradation of the incomparable (so-called) Authorised 
 Version. I think he withdrew, when he saw what the 
 upshot was to be. Not less severe was his taste in the 
 matter of public praj-er. Once he said to me, ' I think 
 you know Professor Knox, of Timbuctoo. I can't under- 
 stand him. He tells me he is an immense admirer of our 
 Collects. But he has just given me a volume of prayers 
 of his own composition ; and it is impossible even to 
 imagine anything less like the Collects.' The fine face 
 expressed perplexity, only. Had certain valued friends of 
 mine made the same remark, I should have regarded it as 
 a smart rap over the knuckles administered to the ritua- 
 listic nonconformist. 
 
 The Bishop fought bravely against time. Notably, he 
 preached on an important occasion in St. Giles' Cathedral 
 at Edinburgh, when it had appeared impossible. But he 
 gradually ' dwined.' He would lie on the sofa in his 
 library, and make one sit close to him that he might hear. 
 He was often in severe pain. But there never was the 
 
TWO DEPARTURES FROM ST. ANDREWS 55 
 
 slightest failure in mind : and he brightcned-up and talked 
 with astonishing liveliness. About the middle of October 
 1892, he discussed my second St. Andrews volume, just 
 published, in the brightest way : but he said he felt he would 
 not see the second volume of his Autobiography published. 
 In the latter days, I saw him but for a minute at a time : but 
 always received the solemn blessing. It was going down 
 hill now. Monday, December 5, was a day of intense 
 frost : the snow lay deep everywhere. I had to make a 
 hurried journey to Edinburgh, but was back soon after 
 four o'clock, a magnificent red sun glinting on the snow. 
 I went straight to ask for the Bishop : but the good and 
 dear man was dying. I saw two of his daughters : very 
 quiet. He passed at 8.30 in the evening. 
 
 Next day I went to make enquiries, but found a message 
 to come in. Two sons had come : and I stayed long with 
 them and a daughter. Then to the library, and saw the 
 grand old man at rest, on a little bed where I had last seen 
 him. One bit of Latin verse, long before, had been dated 
 In lectulo ante lucem. His eldest daughter was kneeling 
 beside him. Never did death look less death-like. There 
 was perfect peace on the calm unchanged face : not a trace 
 of pain. And there was no laying-out in the robes. I took 
 the hand and held it, as used to be. It was the first time 
 it did not hold mine kindly. 
 
 The funeral was on Friday, December 9. There was 
 bright sunshine, with intense frost, and the streets were 
 ice. The Episcopal church was quite full, and the service 
 was reverently conducted by three Scottish Bishops : one 
 
56 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 the Primus, and his brethren of Edinburgh and Glasgow. 
 It was bitterly cold in the Cathedral churchyard, as the 
 mortal part of Bishop Wordsworth was laid to rest. The 
 choir sang * O God, our help in ages past,' but it lacked 
 the organ, and the music sounded thin and shrill in the 
 keen air. More than once or twice I had stood with the 
 Bishop at the spot which was waiting for him. He tried 
 to got me to buy the space next his. But having a little 
 place at Edinburgh, I put off till the space had been ac- 
 quired by another. 
 
 Sunday, December ii,was the Third in Advent. It 
 was not for me to preach the ' funeral sermon.' But I had 
 said a word at my Wednesday service at St. ]\Iary's : and 
 a word had to be said at the parish church this morning. 
 The Bishop's brother-in-law, Mr. Barter, was seated close 
 to the pulpit. The service was * very Advent,' and so was 
 the sermon. The text was Rom. viii. 19 : * For the earnest 
 expectation of the Creature waiteth for the manifestation 
 of the sons of God.' And these were the last words spoken 
 from it : 
 
 ' I know not any place where that waiting look, that 
 look of earnest expectation, seems to me oftentimes so ap- 
 parent, as in that solemn churchyard where on these last 
 two days we laid to rest one who bore a name of renown, 
 one forty years a ruler in the Church of God : and yet 
 another who filled a far less conspicuous place, but who was 
 a good soldier and an earnest volunteer. The winter sun 
 blazed through the windows, as they bore the Bishop out 
 of the church where he often ministered, and shone on the 
 
TWO DEPARTURES FROM ST. ANDREWS 57 
 
 snowy ground as they lowered the mortal part of that 
 benignant patriarch to the long rest with the words of 
 immortal hope. But yesterday, when we bore to his grave 
 the brother who had seen little more than half the Bishop's 
 years, with music in our ears which comes straight to 
 Scottish hearts, it was the dreariest December weather : 
 yet the waiting look was there. Not far away, Samuel 
 Rutherford sleeps : but the spirit made perfect knows 
 better than of old that " glory dwelleth in Immanuel's 
 land." And very near, another : whose name goes even 
 more certainly with the remembrance of gray St. Andrews 
 than even the name of Wordsworth : now in God's light 
 seeing light as none can see it here. For a thousand years 
 that sacred ground has waited the coming of the living : 
 waited the resurrection of the dead. I knew the spot, he 
 had shown it to me, where the Bishop was to rest : very 
 quietly and calmly the saintly man looked on to the great 
 change. Another characteristic figure has gone from 
 these streets : a stately yet humble-minded churchman, 
 who looked every inch far more than in God's Providence 
 (which permits man's intervention) he was ever allowed in 
 outward rank to be. He lived a blameless life : he worked 
 continually towards an unselfish end. Not one controver- 
 sial word shall be said to-day. But surely his record was 
 a long expectation of what as yet has not come : what he 
 believed the fulfilment of Christ's prayer. And I think 
 all good men will acknowledge that he pressed upon us a 
 truth which in Scotland has been too little regarded : the 
 evil of needless division between people bearing the 
 
58 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 Christian name. With what pure devotion to what he 
 deemed the right he took his line through life, many know. 
 And the graceful sympathy, the fatherly benignity, of the 
 noble old man, some will never forget. When I beheld him 
 in the last sleep : saw the look of perfect peace : and took 
 the cold hand for the last time : I felt that I never have 
 known a truer or better man. And I never look to do so.' 
 Two things may be explained to the reader which 
 needed no explanation in St. Andrews. On the base of the 
 great granite cross above Principal Tulloch's grave, the text 
 is engraved, ' In Thy light we shall see light.' And it has 
 long been told that the last words of Samuel Rutherford, 
 Principal of St. Mary's College in the University, who died 
 March 20, 1661, aged no more than sixt)-, were, ' Glory 
 dwelleth in Immanuel's land.' But though the unforget- 
 able words were spoken, it appears doubtful whether they 
 were the famous Rutherford's very last. Like St. Columba, 
 he was a saint, but a saint with a temper. And there is 
 some reason to believe that the final words were in reply 
 to a citation to appear before parliament on a charge of 
 high treason, which was served upon the d}Mng man. 
 ' Tell the King that before that day I shall be where very 
 few kings or privy-councillors ever come.' The words 
 may possibly set forth a truth. But they could hardly be 
 made the refrain of a beautiful sacred poem : certain 
 selected verses of which, flavoured strongly with the 
 imagery of the Canticles, now form a most popular hymn. 
 Everybody knows Mrs. Cousin's touching poetry : which 
 came to her one evening as a sudden inspiration. 
 
TWO DEPARTURES FROM ST. ANDREWS 59 
 
 It is interesting to remember that I was once told that 
 ' The sands of time are sinking ' was written by Samuel 
 Rutherford himself: and that it was found lying on his 
 table after his sudden death. The good lady who wrote 
 the poem still survives. It was first published in an Edin- 
 burgh periodical called the The CJiristiaji Treasury, in 
 1S57. And it consisted of nineteen verses of eight lines 
 each. Even so, the very striking verses, called Aquinas' 
 Prayer for the Devil, were by man}' believed to be at least 
 a translation of words of that Saint. They were in fact 
 written by Mr. Call : as we used to say of Glasgow prize- 
 essays, his ' unaided composition.' Long ago, he wrote to 
 ask me if I knew where in the writings of Thomas Aquinas 
 anything like them could be found. 
 
 This crisp September afternoon, after reading the burial 
 service over a much-missed man of thirty-three (he heard me 
 preach last Sunday afternoon and this is but Thursday), I 
 went to Bishop Wordsworth's grave with my ever kind and 
 helpful friend and colleague. Dr. Anderson. He read to 
 me, and I wrote down, the words engraven on the stone 
 which comprise the life-work of the Bishop in Scotland. 
 
 ' Remembering the prayer of his Divine Lord and 
 Master for the Unity of His Church on earth, he prayed 
 continually and laboured earnestly that a way be found for 
 the Re-Union of the Episcopalian and Presbyterian Bodies, 
 without the sacrifice of Catholic principle or scriptural 
 truth.' 
 
 These words are truth : if truth was ever written above 
 a grave. 
 
6o MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 Principal Cunningham, bright, brave, lovable, worthy 
 occupant of the Chair of Tulloch and Samuel Rutherford, 
 departed a man ten years younger than the Bishop. It 
 was pathetic that when Tulloch died, having been Principal 
 of St. Mary's College for thirty years, the man who stepped 
 alertly into the vacant place was Tulloch's senior by several 
 years. For forty years Cunningham had been minister of 
 the beautiful parish of Crieff, in Perthshire. And singu- 
 larly, within these few days, Mr. Paterson, who succeeded 
 Cunningham at Crieff, as brilliant a student and bright a 
 man as has for long held a Scottish parish, has been elected 
 Professor of Divinity at Aberdeen in succession to the 
 brilliant student who has succeeded Cunningham here. 
 That Aberdeen Chair (a thing without parallel) is decided 
 by competitive examination. The candidates were eight : 
 and every one of them would have made an admirable 
 Professor. But Paterson, youngest of them all, stood first 
 in every subject. He is a singularly attractive personality ; 
 and a brief though near acquaintance sufficed to make one 
 feel a warm regard for him. One dares not to prophesy : 
 but I have the clearest anticipation of what, if God spare 
 him, is sure to be. But one reflects, too, with sorrow, 
 thinking of the eminent scholars who were unsuccessful, 
 how little encouragement there is in the Kirk for any hard- 
 working parish minister to keep up his scholarship. There 
 have been days in which those who appointed to certain 
 Scotch Chairs would have laughed in your face if you had 
 been weak enough to fancy that the purpose of selecting 
 the best man had ever entered their heads. Dr. Lindsay 
 
TWO DEPARTURES FROM ST. ANDREWS 6r 
 
 Alexander told me that he accompanied Morell, when a 
 candidate for a Moral Philosophy Chair, in his canvass of 
 certain small shopkeepers who were among the electors to 
 it. A little grocer listened to Morell's statement of his 
 qualifications : and then put the really-testing question, 
 * Are ee a jined member o' oany Boaddy ? ' 
 
 The appointments made by Secretaries of State and 
 Lord-Advocates have not unfrequently been quite as scan- 
 dalous. It would be extremely pleasant (and remarkably 
 easy) to point out instances. But it is conceivable that it 
 might give offence. Only it may be said that herein one 
 political party is precisely as good as another. 
 
 When a man keeps wonderfully youthful and alert to 
 an advanced age, he breaks down (sometimes) of a sudden. 
 I never took in that Principal Cunningham had grown old 
 till on Wednesday, May 24, 1893, I walked with him 
 from the University Club at Edinburgh, where we were 
 abiding, to the Conclave about which there used to be 
 a preposterous reticence. No doubt the days have been 
 when the little College needed it all, to maintain anything 
 like respectability. The dear Principal was alarmingly 
 feeble. Then he ran down fast. Early in July, when I 
 was taking the church at Strathpeffer for a month, the 
 word came that the end was near. But I came back at 
 the beginning of August, and saw him repeatedly : weak 
 in body but clear in mind. Returning from country visit- 
 ing work (I hav^e plenty here and remain a country parson) 
 on the evening of Wednesday, August 30, I found a note 
 from his daughter that her father was getting low. I went 
 
62 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 over at once and saw him. The record of the time says, 
 ' Very low. Knew me. No pain. Just Hke himself. In the 
 room where I saw Tulloch very ill, over the archway. His 
 wife with him, a gentle devoted woman : his two daughters 
 and niece. God help him through this last trial. A kind, 
 amiable, clever man.' The next morning he was weaker, 
 and did not know me. 'Busy day. At 4 again saw poor 
 Principal Cunningham. Doctor says sinking. Knew me 
 "perfectly," he said. I prayed with him. He took my 
 hand quite firmly, and said " God bless you." Looking 
 very nice, but very weak.' Yet he got through the night, 
 and passed away on the morning of Friday, September i, 
 1893. I saw them all, immediately. It was fixed he was 
 to be laid here. And in the afternoon I went with his 
 son to the Cathedral, he to settle the place for his father's 
 grave. We found a beautiful spot. And going to the 
 proper authority, we found that the good Principal had 
 chosen, himself, the very place. One felt, then, how de- 
 sirable it is that the resting-place be ready : also how vain 
 it is to carry the mortal part to a great distance. Many 
 had thought of beautiful Crieff. That day, ' His son took 
 me in to see the dear Principal, at rest. He looked 
 extremely nice. Far younger than in life. Calm and 
 peaceful.' 
 
 The funeral was on Wcdnesda>-, September 6. In a 
 startling way, it recalled that of Tulloch. Dr. Gloag of 
 Gala.shiels, Dr. Rankin of Muthill, old friends, came early 
 to this house ; and William Tulloch. The service in the 
 parish church was all as before. The coffin was placed as 
 
TWO DEPARTURES FROM ST. ANDREWS 63 
 
 then. There was a large congregation : the Magistrates 
 were there : Lord Bute, the Lord Rector, in his robes : 
 and some Professors and students. But it was the Lone 
 Vacation, and most of them were far away. I read the 
 opening sentences. Psalm 90 was touchingly chanted. 
 My colleague was absent of necessity. But Dr. Rodger of 
 St. Leonard's read Job xiv., and Dr. Gloag the parts we 
 read of i Cor. xv. Then I prayed : the record says ' ex- 
 tempore, and not very well, but heartily.' Then ' When 
 our heads ' was finely sung. Then the blessing : and the 
 procession along South Street, as before. The day was 
 overcast : but the trees were green. I met the coffin at 
 the west door of the Cathedral, and went along the Nave : 
 all the service as we have it here. There is but one burial- 
 service for the English-speaking world. Principal Caird 
 had come from Glasgow. He looked wonderfully young. 
 But the jet-black hair was white. Dr. Rankin and I 
 walked a long way out the west beach, talking (with many 
 pauses) of the life and work which were done. When he 
 went, I read the record of Tulloch's funeral. The old time 
 came over one. 
 
 For the sake of young ministers of the Kirk, I will run 
 the risk of being charged with conceit. The record of the 
 time says, ' I had thought my prayer very poor. But 
 several papers said "singularly impressive and touching." 
 One, indeed, in a paragraph plainly written by a well- 
 educated man, " Nothing could have been more appro- 
 priate and beautiful than the prayer with which (some- 
 body) led the devotions of the congregation, so manly in 
 
64 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 sentiment, so elegant in diction, and so sympathetic and 
 impressive in tone." More is added, which I really must 
 not take in. I did not mind so much about the papers, 
 because they are always so extremely kind that they say 
 one did what one ought to have done. But, curious, quite 
 a number of letters came : which brought tears. Some- 
 body, who ought to have known better, said Better {sic) 
 than the magnificent service read at the grave. All this 
 shows how something made on the instant for the instant 
 and given with real feeling gets home to people.' Let it 
 be added, that as we sometimes do fairly well when we 
 thought we had done very ill, so we sometimes may have 
 done very badly indeed when we thought we were getting 
 on at our best. 
 
 The funeral sermon was on Sunday, September lo, at 
 the parish church. I was asked to preach it : never having 
 done such a duty before. It was a touching occasion to 
 some. There was a great congregation, filling the large 
 church. Good ]\Irs. Cunningham and her children were 
 there : very quiet. She had selected the hymns : her 
 husband's favourites. The music was very hearty and 
 good. The Psalms were 90 and 91. The Tc Deiwi by 
 Dr. Dykes. The hymns were Bishop Heber's 'Jesus, hear 
 and save ' ; ' Be still, my soul ' ; ' When our heads ' ; and, 
 of course, as when Tulloch went, the h}'nin founded on 
 the words of the great predecessor two centuries before. 
 I give what was said about Principal Cunningham : be- 
 cause it really sums up what I should wish the readers of 
 this page to know of a very remarkable man, who got his 
 
TWO DEPARTURES FROM ST. ANDREWS 65 
 
 due at the last, but did not get his due for many a laborious 
 year. This is how that morning's sermon closed : 
 
 * It is in any season of loss and sorrow that the family 
 character of St. Andrews comes out. We are a family ; 
 in the main a kindly and united family ; and there are 
 little family differences now and then. But in real great 
 trouble surely there is no place where there is greater warmth 
 of heart, nor deeper feeling, than in this sacred city by the 
 Northern Sea. We can remember nothing but good of 
 the brother who is called to go before us. But, thinking of 
 him whom we laid to his rest last Wednesday, I know 
 nothing but good to be remembered. 
 
 ' He came to us late. It will not be seven years till the 
 chill November comes since, in that quaint old library 
 hall, he gave his bright opening lecture ; as epigrammatic 
 and sparkling a discourse as I ever heard from any. But 
 he put his heart into his duty, and gave it to this city ; 
 and to-day we are mourning not only a dear but an old 
 friend. Through these seven years I have seen him con- 
 tinually, and though in the main agreeing with him, there 
 were matters on which we had to agree to differ. But 
 there never was ruffle nor jar. No kinder-hearted, no 
 sweeter-natured man has been here. If a keen contro- 
 versialist in earlier days, there never was a trace of rancour 
 or bitterness. And the bright, alert, keen intellect, the 
 ready incisive speech, the clear prevision whereto the times 
 are going, made him one of the most remarkable men of 
 his day in this Church and country. 
 
 ' The name of Mr. Cunningham, of Crieff, was outstand- 
 
 F 
 
66 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 ing when I was a lad in the Church ; we all knew it well. 
 We always wondered how a preacher so immeasurably 
 above the ordinary line was not called to a more con- 
 spicuous place ; though in that beautiful region, and in the 
 beautiful church he mainly built, he was as happy as any- 
 where. None can be more useful, none can be happier, 
 than the country parson who is content to abide in 
 Arcady. But it was not a parochial charge which was 
 his niche. While still a young man, he had written his 
 Church History of Scotland, an elaborate work in two large 
 volumes, and quite the brightest and most interesting 
 Church history I ever read. Of course, he ought to have 
 been placed in a Church History Chair. No man in Scot- 
 land had shown himself a tenth part as fit. But Cunning- 
 ham was on the wrong side of politics, and time after time 
 men were promoted over his head whom it would have 
 been cruelty to compare with him. It is quite understood 
 that these appointments are political — once they used, 
 indeed, to be family — and one party is exactly as good as 
 another in this respect. Cunningham, to his great honour, 
 remained quite unsoured by ill-usage which was a scandal ; 
 and was acknowledged to be such by all who knew the 
 facts. A pusher is always contemptible ; never so con- 
 temptible as in the Church. But the pusher and self- 
 seeker sometimes makes his way. 
 
 ' Everything came at last to one who deserved it all : 
 the Croall Lecture, the Moderator's Chair, and the seat 
 Tulloch had left : and Dr. Cunningham (he had not to 
 tout for his Doctor's degree) was quite young enough 
 
TWO DEPARTURES FROM ST. ANDREWS 67 
 
 to enjoy things. He set himself to his new work with 
 keen reHsh, the very youngest nuan of his years. In 
 this pulpit, in the Presbytery, in his Chair, giving the 
 effervescent opening lecture of each session, he was a man 
 among a thousand. And never was eminent man more 
 devoid of pretence. Like his great predecessor, he was a 
 most lovable man. Bright, keen, vivacious, always ready, 
 fully equipped, but never rancorous, absolutely incapable 
 of anything malignant or malicious : that was Principal 
 Cunningham. And we shall see the alert form and face 
 on the pavement, on the green turf never more. 
 
 * His time here was too short. It pleased God that he 
 should be called while we looked for years of usefulness 
 and honour. He had a quiet weaning from this life. I 
 never will forget the worn, kind, patient face that looked 
 at me the last evening here. " Do you know me, dear 
 Principal ? " " Perfectly." Then, " No pain." Last, the 
 warm grasp of the failing hand whose work was done ; 
 and it had done hard work ; and the quiet " God bless 
 you " with which we parted. You would think little of me 
 if I could forget these things. I saw him once again, at 
 rest. A far younger face than any of you ever saw. 
 Smooth, unlined, with the look of perfect peace. God 
 send each of us as painless a departure. 
 
 ' I think those to whom he was dearest must ha\e f^-lt 
 in their hearts the honour and affection shown him on 
 that burial day, when he was carried into this church, his 
 mortal part ; and the congregation of rich and poor joined 
 in worship where he was wont to worship ; then borne 
 
68 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 along that ancient street under the limes growing russet, 
 and laid to rest with the sublime words of Christian 
 hope. 
 
 * It is the way of our Kirk and country to forget (and, 
 if possible, to ignore) a man's University eminence. Had 
 it been in England, one half of Principal Cunningham's 
 College distinction would have effectually made his worldly 
 fortune. Most of our congregations do not know whether 
 their ministers were brilliant students or not. 
 
 ' It was a remarkable gathering that came to that 
 funeral — more remarkable than many knew. The priest 
 of the ancient Church out of which we all came, and one 
 of its dignified prelates, were with us under that roof ; 
 also our Lord Rector, a working Lord Rector, a devout 
 member of that communion. Some remembered how the 
 stately old Bishop Wordsworth was with us last time. In 
 another country that grave procession would have had 
 more of outward state. Here the most outstanding man 
 left in this Kirk, the greatest preacher of this half-century, 
 walked modestly and undistinguished in the crowd to see 
 the last (in this world) of his old friend. 
 
 ' A new association has been added to that grand 
 churchyard which has so many. Where Rutherford and 
 Hallyburton sleep ; Principal Hill and Principal Tulloch, 
 Robert Chambers and Adam Fergusson, John Park and 
 John Robertson ; we left John Cunningham till the resur- 
 rection day. We who abide in St. Andrews always re- 
 member how our own poet, Andrew I-ang, passes from 
 the burying-place, far awaj', where is the grave which 
 
TWO DEPARTURES FROM ST. ANDREWS 69 
 
 " has been wept above, with more than mortal tears," to 
 ours above the ocean-cave of St. Rule. 
 
 Grey sky, brown waters, as a bird that flies 
 
 My heart flits forth from these, 
 Back to the winter rose of northern skies. 
 
 Back to the northern seas. 
 
 And lo, the long waves of the ocean beat, 
 
 Below the minster grey, 
 Caverns and chapels worn of saintly feet. 
 
 And knees of them that pray.' 
 
 The last time the Principal heard the writer preach, 
 was on Whitsun-Day, May 21, 1893. The text was 'As 
 one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you ; 
 and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem.' So, we humbly 
 trust, he has found it. ' Jerusalem which is above is the 
 Mother of us all ' : and will comfort all Her children as no 
 mother ever did here. We do not, now, pitch our hopes 
 so high as did Samuel Rutherford. Peace and consolation 
 ' dwell in Immanuel's land,' Which will do. 
 
70 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 INCIDENT, ECCLESIASTICAL AND PAROCHIAL 
 
 On Saturday, June i6, 1894, a bright sunshiny afternoon, 
 a meeting was held in the great hall of Farnham Castle in 
 Surrey : which has been the dwelling of the Bishops of 
 Winchester for seven hundred years. It was the annual 
 meeting of the Surrey Clergy Relief Society : the name 
 suggests what is very sad to think of For the greatest of 
 National Churches, with its great prizes, has likewise 
 depths which far exceed any in the poor Kirk of Scotland. 
 Add all benefices together, beginning with Lambeth : then 
 strike an average : and our average north of the Tweed, 
 where there is scarce a stipend of a thousand a year, is 
 decidedly the higher. With us, too, in rural regions long 
 ago, there prevailed the belief, both among rich and poor, 
 that the clergy ought to have their noses kept very tight 
 to the grindstone : that (in the words of a stupid old 
 Scotch Judge) ' a puir Church would be a pure Church.' 
 A very rich old lady, whose brothers were enormously rich, 
 once said to me, as laying down an axiom, that ' no mini- 
 ster would do his duty if he had a thousand a }'ear.' The 
 statement was made to me (I was a lad) with intention of 
 impertinence : for the old woman was well aware that m)- 
 
INCIDENT, ECCLESIASTICAL AND PAROCHIAL 71 
 
 Father, as faithful a parish clergyman as ever lived, would 
 in the latter years have been held a well-to-do man even 
 in the Anglican Church : and I knew the handsome pair 
 of horses which conveyed him about were an offence to 
 some. ' I like Mr. Stiggins : he's so humble ' : a lady of 
 position once said to me, very significantly. ' Thank you,' 
 was my reply : ' I know exactly what you mean.' She 
 answered, ' No : I don't mean that at all.' But my rejoin- 
 der was, ' Yes, you do.' There the conversation ended. 
 Though elliptical in expression, it was perfectly intelligible • 
 to any one who understands the ways of Scotland. It was 
 a laird, of long descent, who said to one who was a minister 
 and a minister's son, as though pleasantly expressing the 
 normal relation, ' Of course the lairds always laughed at 
 the ministers.' The lairds are now laughing in unhilarious 
 fashion : and they do not meet much sympathy. But a 
 good deal worse is coming to the ' merciless robbers of 
 Christ's heritage ' : as downright John Knox called those 
 who plundered the Church at the Reformation. Should 
 the Kirk ever be disendowed, sure as fate the next question 
 will be the disendowment of certain others (very easil}' 
 indicated) : who for three centuries and more have grabbed 
 the nation's money, and done no work for it at all. 
 
 The Society which has been named was established for 
 the relief of necessitous clergymen, and of their widows 
 and children. The Bishop presided : who, with that house 
 to keep up, and with the ceaseless calls upon him of the 
 great office, would be (had he no more than the legal pro- 
 vision) as necessitous a clergyman as any. He spoke, in a 
 
72 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 quiet but very touching way, of the trouble which had 
 come to many homes through reduced incomes : and added 
 that if in the course of time disestablishment came, he did 
 not see how their present system of a married clergy could 
 go on. Many, he knew, would shudder at the idea of 
 anything like a monastic life for the clergy : but it might 
 have to be. It was curious to me to hear such words. 
 For, in April 1890, Dr. Liddon (drawing near the close : he 
 went on September 9, 1890) wrote to me in nearly the 
 same terms : while speaking very kindly of the service at 
 the Centenary of the Glasgow Sons of the Clergy. He 
 disapproved enforced celibacy, for divers strong reasons : 
 but what if narrow means made it inevitable ? Many 
 touching facts were told : heart-breaking facts. I made a 
 little speech, with much feeling : for though the two 
 National Churches are in some respects very unlike, the 
 like straits and anxieties are known in both. I thought, as 
 often before, how our good Professor Baynes used to say 
 that here is the tragedy of modern life. And times beyond 
 number, thinking of the Manse, and the quiet, busy, careful 
 life there : looking at the bright little people, boys and 
 girls, racing about : one has thought that too much de- 
 pended on a single life : it was the warm nest on the 
 decaying bough. The meeting came to an end : and one 
 was made to feel that the world is narrow. For a lady 
 introduced herself as the grand-daughter of a minister of 
 Urr : just the next parish to mine of old days in Gallowa}'. 
 And nearer still, another lady was the great grand-daughter 
 of one who had preceded me there, and whose monument I 
 
INCIDENT, ECCLESIASTICAL AND PAROCHIAL tt, 
 
 looked at each Sunday through those five years : a mini- 
 ster of unforgotten Kirkpatrick-Irongray itself. 
 
 Yet all that talk of the straits of the clergy wakened 
 up a curious association : not quite consistent with serious 
 reflections of which I did not speak that day. I thought 
 not merely of powers abated and circumscribed : but of 
 possible temptations. For the clergy are trusted, often, 
 with the distribution of money. Not a word shall be 
 said by me here, unless most seriously. Yet it came back 
 how I once had concluded that the impecunious have one 
 privilege : not wholly fanciful. 
 
 Impecunious means poor. Poor is a short word : the 
 other a long. Poor is a Saxon word : the other a Latin. 
 And I greatly prefer Saxon words to Latin : and short 
 words to long. Why then Impecunious .'' 
 
 The Tay was flowing within sight and hearing ; and it 
 was a golden harvest-day. The humble writer of these 
 lines was standing by a little cottage, his for that hour ; 
 when a very active and healthy tramp, of villainous ex 
 pression, came up, a blot on the landscape (where only 
 man was vile) ; and demanded money in an offensive and 
 minacious tone. For the spot was lonely, and the police- 
 man far away. The reply was, ' A strong young man like 
 you should work for his bread. I will not give you any- 
 thing : but I will see that )'ou are provided with honest 
 work for a week at least : the harvest needs it all.' He 
 gazed on me with contempt, and said, ' You English par- 
 sons should be off to your own country.' I answered, 
 ' You mistake, good man : I am not an English parson, 
 
74 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 but a Scotch parish minister.' ' Oh,' said he, ' I have 
 always understood that you are an Impecunious Lot ' : and 
 then, casting upon me the pecuhar look of an idle tramp 
 who knows he is not to cheat anybody, he departed from 
 view. Nature smiled again. And I have related the 
 incident exactly as it happened. Hence Impecunious. 
 
 His word came back to me on another day, a wonder- 
 ful October day, of changing leaves, of miraculous trans- 
 parency and stillness of the environing atmosphere, walking 
 townward amid the failing light. Then, leaning upon a 
 wall, I discerned five little boys. I stopped, and had a 
 talk with them ; leaning upon the wall too. They were 
 all at school. They told me their names. I had christened 
 four of them. I gave them some good advice, which they 
 may possibly remember ; and finally, departing, bestowed 
 upon each a modest sum, which made five little hearts 
 glad. To-morrow, at school, some neighbouring boys will 
 be disappointed : forasmuch as they had not chanced to 
 be leaning on that wall at that moment too. But that is 
 Election, and must needs be. Even so a man misses being 
 made a Judge, a General, a Bishop. I came away. 
 
 Ah, there was something amiss. This will not do. 
 There was not the glow of modest satisfaction, in having 
 done a small act of kindness. F"or the money was not my 
 own. A kind soul had given it to mc, to pass on. And 
 fully to enjoy the doing of any little kind deed, taking the 
 form of giving : 
 
 ( 1 ) You must give your own. 
 
 (2) You must give what you will miss. Da)-s have 
 
INCIDENT, ECCLESIASTICAL AND PAROCHIAL 75 
 
 been in which I could not have given that sum without a 
 Httle thought, and possibly not then unless by doing with- 
 out something I wished to have. 
 
 Only thus will you realise how pleasant it may be to 
 give : pleasanter than to receive : though to receive is 
 pleasant too. To some folk it rarely happens to receive 
 anything they have not worked hard for. 
 
 Be glad, ye Impecunious ! You have a privilege, in 
 your modest giving, which James Baird and Lady Burdett- 
 Coutts could not know. They gave their own, indeed, 
 these beneficent souls : both being so rich that they never 
 missed what they gave. There could not be the sense of 
 Sacrifice. They never (I suppose) had to do without any- 
 thing, for that they had given their thousands of sterling 
 pounds. A terrible sense of responsibility, doubtless, often 
 pressed upon them both. Much had been given them : 
 Freely they had received : we can all remember what ought 
 to follow. But you whom I have known, who had to make 
 an effort, to resign something, to pinch yourselves, that you 
 might do good, that you might relieve another's necessity, 
 your heart glowed, and it will glow again, then and there. 
 You never thought of any reward. Something constrained 
 you : and I know well what it is that (unsuspected some- 
 times) constrains and has constrained to every good and 
 gracious deed that ever was done by poor human being. 
 But your reward came : and it was not fanciful : it was 
 substantial and real. I have seen the tear on your cheek, 
 which you did not want me or any other mortal to see : 
 and I knew the swelling of your heart. Your soul was 
 
76 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 happy, was lifted up, on that day. And your face shone 
 with a heavenly light. 
 
 Yes : it is a fine thing, if the heart be right, that you 
 be what the tramp said in Strathtay. 
 
 It gives you a chance of something very pleasant : 
 which will last for an hour or two. Which is something, in 
 this world. 
 
 A very little sum of money is a very great thing to 
 many immortal beings. I have seen it so times innume- 
 rable. It is specially pathetic when you see it so to people 
 who are very old. I think my ways are only like those of 
 my brethren of the Kirk. A rule is, Take off your hat 
 to any one who is very old. Also to every one who 
 uncovers his head to you. Also to every woman : unless 
 where she would think you did not mean it seriously. And 
 then a few kind words. I regret that I have known those 
 who needed to be told, Never enter the poorest dwelling 
 with your hat on your head. The present Speaker and I, 
 long ago (he was merely Mr. Arthur Peel then), once went 
 into various Highland cottages with a tremendously rich 
 Member of Parliament : who kept his hat on his dignified 
 head and his hands deep in his trousers pockets, and 
 addressed us to the exclusion of the inhabitants. I liked 
 it not. And he was an ' Advanced Liberal.' I was just 
 the opposite in those days. 
 
 But this is a deviation. It was very touching, on the 
 first mild day of March two years since, at a funeral in the 
 Cathedral churchyard here, as I said the words committing 
 earth to earth, to look down on the inscription on the 
 
INCIDEN^T, ECCLESIASTICAL AND PAROCHIAL ^^ 
 
 coffin lid. Very brief. M. JW., Aged loi years. For I 
 knew what humble cares had filled the heart of the 
 centenarian to the last. How eagerly anxious, a few days 
 before, JVas she to get her coals ? The answer, I need not 
 say, Every earthly thing I could give her. But, indeed, 
 without being so old, one is made to feel that the past 
 is gone : and however long it may have been, you have to 
 address yourself to the real and pressing present. I have 
 no doubt my aged sister had thought to herself, eighty 
 years before, If I only get this, I shall never want anything 
 more. I know an apprehensive person who, writing a 
 book he feared he would never finish, put in writing the 
 resolution that if he were but permitted to finish this, 
 his work should be ended. But it proved not to be so. 
 
 Coming away, I met an aged man. He was much 
 interested in the funeral of one so old : though with a quiet 
 disregard of death. Would I give him something } A 
 few in this place rarely meet me without such a question. 
 I had exactly fiv'epence, which I handed over : saying I 
 owe you two shillings and a penny next time we meet. 
 How the wrinkled face brightened ! Here was a little blink 
 of comfort. He would have a warm fire and a warm cup 
 of tea for that evening at least. Not the gratitude of man, 
 only, has often left one mourning : but the gladness too. 
 
 There was a curious tendency in Scotland, of old, to 
 attend funerals. Sir Walter's father attended all he could. 
 And you had the trouble of getting into mourning often 
 then : which is not here now. Yet when I first came here, 
 I thought it strange to see an esteemed elder walking along 
 
78 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 South Street in the grave procession in a light-coloured 
 great-coat. Likewise to see the nnourners, all save those 
 who immediately followed the hearse, cheerfully talking. 
 My mother told me it did not seem right that Mr. Disraeli 
 should be diligently reading the newspaper while fol- 
 lowing (in his carriage) the funeral car that bore the great 
 Duke. When I was a student, the minister who officiated 
 at a burial always wore 'Weepers': white cambric round 
 the wrists of his coat. The sewing-on and taking-off were 
 a great trouble. In days happily gone, the inducement to 
 some was the regulation glass of wine to all comers. That 
 irreverence is happily gone by. But I have often seen, at 
 a rustic funeral, where it could ill be afforded, a crowd of 
 people receive (i) a supply of bread and cheese, with beer : 
 (2) a round of biscuits with whisky : (3) a round of short- 
 bread with wine. And the prayers, which (sad to say) 
 were forbidden at a funeral service, were smuggled in 
 under the pretext of 'asking a blessing' and 'returning 
 thanks,' before and after that indecent refreshment. There 
 can be no doubt that Dr. Liddon was right when he said 
 to me that the only thing which enabled people to endure 
 the awful ways of the unimproved Kirk, stripped bare by 
 English Brownism, was that 'they never knew an}'thing 
 better.' 
 
 Even when I came to St. Andrews (in two da\-s it 
 will be twenty-nine years since) that terrible fashion of cake 
 and wine remained. And it was not easy to put it down. 
 We were Innovators : meddling with an old Scotch custom 
 ' which had existed before we were born.' That last sug- 
 
INCIDENT, ECCLESIASTICAL AND PAROCHIAL 79 
 
 gestion was once held as a logical argument. While the 
 fashion was dying out, I used to think that never man 
 looked so contemptible as when taking a glass of wine 
 at a funeral. For the mortal looked ashamed : yet his 
 countenance conveyed a certain vulgar defiance of the 
 ' ritualistic ' parson by, surveying him with disapproving 
 look. Any minister in those days who aimed, I say not 
 at attaining decency in public worship, but at cutting off 
 gross indecency, was ' a ritualist ' ; and was aiming at 
 ' priestly domination.' He was * a Prelatist ' : even ' a 
 Papist.' Now that the battle is won, and that I have at 
 St. Mary's every Sunday a vast deal more than Robert 
 Lee was persecuted into his grave for, I wonder how men 
 lived through that time of vulgar and stupid bigotry at 
 all. Of recent Moderators, certainly Dr. Story, Dr. Mar- 
 shall Lang, and I, would have been deposed (if they 
 durst) by those who dominated the Kirk forty years ago. 
 On the other hand, it may be confessed that we never laid 
 ourselves out to conciliate those reverend individuals. 
 
 A good woman in this parish, with no inducement at 
 all save the solemn beauty of the service, for years never 
 failed to be in the churchyard at every funeral where she 
 knew the service was to be read. Unhappily, it is not 
 always read here, even yet. And there are men who 
 introduce a discordant concoction of their own : which 
 nothing would induce me to hear. Of course, we wear 
 decorous robes. But I remember a man in a great-coat 
 sticking his umbrella in the ground, hanging his hat 
 thereon, and then proceeding to make a few observations. 
 
8o MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 It was a melancholy occasion. But some thought it very- 
 fine. Save as hooped together by Establishment, such do 
 not belong to the same Church with me : and should that 
 hoop break, they will go to their own place : which will 
 be very far from mine. I saw that good old woman in 
 the closing days, often. The last day came : she could 
 barely speak. But when I entered, she whispered to a 
 kind neighbour, Tell him. The kind neighbour said, 
 ' She wishes you to promise that you will read the service 
 over her, yourself.' Only one answer was possible. ' Yes : 
 if it please God you go first, I will.' And I did : not 
 without a tear. 
 
 She would not hear it, dear woman. But the antici- 
 pation pleased. And it touched deeply, on another day, 
 when a good daughter wrote, making the same request : 
 and saying she felt it would soothe her mother in the last 
 sleep if the magnificent words of Christian hope were said 
 over her. 
 
 These parochialia are serious, not to say sad. Cheer- 
 ful things come too. There is a youth among our clergy 
 who is specially dear to me. While a student, he read the 
 Lessons for me regularly, and was much at home in this 
 house. Immediately on receiving orders, he became my 
 assistant for a while. His father, one of our most impres- 
 sive pulpit orators, was taken in a moment : and with the 
 impulsiveness of popular election, the }'outh was set in 
 his father's place : holding at a very early age one of our 
 chief charges and best livings: holding it worthily. A 
 few Sundays since, he read the Lessons as of old, and read 
 
INCIDENT, ECCLESIASTICAL AND PAROCHIAL 8i 
 
 them beautifully. But being on a holiday, and devoid of 
 clerical array, he read ' as a layman ' : walking from a pew 
 to the lectern when the time came. His aspect was dis- 
 tinctly military : the bright face moustached. A kind old 
 gentleman, meeting him on the Links in the afternoon, 
 introduced himself by saying how well he had read 
 that morning : adding that in his judgment the young 
 man had mistaken his profession. ' You should have 
 gone into the Church,' he said. The answer, perfectly 
 true, though somewhat misleading, was, ' Do you know, 
 at one period in my life, I thought most seriously of going 
 into the Church ? ' So they parted. And the kind old 
 man knew not that he had addressed quite the luckiest 
 man (in the sense of a rocket-like rise) who has entered 
 the Kirk in the last fifty years. The story got into a 
 newspaper published in the great town of Greenock, 
 where my dear young friend is minister of the historic 
 West Kirk (always so called). Thereupon a worthy 
 parishioner declared that he was ' a Jesuit.' Surely the 
 judgment was unduly severe. It is borne with entire good 
 nature. If that youth lives, and is blest with health and 
 strength, there can be no doubt what place he will take as 
 a preacher. 
 
 Two Lord Rectors of the University have given their 
 inaugural addresses since the time at which a certain local 
 history closed : each, in his way, a very remarkable and 
 outstanding man : each quite worthy to take his place 
 in a most distinguished succession. 
 
 On Monday, April 6, 1891, in the great Recreation 
 
 G 
 
82 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 Hall, Lord Dufferin was first seen of many to whom his 
 name had long been familiar. I suppose no human being 
 has ever been placed in so many difficult positions, and 
 filled each without making a single mistake. I suppose 
 if any mortal desired to point out the world's outstanding 
 instance of brilliant faculty in combination with perfect 
 temper, tact, and wisdom ; that truly illustrious marquis 
 would be the very first thought of As for charm of 
 manner, St. Andrews will never forget that Lord Rector. 
 The arrangement of the hall that afternoon was con- 
 spicuously stupid : decidedly worse than on other occa- 
 sions when it was extremely stupid too. The Rector was 
 placed at the precise point where it would be most dif- 
 ficult to speak audibly : yet he managed, without vocifera- 
 tion, to be perfectly heard by a gathering of perhaps 
 eighteen hundred or more. He looked very dignified : 
 very young considering his long record. The address was 
 admirable : most of the educated class in Britain read it 
 next day. It took an hour and twenty minutes : the hard- 
 worked man had taken pains to be prepared. In the 
 evening a great crowd gathered in the new librar\'-hall : 
 very acadeiiic in aspect. Principal Donaldson introduced 
 me to the Rector : who was most frank and genial. But 
 now I saw the anxious life marked on the fine face, as I had 
 not at greater distance that afternoon. I ventured to say 
 that admirable as the address had been, I thought that 
 even greater enthusiasm would have been kindled in our 
 students had it been expressed in that classical tongue 
 which had been employed at the banquet at Rc\-kjavik in 
 
INCIDENT, ECCLESIASTICAL AND PAROCHIAL 83 
 
 Iceland, long before. The oration is given in part in the 
 chairmmg Letters fro /n HigJi Zrt/////r^^i', published in 1857. 
 Though the brilliant Rector is a modest man, he was con- 
 strained to describe his speech as ' so great an effort of 
 oratory.' Truth and justice required it. Just the opening 
 sentence must brighten this page. 
 
 ' Viri illustres, insolitus ut sum ad publicum loquen- 
 dum, ego propero respondere ad complimentum quod 
 Recte-Reverendus Praelaticus mihi fecit, in proponendo 
 meam salutem : et supplico vos credere quod multum 
 gratificatus et flattificatus sum honore tam distincto.' 
 The Lord Rector, in the pleasantest manner, agreed with 
 the humble writer as to the certain effect. But he 
 appeared convinced that at Reykjavik, on that memorable 
 day, he had been so raised by circumstances above his 
 ordinary level, that any attempt to repeat that effort, in 
 the quietness and sobriety of St. Andrews, would have 
 been doomed to failure. More seriously, Lord Dufifcrin 
 was interested in learning that when the attractive volume 
 was published, thirty-four years before that day,, the pre- 
 sent writer, then a youthful country parson, had contri- 
 buted a lengthy and most favourable notice of it to the 
 Saturday Reviezu : well-known to him at that time. The 
 great diplomatist was again the effervescent young Irish 
 peer : as he said that was the first friendly review of his 
 book ; and it was pleasant reading. 
 
 When I got home, I got out the bound volume, and 
 read my review : unseen for thirty years. It was a sin- 
 gular experience. Frankly, I thought it nicely written. 
 
 6 2 
 
84 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 Indeed, the autocratic Douglas Cook would have made 
 short work of it, had it not been respectably done. But 
 as I read it, it was little to say I did not recognise it as 
 my own : or feel that I had written it. In the most serious 
 manner I felt that I had not written that article, and could 
 not. And yet I wrote it : that was certain. Ah, the young 
 minister of Irongray was gone for evermore. 
 
 Our present Lord Rector is the young Marquis of 
 Bute : young comparatively. For when lately I conveyed 
 to him that he was' too youthful to quite take in something 
 I was saying, he said, -with feeling, ' I'm not young. I'm 
 very old. I'm Half- Way. I'm forty-five.' The inevitable 
 rejoinder came, ' Ah, thirty-five is Half- Way,' If a well- 
 remembered statement of Moses be true, the case indeed 
 is so. Various circumstances have given special interest 
 to Lord Bute's personality, through his whole life ; and 
 putting ranJ: and wealth quite apart, he is one of the most 
 outstanding men of the time. In several recondite fields 
 of knowledge, I suppose he stands easily first. And never 
 was territorial prince more unpretending. Yet only a fool 
 would presume upon the Lord Rector. I regard him with 
 as much personal concern as any. For I lived till I 
 was six years old where Dumfries House dominates the 
 region around ; and the old marquis was a very great 
 noble. One of my earliest memories is of hearing him 
 make a speech. He was wise, and good ; but nature had 
 denied him fluency. He held it his duty to maintain a 
 regal state. Four horses always drew his carriage ; and 
 all things matched. It is a changed world now. The 
 
INCIDENT, ECCLESIASTICAL AND PAROCHIAL 85 
 
 other clay I had passed a gate : when of a sudden a tall 
 figure in homely tweed issued forth, and came tearing after 
 me for two hundred yards at the rate of eight miles an 
 hour. It was he who was once vulgarly called Lothair. 
 I could not but say, gazing on the panting marquis, and 
 thinking of the unbending, unhurried father. The world 
 is surely coming to an end. Though even in my early 
 childhood it used to be said in that Arcadian tract, that 
 ' the big marquis was much easier to get on wath than the 
 wee marquis ' : meaning the factor. And in an evening, 
 with the green ribbon of the Thistle in evidence, and with 
 the star on his breast, it may be admitted that the eminent 
 architect and antiquarian looks very much as he ought to 
 do. And one likes to see things right. I often remember 
 what was said in my hearing, ages since, by a popular 
 preacher as a startling paradox : ' Ah, my friends : if all be 
 not right, depend upon it there is something wrong.' The 
 people who listened held their breath in awe. Such a 
 thing had never occurred to them before. 
 
 Lord Bute delivered his rectorial address on Wednesday, 
 November 22, 1893, in that same great hall. But it was 
 incomparably better arranged than for Lord Dufferin ; and 
 the Lord Rector, in a powerful and telling voice, made 
 himself heard in every corner. The final function of that 
 afternoon was the public conferring of the degree of 
 LL.D. on ten persons, chosen by the Rector ; and upon 
 the Rector himself A more singular and heterogeneous 
 lot never at any one time received that distinction. There 
 were men of all Churches and nations. With the cxccp- 
 
86 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 tion of two or three whom the Rector had known from 
 infancy, and who were wholly undistinguished in any other 
 way, all were men of distinct eminence. And instead of 
 the hood of recent time, which hangs down over the robes, 
 each man was invested with a proper friar's hood, capable 
 of being turned over the head. The effect, to unused eyes, 
 was most singular. One good man informed me that 
 persons in his vocation were forbidden to cut their hair. 
 I wondered whether they were likewise forbidden to wash 
 their hands. 
 
 The address was certainly a very remarkable one. 
 Not merely for the pleasant touches of real life ; nor for 
 the occasional passages of unmistakable eloquence. But 
 that a devout Roman Catholic, a convert straight from the 
 Kirk of Scotland, should tell the story of the Reformation 
 to an audience almost exclusively Protestant, yet give no 
 offence, and this without dealing in generalities and plati- 
 tudes, was something which has seldom been. It did 
 indeed occur to me, here and there, that possibly Cardinal 
 Manning might not have liked the address so well as we 
 did. And the great landowner was apparent : somewhat 
 colouring the firm Romanist. But not Dean Stanley 
 himself could have more touchingly spoken up for St. 
 Andrews, nor more eloquently, than at several points did 
 Lord Bute. 
 
 It was a great success, the entire appearance. And 
 for the first time, we have a working Lord Rector : ready 
 to come whenever he is wanted. And he is wanted not 
 unfrequcntl}'. 
 
INCIDENT, ECCLESIASTICAL AND PAROCHIAL 87 
 
 In other ways the cultured antiquarian, backed by 
 means such as few other antiquarians ever possessed, has 
 interested himself in the ancient place in a manner de- 
 serving the highest praise. He is the very first person 
 whom I have ever found disposed to go both heartily and 
 intelligently into the matter of the restoration of the 
 ancient parish church from unspeakable degradation. The 
 thing will be done in time. I should rejoice if it were 
 done in my time. Very much has been spoken and written 
 upon the subject : nothing need be added now. Visible 
 work has been done elsewhere. An incredibly ugly 
 modern house, in a mangy classical style, built close to the 
 great Gothic Cathedral, magnificent in ruin, a painfully- 
 jarring presence in such neighbourhood, has for long borne 
 the absurdly-pretentious and unfitting name of TJie Priory. 
 Very little like a Priory, indeed. But those who intruded 
 it there no doubt thought the name sounded well : even as 
 I have known a Scotch publisher bring out a Bible in the 
 English tongue only, and call it the Polyglot Bible. The 
 space where was the grand Cloister was made a garden. 
 A sacrilegious greenhouse was built against the South 
 wall of the Nave, pouring smoke from a hideous chimney. 
 Yet it is well that greenhouse was stuck there : as 
 otherwise the noble wall would have gone down for 
 building material. Many a year, the Cathedral was the 
 common quarry of the place. Lord Bute bought the 
 so-called Priory, and the ground all about it has been 
 deeply excavated. Many feet beneath the recent surface, 
 the foundations were found of buildings of extreme interest. 
 
88 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 The entire ground- plan has been revealed ; and fragments 
 of a wonderful beauty. The undercroft of the refectory- 
 was in such condition that a good architect could readily 
 reproduce it. The work of discovery being accomplished, 
 a work of restoration is going on to-day : watched by 
 many with profound interest. It is absolutely certain 
 that what is done will be done with perfect taste, know- 
 ledge, and reverence. How far the rebuilding may be 
 carried is as yet unknown to the outer world. Possibly the 
 Lord Rector has not entirely made up his own mind. It 
 is many a day since St. Andrews has seen such a work 
 attempted. And the discoveries here made suggest how 
 much remains to be discovered in other parts of the 
 ancient city. 
 
 No more interesting visitor has in these last days come 
 to St. Andrews, than the admirable woman whose husband 
 was the great and good Bishop Fraser of Manchester. 
 He was far too early taken from a noble work, nobly done. 
 But it is singular how many have gone at the age of sixty- 
 seven : fatal to ecclesiastics as thirty-seven to men of genius 
 in poetry, music, and painting. John Knox went at sixty- 
 seven : and Luther : and Chalmers. So did Thomas 
 Campbell the poet. So did Bishop Wilberforce. Think- 
 ing of a quiet vocation, unknown to the great world, I 
 have been startled to find how man}' I could reckon up. 
 You will not easily find a more stimulating book than that 
 which records Bishop Fraser' s LancasJiire Life. I had read 
 it when it was first published ; but I went over it again 
 with fresh concern after coming to know and value one so 
 
INCIDENT, ECCLESIASTICAL AND PAROCHIAL 89 
 
 dear to the great Bishop whom I never saw. It all came 
 back, vividly. But I was specially cheered by one state- 
 ment, not remembered till thus revived. It is that which 
 defines the Bishop's theological position. ' He was pre- 
 eminently an Evangelical High-Churchman with Broad- 
 Church sympathies.' It was most pleasant to read the 
 words. For many of us in the Kirk cannot more accurately 
 describe ourselves than as Evangelical High Broad Church- 
 men. When I preached in St. Giles' Cathedral at the 
 opening of the General Assembly of 1891, I put the same 
 idea in more balanced language ; and was disappointed to 
 find that some found it unintelligible. It seemed to me 
 perfectly clear. Fortified by a great and good man's ex- 
 ample, I shall venture to reproduce my words here : 
 
 ' And what did we teach ? We trust, Christ's truth : 
 God's love in Him for man's salvation. And some among 
 us have held a singular standpoint, in respect of Doctrine 
 and Life. Evangelical by early training, and by the in- 
 fluence of days when as boy and lad we came under deep 
 personal conviction. High-Church by the aesthetic cul- 
 ture of later days : through the beauty and power of old 
 Church legend and art and prayer and praise. Broad, by 
 farther meditation : seeing round things which once 
 stopped the view. And not these in succession : all these 
 together. Call them moods, or phases : they may be. 
 But they come to very earnest and devout souls. And 
 such souls can feel a true sj^mpathy with the good men 
 who reverently and worthily represent each school.' 
 
 It was on Tuesday, September 9, i860, that Dr. Liddon 
 
90 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 died. He was only sixty-one. In (cw places was he more 
 heartily mourned than in St. Andrews. He held, uncom- 
 promisingly, views which we quite firmly rejected : which, 
 if true, set us in evil estate. But he spoke, and wrote, 
 oftentimes, of the truths we held in common : of our con- 
 dition together after all these differences. And he spoke 
 warmly of the sympathy in which he felt himself with 
 certain of us here. The discrepance never chilled reverent 
 affection. And he acknowledged the high spiritual qualities 
 he found in Scottish Presbytery in terms so cordial, that 
 the keen Principal Cunningham was wont to say that if we 
 could be so good without having (as Liddon judged) either 
 Church or Sacrament, it really appeared that it did not 
 matter much to a good man whether he had Church and 
 Sacrament or not. As Principal Shairp declared, * If 
 these are not Christian people, I never expect to find 
 Christian people at all.' As Principal Cunningham said, 
 in his more vivacious way, it appeared to him that people 
 in the Kirk were just as good as any mortal need be. 
 Others, in graver mood : ' God is better than His word ; 
 and does more than He ever promised.' As Cardinal 
 Newman wrote, not yet a Roman Catholic, ' O rail not at 
 our brethren of the North ' : but thankfully cleave to the 
 belief that God's mercy surpasses ' His revealed design.' 
 
 For divers reasons, we are perfectly content. When I, 
 at certain Communions, beheld fourteen hundred receive as 
 reverently as ever Christian did, I never failed, kneeling 
 silently at the Holy Table, to pray for Liddon : asking that 
 whichever of us was wrong, might be led right. I do not 
 
INCIDENT, ECCLESIASTICAL AND PAROCHIAL 91 
 
 forget how fervently the great preacher thanked me : 
 saying that in like solemn circumstances he would lift up 
 his heart for unworthy me. 
 
 I had said, as one who continually communicates in 
 both National Churches, that the comfort and uplifting are 
 exactly the same in each. But he cautioned me, seriously, 
 against believing much in personal experience in such a 
 matter : adding, very gravely, that a Mohammedan con- 
 gregation was, so far as man could judge, the devoutest he 
 had ever seen. 
 
 This is a portion of what was said in our parish church, 
 the Sunday after Liddon died : 
 
 ' A great man, though a humble and saintly, has been 
 taken from the Church of Christ since last Sunday. The 
 great Anglican Communion has lost her foremost preacher. 
 Here was a striking instance how, even in a hierarchical 
 Church, true greatness and influence are quite apart from 
 assigned rank. Few are the Archbishops who have held 
 (in men's hearts) the place of Dr. Liddon. But in the 
 worldly elevation which human beings can give, and can 
 keep back, he never got his due. Which was nothing 
 short of a scandal. 
 
 ' He did not belong to our division of the Church 
 Catholic. He did not recognise us as within the Church 
 Catholic at all : any more than his friend. Cardinal New- 
 man, recognised linn as being within it. But the man's 
 sweet nature quite did away the offence of his views : and 
 he had no warmer friends than some of us in the Church 
 of Scotland. Twice he visited this city. He never saw it 
 
92 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 but in blazing sunshine. Each time, with profound in- 
 terest, he went over every corner in this historic church : 
 which, even in its present degradation, was a thousand 
 times as much to him as the most beautiful brand-new 
 one. Each time he said, solemnly, how he prayed for the 
 day when he might preach from this pulpit. On each 
 occasion he entered it, and looked at the church from it, 
 in silent prayer. Well I knew what he was asking for ! 
 I see the beautiful face, when we had climbed St. Regulus 
 together under a glorious September sun, the bright sea 
 stretching from our feet into infinity, and the gray ruins 
 by. "A sacred place," he said. In one of his latest letters 
 to me he said, " I pray that the Scotch may have the grace 
 to set in order the things that have been wanting to them 
 ever since John Knox has been in authority — beyond the 
 Tweed." But he added, " In saying this, I rejoice to re- 
 member how very muck we have in common : and shall 
 have, I trust, in life, and in death, and beyond." To 
 which we would all say. Amen 1 ' 
 
 A socially-pushing Scot, the son of a minister or elder 
 of the Kirk, flippantly unchurching or vilipending the 
 Church of his fathers, I will never hold any terms with. 
 Nor will I with a half-educated Englishman, grossly de- 
 fective in the simple morality of the Decalogue : yet who 
 will not pass before an empty altar without ostentatiously 
 bowing, looking sharply whether I see him : and who 
 hastens to express his opinion that a ' Presbyterian can't 
 possibly get to Heaven.' But the dear, saintly, profoundly- 
 learned Liddon : solemnly holding a certain ecclesiastical 
 
INCIDENT, ECCLESIASTICAL AND PAROCHIAL 93 
 
 theory as demonstrably God's truth, and every now and 
 then earnestly and affectionately seeking to bring a 
 Scottish brother into better things than he meanwhile 
 knew : could one closely know such a man without 
 venerating and loving him ? Looked nearly into, how 
 little the point of vital difference. In either National 
 Church, the highest orders are given by the laying-on of 
 the hands of at least three, ordained already by ordained 
 men, and these ordained in long succession back to the 
 first of all. Must the man who presides at an ordination 
 be one permanently set in a higher place, and called a 
 Bishop .'' Or will it suffice that he be set on high, pre/atus, 
 for that day and that duty ; and called a Moderator ? 
 The two Establishments are not in communion : sorrowful 
 to say. And this is all that keeps them apart. As good 
 Archbishop Tait once said to me, ' Could you not have a 
 permanent Moderator of Presbytery, who would preside 
 at all ordinations } Such a man would be vitally a 
 Bishop ; and would satisfy the extremest South of the 
 Tweed.' 
 
 The question of episcopal authority is a matter of 
 detail. One of the greatest of ' Episcopalians,' a mighty 
 preacher, who became a Bishop himself (he lived and 
 worked outside of England), once said to me, ' I should 
 like to see my Bishop try to exercise authority over me ! 
 A Bishop is a man who is qualified to confirm and to 
 ordain: just as a Judge is qualified to sentence a man to 
 be hanged, and as an executioner is qualified to hang him. 
 Let the Bishop stick to his own vocation ! ' 
 
94 
 
 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 The words startled me. You have not the faintest idea 
 who said them. If you knew who said them, you would 
 be startled too. 
 
 I know not why. But at this moment there appears 
 before me a cynical old face, the face of a countr}' parson 
 who held a charge far out of the great world, and who has 
 for many years been far away. I hear his words, spoken 
 with great bitterness : not indeed to me, an insignificant 
 youth, but to somebody of much greater importance. They 
 have remained very distinct in my memory through that 
 long time. 
 
 'You think a great deal of my nephew Tim. You 
 would not, if you knew him as well as I do. I got a letter 
 from him yesterday. It consisted of five lines. And it 
 contained five lies.' 
 
 I had been accustomed to regard Tim with admiration : 
 and I was startled. But Charles Kingsley was wont to 
 say that there is no weakness (call it so) which can abide 
 so long in a man along with God's grace, as the tendency 
 to make statements which are not historically accurate. 
 They generally tend to the exaltation of the good man ; 
 or to the tripping-up of some acquaintance. I am obliged 
 to confess that though truth is the foundation of all good 
 in character, I have known really good men, and ver}- clever 
 men, who wtre not truthful. But it was an awful flaw in 
 them. And (in their absence) all their friends lamented 
 it continually. 
 
INCIDENT, ECCLESIASTICAL AND PAROCHIAL 95 
 
 This day of magnificent September sunshine, tem- 
 pered somewhat by autumnal crispness in the air, is 
 Friday, September 14, 1894. I was inducted to the 
 charge of this city and parish on this day twenty-nine 
 years. It was Thursday, September 14, 1865. I have 
 completed twenty-nine years as Minister of St. Andrews. 
 It is nothing earthly to the reader : but it is a very awful 
 thought to myself One thing I will say : I have worked 
 here to the very utmost of my strength. I have not 
 willingly neglected anything which ought to be done. I 
 deserve not the smallest credit. It had to be, through an 
 anxious nature. I have had much cheer, and many dis- 
 couragements. The discouragements, as must be in the 
 working of any parish, were all close at hand. A good 
 deal of cheer came from very near me : but a vast deal 
 more came from far away. 
 
96 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ARCHBISHOP TAIT OF CANTERBURY • 
 
 * I NEVER liked Tait. I never could like him. And of 
 course I differed from him on many subjects. But I will 
 acknowledge that, during the years of his Primacy, there 
 was no man in the Church of England, known to me, so 
 fit to be Archbishop.' 
 
 I was not likely to forget the words ; nor any words 
 seriously said by one so revered. It was a great event in 
 the writer's little history, to have a quiet talk with such a 
 man. But I wrote down the words that evening ; and many 
 more which will never be printed. For indeed they were 
 of special interest. We were sitting in a quaint old room, 
 in a quiet recess just out of the busiest roar of great 
 London. I watched intently the worn fine features, with 
 their expression of singular benignity and sweetness, as 
 the words were said : said by one who might have been 
 Archbishop of Canterbury himself had he chosen. 
 
 Then, in less grave mood : ' Curious, his being so quiet 
 and self-restrained in the latter days. I was there when Tait 
 
 ' Life of Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury. By Randall 
 Thomas Davidson, D.D. , Dean of Windsor ; and William Bcnham, B.D., 
 Hon. Canon of Canterbury. In Two Volumes. London: Macmillan & Co., 
 1891. 
 
ARCHBISHOP TAIT OF CANTERBURY 97 
 
 t 
 of Balliol, with a tremendous flourish of his cap, defied the 
 
 President of the Oxford Union and was fined a pound.' 
 
 The speaker arose from his chair, and going through the 
 
 action of violently bringing the cap from far behind him, 
 
 shook it as in the President's face in truculent fashion. 
 
 And sitting down, he added, with a smile, * He was very 
 
 hot-tempered then.' It could only have been occasionally, 
 
 one would say. 
 
 I do not think any testimony ever borne to Tait's fitness 
 for his great place would have been more valued by himself 
 than this of the saintly Dean Church of St. Paul's : of 
 whom it was truly said by one of the foremost Prelates of 
 the Anglican Church, belonging to quite another party 
 from the Dean's, ' There is nothing in the Church that he 
 is not worthy of And now that both Dean and Archbishop 
 are gone, there can be no harm in repeating what was 
 equally honourable to both. 
 
 We do not mind much about Tait's frequent statements, 
 beginning early, that he was to be Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury. Probably fifty other men were saying the like of 
 themselves about the same time. And one great scholar 
 and divine, still abiding, was far more solemnly designated 
 to the primatial throne, by one possessed of the second 
 sight. It was never to be. But when the writer was a 
 boy, and Tait was no farther on his way than Rugby 
 (where nobody pretends he was a very great Head-Master), 
 the writer was often told by one who had heard the words, 
 how Sir Daniel Sandford had said, ' That boy will wear the 
 mitre.' It was well remembered, too, how James Hallcy, 
 
 II 
 
98 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 whom Sir Daniel pointed out as ' the man that beat Tait/ 
 had said, near the end, ' I'd have Hkcd to live to see Archy 
 Tait a Bishop.' Other estimates were current too. For Tait, 
 though a great scholar at Glasgow College, when he went to 
 England was never in the same flight with either of the 
 Wordsworths, Lincoln or St. Andrews. It was after a great 
 debate at the Union, at the time of the Reform Bill of Lord 
 Grey, that a brilliant Oxford Tutor wrote to his brother, 
 Senior Classic at Cambridge, of the magnificent eloquence 
 of certain young orators who had taken part in it. 
 Several were named : but, outstanding among them, was 
 one ' Gladstone, a sure Double-First,' who spoke ' better 
 than Demosthenes ' : of course on the side of the most 
 obstructive Toryism. The entire aristocrac}- of the 
 University, intellectual and social, was ranged on one side. 
 ' And who is thereon the other?' the enthusiastic chronicler 
 went on. (Names shall be withheld, save one.) ' A, 
 Nobody : B, Nobody : C, Nobody : Tait, Nobody ! ' The 
 irony of the event is sometimes terrible. And as the 
 revered scholar who wrote the letter read it aloud to a 
 little company after fifty-five years, he added, ' You see 
 young men should not prophesy.' 
 
 But Tait had reached his highest place, and none could 
 call him Nobody (you might like him or not), when one of 
 the greatest men in the great Church of England said to 
 the writer, ' I don't regard the Archbishop as a clergyman 
 at all. He is a hard-headed Scotch lawyer.' And then, 
 in the most pathetic tones of the voice which thousands 
 held their breath to hear, ' If I were dying, the very last 
 man I should wish to sec is the Archbishop of Canterbury ! ' 
 
ARCHBISHOP TAIT OF CANTERBURY 99 
 
 No one who reads the Life would say the Hke now ; and 
 the great and good man gone, least of all. But sec how 
 the foremost fail to understand one another. Xot many 
 quotations can be suffered in my little space. But one 
 shall come here. It tells of the end of his dear old 
 Nurse, ' almost my oldest and dearest friend.' Tait had 
 taken his First-Class, and came to Edinburgh for Christmas. 
 
 ' One day, towards the end of December, she was 
 taken ill. The ailment seemed slight at first, but by 
 the time her beloved Archie arrived she was in high fever, 
 and occasionally distressed in mind. He never left her 
 side except once, when he went to obtain the aid of 
 Mr. Craig, a clergyman of the Scottish Episcopal Church, 
 in order that the old nurse and her grown-up charge might 
 together receive the Holy Communion, which at that time 
 was rarely, if ever, administered privately in the Presby- 
 terian Church, of which Betty was so staunch an adherent.' 
 When the Holy Communion had been celebrated, Mr. 
 Craig left the two alone together. All night the young 
 man sat b}' the old nurse's bed, and spoke to her words of 
 peace and comfort as she was able to bear it. She died 
 with her hand clasped in his as the morning broke on the 
 first day of 1834.' 
 
 Yes, and it would have been exactly the same had 
 
 dear old Betty lived to see him Primate. Some words 
 
 come back to one's memory. He was an illustrious man 
 
 who said lightly, ' So old Tait's away.' The answer was, 
 
 Yes, gone to Paradise.' The rejoinder came. ' Very 
 
 ' God be thanked, all that is changed. 
 
 H 2 
 
lOO MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 <Tood, but he won't be Archbishop of Canterbury there.' 
 And indeed he would not. But though he could not take 
 an}- earthly elevation where he went, he would take with 
 him, wheresoever, the unspoiled heart of that long-departed 
 New-year's-eve. Which is far better. 
 
 Too much is made of the Archbishop's Presbyterian 
 extraction and education, as though these did in some 
 degree disqualify him for his place. No doubt, his father 
 was an Elder of the Kirk, So were his two brothers : 
 and they sat regularly in the General Assembly, where 
 Sheriff Tait of Perthshire was an outstanding man. Many 
 times, in May days just departed, the writer beheld the 
 two Maclagans, brothers of the new Archbishop of York, 
 sitting in that Venerable House. And in his youth he 
 preached, each Sunday afternoon, in a Scotch parish church, 
 to the Archbishop's father and mother. Dean Lake of 
 Durham, in a strain which falls familiar on the ear,' 
 expresses his opinion that Archbishop Tait, in his Epis- 
 copal life, * made serious mistakes, both in word and action.' 
 Then comes the apology for the uncultured Scot ; which 
 will provoke a smile in some readers : 
 
 ' But when wc think of the manner in which, born and 
 bred in a different Communion, he gradually learned, in a 
 time of great difficulty, to understand and even to sympa- 
 thise with all the varieties of the English Church, and of 
 his constantly increasing determination to do justice to 
 them all — a determination which, I believe, would have 
 gone much further, had his life been prescr\cd ' — 
 ' Vol. II. p. 607. 
 
ARCHBISHOP TAIT OF CANTERBURY loi 
 
 And so on. Here is a bit of that high-bred provin- 
 cialism, too common in the AngHcan Church, which is 
 based on absolute ignorance of things Scottish. There is 
 no gulf at all between the best in the Church of Scotland 
 and the best in the Church of England. Presbytery is 
 accepted, as suiting the genius of the Scottish race : but it 
 counts for nothing, when compared with such vital questions 
 as those of a National profession of Christianity and a 
 National Church. Not an anti-state-church Presbyterian, 
 but a good Anglican churchman, is brother to most men 
 worth counting in the Scottish Kirk. And should the day 
 come which shall put Scottish churchmen to right and left, 
 that will appear. It is twenty-seven years since Mr. Froude, 
 after his very first evening in Scotland, spent in the com- 
 pany of some who are mostly gone, said to the writer, ' I 
 see your best men are exactly like our best men.' And it 
 is many a day since Dr. Liddon, on his first day in St. 
 Andrews, said how astonished he was at the sympathy he 
 had met in the Kirk : said that though a system he liked 
 not had gradually ' crystallised, through the fault of nobody 
 living,' he found himself drawn, in true affection, to the 
 men. Yet everybody knows that Liddon was uncompro- 
 mising in his ecclesiastical views : even to a degree which 
 certain of his Scottish friends found hard to bear : indeed 
 did not bear but with frank expression of astonishment. 
 When Bishop Wilberforce came to Scotland, and went 
 about with his eyes blind-folded, he did indeed accept as 
 true, and record in that very regrettable diar)-, various 
 stories about the Church which were rather more outrageous 
 
I02 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 than if he had stated that black was white. And on August 
 II, 1861, he wrote therein of 'the bitter, levelling spirit of 
 Presbyterianism ' : a spirit which may possibly once have 
 been, but which is utterly extinct among educated men. 
 Quite as much narrowness, bitterness, and wrong-headcd- 
 ness, may be found in certain strata of the Church of 
 England, as anywhere North of the Tweed. Read many 
 of the letters which Tait received, not all anonymous : and 
 this will be apparent. The future Archbishop had not far 
 to go ; and had nothing at all to get over. Of course, 
 to the end, it remained impossible for him to believe that 
 all vital Christianity was confined to the members of 
 Churches with three orders. It was with him as when 
 Principal Shairp went to Oxford in the beginning of the 
 ' Movement,' and could but feel If those men and women I 
 have knozun in the Kirk %vere not CJiristians, I cannot ex- 
 pect to see ajty. But gradually, Tait, in lesser things, not 
 only understood the Anglican Church quite as thoroughly 
 as Dean Lake, but even caught the atmosphere he lived in 
 to a degree which amused a countryman. Meeting for the 
 first time' a Scottish parson who had studied Gothic churches 
 for many years (it was under the shade of Canterbury), he 
 said, ' Did you ever see a Cathedral before ? I mean an 
 English Cathedral.' Here appeared the natural belief of 
 the travelled Scot that his brother Scot knows nothing. 
 ¥ac the Scottish parson could repl)', another dignitary, 
 quite as famous as Tait, said, in a loud voice, ' He has seen 
 them all. He knows a great deal more about them than 
 you do.' Whereupon the ready Primate, w ith his sweetest 
 
ARCHBISHOP TAIT OF CANTERBURY 103 
 
 smile, went on, ' Ah, but you must come and see Lambeth. 
 That is quite as interesting as any Cathedral.' Scotsmen 
 for the most part understand one another perfectly. It 
 was an Englishman, not a Scot, who once said to the 
 writer, speaking of a saintly woman of high worldly place 
 (indeed very high), ' Between ourselves, I fear she is very 
 little better than a Presbyterian.' The words were ren- 
 dered in a whisper, as stating something too dreadful to be 
 put in audible words. 
 
 We did not need this biography to assure us that only 
 by some incredible mistake could the statement have crept 
 into Bishop Wilberforce's Life,' that Tait said, ' You will be 
 the real Archbishop ; I shall only be so in name.' And again, 
 ' I do not care how soon the world knows what I know, 
 that during your dear father's lifetime he was in reality 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, and I was only his lieutenant.' 
 Anything farther from the actual fact could not be imagined : 
 fifty instances occur which so testify. Tait could not have 
 acted under the orders of any mortal : least of all under the 
 orders of Bishop Wilberforce. And Tait was not a gusher : 
 though he was sometimes very outspoken. Such as knew 
 him would testify that the sentences ascribed to him are 
 singularly unlike his ordinary talk. As for his estimate of 
 his brilliant contemporary, we find it expressed with perfect 
 frankness. ' The Bishop of Oxford was as eloquent and in- 
 discreet as usual.' - 
 
 The writers of this Life have done their work very 
 fairly, and very thoroughly. The defects of the book come 
 ' !'• 337- lidition in one vol. ^ Vol. II. p. 5. 
 
I04 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 of its not being merely a biography, but a minute history 
 of the main events and controversies in the Church of 
 England during Tait's Episcopate. We are told nothing 
 but what we knew before : and many things are suppressed 
 which many knew : knew not through irresponsible gossip, 
 but surely. The frank revelations (in some details) of 
 Bishop Wilberforce's Life, make a striking contrast with the 
 reticence here. In the main, the Lives are like the men : 
 though Tait could be very frank sometimes. And surely 
 this Life would not make any modest and reasonable man 
 ask to be Archbishop of Canterbury. Lambeth is all very 
 well, though 'the most depressing of homes' in the judg- 
 ment of one once the head of the family there : Addington 
 in May, with those acres of rhododendrons, with the grand 
 woods, the Scotch firs of Perthshire and the heather, can 
 redeem the big, ugly, featureless house : and the little 
 church is charming, with its quiet churchyard where Tait, 
 Longley, and Sumner sleep, with only the green grass 
 above them. Possibly it may be pleasant to take prece- 
 dence of a Duke ; and the income is handsome when a 
 fleeced Primate has actually got hold of it. One such, a 
 humorist, is said to have preached his first sermon from 
 the text, 'A certain man went down from Jerusalem to 
 Jericho, and fell among thieves ' : and another, doing 
 homage to the Queen, said she was the first official he had 
 met who had not asked him for fifty guineas. lUit the 
 responsibility is awful to a conscientious man : and unless 
 to a man of very exceptional tastes, the work is incredibly 
 wearisome. Every wrongheadcd crank, every insolent 
 
ARCHBISHOP TAIT OF CANTERBURY 105 
 
 idiot, every conscientious bearer of a testimony, from Lord 
 Shaftesbury on one wing to Dr. Pusey on the other, with 
 Dean Stanley away out in the open far from both, has his 
 representation to make to the Archbishop as to what is 
 ruining the Church of England : and his representation, 
 often extremely lengthy, must be considered, and wisely 
 and courteously answered. Not every answer can be as 
 brief as that which in a line told a correspondent that the 
 Archbishop did not see any necessity for the correspondent 
 supplying an alleged deficiency in the Lord's Prayer. 
 Then the dreariness, the utter lack of interest, of the fierce 
 contentions on details of ritual and the like : all related in 
 the Life with conscientious fairness and intolerable pro- 
 lixity. The biographers were bound to do it, one feels : the 
 fault is not theirs. Here is Scotland again, for quarrel- 
 someness and wrongheadedness and making vital of the 
 pettiest matters. Well might Newman, still Anglican, 
 write, ' O rail not at our brethren of the North ' : our 
 brethren of the South, though on different details, are 
 exactly the same. And all these dreary squabbles must 
 be patiently gone into by the Archbishop. Nothing must 
 be contemptuously daffed aside : as Tait once said in 
 Perthshire, It ivoiddn't do. Patience must be illimitable. 
 And then the letters : the baskets-full to read ; the baskets- 
 full to write. Every Bishop of a large diocese has this 
 cross to bear : but the Archbishop is a quasi-Patriarch ; 
 and from every corner of the earth where the Anglican 
 Episcopate, or anything like it, has spread, the entreaty for 
 counsel in all perplexity, for sympathy in all trouble, comes 
 
io6 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 to Lambeth or Addington. One knows the meaning of 
 the deteriorated handwriting : of the signature abridged to 
 the utmost : of the gradual cessation of all punctuation. 
 It tells a pathetic story of overwork : and that in the way 
 which takes most out of a man, next to vehement oratory ; 
 perpetual letter-writing. A Bishop's letter is a touching 
 thing to see : less so indeed when a Chaplain who has 
 learnt to write exactly like him pens the letter, and the 
 blameless Prelate does but add his name. Not many 
 human beings realise what it is to write seventy letters in 
 a day. The writer remembers how Dean Wellesley of 
 Windsor once said to him, with asperity, ' You could not 
 make Stanley a Bishop : he writes such an abominable 
 hand.' But what would that hand have grown to, after 
 twenty years on the Bench ? It is not so many years since 
 the writer walked, side by side with the Archbishop, up 
 and down by the bank of a little Scottish river. ' What in- 
 sanity it was in A.,' he said, ' to work himself to death as 
 he did ! ' Then, in a worn voice, with a sorrowful face, he 
 expatiated on the foolishness of overworking. Ah, like 
 other good men, wise for everybody except himself Only 
 anonymous letter-writers, as a rule, take upon themselves 
 to admonish the Primate of All England. But the writer 
 thought, within himself, ' There is not a man in Britain, to- 
 day, overworking more than you.' Never hurried nor 
 flurried : nothing morbid or fanciful about him : good, 
 honest, brave, strong, cautious, far-seeing : astute without 
 shadow of craftiness : placed very high, \ct with head 
 absolutely unturned : had but the burden been brought 
 
ARCHBISHOP TAIT OF CANTERBURY 107 
 
 within man's bearing, he need not have had that solemn 
 w arning before sixty, he ought to have lived to fourscore. 
 
 Then the sitting next the ministerial bench in the 
 Lords, at any moment liable to be called on to speak in the 
 name of the greatest National Church in Christendom. 
 No wonder that somebody, the first time he had so to 
 speak, was in a state of trepidation which a lay peer 
 irreverently called ' a blue funk.' ' Why is not somebody 
 else there ? ' was the question put to one who was criticising 
 a Primate's action, having himself declined the Primacy. 
 ' Ah,' was the quiet answer, ' that man would have disap- 
 peared. He would have been in his grave. It is too much 
 for anyone.' 
 
 Tait was helped by his vein of Scottish humour. He 
 listened to an amusing story with real enjoyment : and he 
 told one admirably well. The sorrowful face, with the sad 
 smile, added to the effect. Some remember one which 
 Dean Stanley repeated at a Bishop's dinner at Lambeth on 
 the authority of a Scottish friend. It elicited from the 
 Archbishop no more than ' A very good story' : but it is 
 literally true. On one of his latest visits to a certain 
 country house in a Scottish county, he went alone to the 
 post-office to send a telegram to his brother. He wrote it 
 out. ' The Archbishop of Canterbury to Sheriff Tait,' and 
 handed it in. The sceptical old postmaster read it aloud 
 in contemptuous tones : ' The Archbishop of Canterbury' : 
 and added, ' Wha may ye be that taks this cognomen ? ' 
 The Archbishop, taken aback, remained silent for a 
 moment. The morning was cold, and he had a woollen 
 
loS MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 comforter wrapped round his neck : but on second view, 
 the postmaster thought he looked more respectable than on 
 a first, and added, ' Maybe ye're the gentleman himsel'.' 
 Tait replied, modestly, ' For want of a better, I am.' On 
 which the good old Scot hastened to apologise for his first 
 suspicion of imposture : adding, ' I might have seen you 
 were rather consequential about the legs.' Then he added 
 words of cheer, which Tait said truly were vitally Scotch : 
 * I have a son in London, a lad in a shop ; and he gaed to 
 hear ye preach one day, and was verra weel satisfced.' 
 
 It was during that same visit that one v/as impressed 
 by his odd suspicion of pressmen. A conspicuous London 
 clergyman had written some sketches in a daily newspaper 
 of immense circulation, which had attracted much notice. 
 ' Oh,' said the Archbishop, ' lie s just a reporter! And there 
 an end of him. And though it cannot be recorded, it can- 
 not be forgot, how something condemnatory of the extreme 
 ritual of a well-known London church, awakened a deep 
 but musical voice of remonstrance. No one can say that 
 that house was divided against itself But there was a 
 loving diversity of opinion and of liking, which was quite 
 well understood. The good son Craufurd, early taken, 
 thought the Church of the Future would be ' higher than 
 my Father, lower than my Mother.' And standing b}' the 
 altar in the pretty chapel of a Bishop's house, out oi which 
 a beautiful conservatory opened, the good woman said to 
 the Bishop, ' How convenient for bringing in flowers ! ' 
 The Bishop had no objection. But the Archbishop silently 
 shook his head, though not austerely. 
 
ARCHBISHOP TAIT OF CANTERBURY 109 
 
 Archibald Campbell Tait was born at Harviestoun, in 
 Clackmannanshire, on December 22, 181 1. The family 
 had conformed to the National Kirk ; but the strain was 
 originally Episcopal. The blood was purely Scottish ; and 
 Tait, to the end, was a Scot. Even the accent could never 
 deceive a countryman. I have heard English folk call it 
 English. It was very Scotch indeed. He was well-con- 
 nected, his grandfather being the Scottish Chief Justice. 
 He was the ninth child, and was born club-footed. This 
 was corrected : but not quite : he was ' never a good pro- 
 cessional Bishop.' He was baptized in the drawing-room 
 at Harviestoun, by Dr. MacKnight of the Old Church, 
 Edinburgh : ' a large china vase ' being used on such occa- 
 sions. The Edinburgh house was in Park Place, near the 
 Meadows. His mother, a woman of the sweetest nature, 
 died when Archy was not two years old. The father was 
 a most lovable man ; but it was not from him that Tait 
 inherited his caution. First, the High School of Edinburgh : 
 then the New Academy, an admirable school, in the most 
 unattractive surroundings. Here Tait was head-boy in his 
 year : ' Dux.' At sixteen, to Glasgow College. Under 
 the care of the authoritative but devoted Betty he lived in 
 a lodging in College Street, looking on the grim but solemn 
 facade of the old University buildings, all vanished. I have 
 heard him speak with great feeling of those days. Sir 
 Daniel Sandford was Professor of Greek : a very great man 
 in his day. He died on his birthday : forty. I remember 
 well how startled the Archbishop was when told this. It 
 was suggested that Arnold was but forty-six. But he re- 
 
no MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 plied, ' Ah, in those years a man does the best work of his 
 life.' Professor Buchanan held the Logic Chair : Tait says 
 a man ' without any shining abilities.' Not the ordinary 
 verdict of Glasgow men. Tait worked extremely hard, 
 getting up at 4.30 A.M. He was all his life a pattern of 
 conscientious goodness : like another, he had been ' born 
 before the Fall.' There is a touching little diary, of hard 
 work so long past. But many Glasgow students worked 
 as hard and did not come to anything. James Halley, who 
 died early, and who was terribly handicapped, 'beat Tait' 
 for the Greek Blackstone : but generally they ran a very 
 equal race. Here he attended ' the Ramshorn Kirk,' now 
 known as St. David's. Finally, he got one of the Snell 
 Exhibitions to Oxford : not improbably for the reason he 
 suggests, the hospitalities of his relation at Garscube. The 
 Snell Exhibitions are held at Balliol ; and here Tait, a 
 Tory at Glasgow, gradually turned a Whig. To the end 
 of his life he was for Roman Catholic Emancipation and 
 Endowment. His father, greatly beloved, died while he 
 was at Oxford. In November 1833 he took his B.A. 
 degree : First Class in Classics. Being entirely dependent 
 on his own exertions, he remained at Balliol and took 
 private pupils. But in due time he became Fellow and 
 Tutor of Balliol : and now the struggle of his life was over. 
 He became 'much more of a High Churchman than I 
 was : nor has the Church of Scotland so much of mj' ad- 
 miration as in former times.' Quite naturally, he passed 
 into Anglicanism : being confirmed at Oxford as a )-oung 
 man. And on Trinity Sunday, 1836, he was ordained 
 
ARCHBISHOP TAIT OF CANTERBURY iii 
 
 Deacon on his Fellowship by Bagot, Bishop of Oxford. 
 At once, he set himself to clerical duty in the unattractive 
 Baldon, five miles from Oxford : and, still busy with tutorial 
 work, he served that cure diligently for five years. 
 
 In these early days, he thought of the Moral Philosophy 
 Chair at Glasgow : but more seriously of the Greek, a very 
 considerable prize. I believe that he might have had it, in 
 succession to Sandford. But having taken English orders, 
 he had a difficulty about the University tests, which others 
 did not feel at all. It was the turning-point in his life. 
 Lushington got the Chair, to be succeeded by Jebb, both 
 Senior Classics. Tait's life was to be in England : he 
 determined * to remain an Episcopalian.' Everyone knows 
 how in March 1841 he was one of the Four Tutors who 
 signed the famous letter concerning Tract 90. The letter 
 was written by Tait. And he wrote, with some asperity, of 
 those ' who regard the Kirk of Scotland as the synagogue 
 of Baal.' He very decidedly preferred Anglicanism, both 
 in government and worship : but, to the end, his heart 
 warmed to the Church of his father, if not of his grand- 
 father. In a little while, the ' great door was opened.' 
 Arnold died on Sunday, June 12, 1842. And of eighteen 
 candidates, after long perplexity between the two youngest, 
 Tait and C. J. Vaughan, the decision was made on July 29, 
 and Stanley, who thought no one really fit to take 
 Arnold's place, received ' the awful intelligence of your 
 election.' Tait was inaugurated on Sunday, August 14, 
 Stanley preaching the sermon. He wanted some months 
 of being thirty-one. 
 
112 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 The story henceforth is within living memories. An 
 adequate Head-Master : not a great one. He had the help 
 of a Composition-Master from the first. The present Dean 
 of Westminster (Bradley) says, ' His sermons were some- 
 times really impressive. More than this I can hardly 
 say.' Principal Shairp wrote : ' Tait was certainly b)- no 
 means a born school-master. He had not himself been 
 at an English public-school' And he had to get on with 
 assistant-masters, who thought Arnold's place might be 
 occupied, but never filled. On Midsummer day 1843 Tait 
 was married to Catherine Spooner. * The bright presence 
 of the beautiful young wife ' was outstanding at Rugby, 
 and afterwards. Besides other things, she was quite equal 
 to unravelling the most complicated accounts, which had 
 perplexed trained business-men. And this in the early 
 Spring of 1848, when Tait seemed dying, and dictated his 
 farewell to the Sixth Form. He got better : but it was a 
 relief to all when, in October 1849, he accepted the 
 Deanery of Carlisle : being, as Dean Lake writes, ' a 
 Protestant, with a strong dash of the Presbyterian, to the 
 end.' The Dean adds that in the Rugby of Arnold's 
 memory and of Stanley's biography, ' a little cold water, 
 from time to time, kindly administered, was not without 
 its uses.' And the unexcitable, humorous Scot, was 
 eminently the man to administer it. 
 
 In May 1850 Tait and his household settled in the 
 Deanery at Carlisle. He did much as Dean : but it was 
 his work on the Oxford University Commission which 
 marked him out for elevation by a Liberal Government. 
 
ARCHBISHOP TAIT OF CANTERBURY 113 
 
 In March and April 1856 the awful blow fell, whose story 
 has been touchingly told : Five of six little daughters died 
 of scarlet fever. Between March 10 and April 10 they 
 were laid to rest : and father and mother were never the 
 same again. And on September 17 Tait writes in his 
 diary that he had this morning been offered the See of 
 London: that now (11 A.M.) he was to take an hour of 
 prayer, though ' I have no doubt of accepting the offer.' 
 ' God knows I have not sought it' It might have been as 
 well, in stating the considerations which pointed to Tait, 
 to have omitted some lines which yet recall a savage 
 sentence in the Saturday Reviezu of those days : Who 
 wrote it .'' Some think they know. The Prime Minister 
 was Lord Palmerston. And even the friendly biographers 
 say ' it was indeed a bold step on his part to send Dean 
 Tait to London.' He was consecrated in the Chapel 
 Royal, Whitehall, on November 23, 1856. The well- 
 meaning Lord Shaftesbury was ' alarmed ' by the Bishop 
 appointing Stanley one of his Chaplains. ' The Bishop 
 knows not the gulf he is opening for himself We all 
 know the good man's way. The wonder is that he did 
 not say (as usual with him) that ' thousands and tens of 
 thousands were startled.' But in a fortnight's time he 
 wrote, ' It is all quite right. I have no more apprehensions.' 
 Stability of mind is a fine thing. 
 
 Troubles came, of course. The Divorce Act : Con- 
 fession : St. George's-in-the-East : are ancient history. 
 The open-air preaching : the services in Exeter Hall and 
 in certain theatres : the evening services in Westminster 
 
 I 
 
114 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 Abbey and St. Paul's ; and in Bethnal Green : the Primary 
 Charge, reaching to near five hours, and certainly up to 
 date: the offer in September 1862 of York: are re- 
 membered as of yesterday. The controversy as to Essays 
 and Reviews brought letters from Dr. Temple which must 
 have been very painful to read. Nobody dreamt that 
 Temple was to be Bishop of London himself ' You ought 
 not to make it impossible for a friend to calculate on what 
 you will do. I do not care for your severity, I do care 
 for being cheated.' Then came Bishop Colenso, and 
 Bishop Gray. The question of what was called Ritualism 
 grew warm in i860. All Saints', St. Alban's, St. Peter's, 
 London Docks, became prominent ; and a ' religious ' 
 newspaper spoke of ' that ecclesiastical bully, the Presby- 
 terian-minded Bishop of London, who has shown himself 
 as narrow-minded a bigot and as unchristian a gentleman 
 as ever disgraced a Bishopric' In April 1863 the ' Bishop 
 of London's Fund ' was founded. Through all, the work 
 of the largest diocese in the world went steadily on. And 
 on November 13, 1868, being at Stonehouse, in Thanet, 
 the letter came from Mr. Disraeli which offered the Primacy. 
 The offer was accepted the same afternoon. The circum- 
 stances are quite well known. 
 
 Most readers will acknowledge the wisdom of the 
 part taken both by the Archbishop and the Queen in 
 the difficult matter of Irish Disestablishment. On 
 November 18, 1869, when only fifty-eight, a stroke of 
 paralysis fell, from which his entire recovery was something 
 miraculous. Probably the Church owes the introduction 
 
ARCHBISHOP TAIT OF CANTERBURY 115 
 
 of Suffragan Bishops to so striking an instance of fatal 
 over-work. In the earlier days of the Archbishop's illness, 
 Dr. Temple was appointed Bishop of Exeter, having (as 
 Dr. Pusey averred) ' participated in the ruin of countless 
 souls.' Early in 1872 Lord Shaftesbury besought the 
 Lords to take action against Ritualism : declaring (of 
 course) that ' the fate of the Church of England is 
 trembling in the balance.' But he found it ' hopeless, 
 thankless, and fruitless work to reform Church abomina- 
 tions.' Nothing need be said of the Athanasian Creed, save 
 that Tait was violently abused by some. As little of the 
 Public Worship Regulation Act. At the close of May 1877 
 the Archbishop came to Edinburgh to the funeral of his 
 brother John. He visited the General Assembly, then in 
 session : which rose to receive him. The death of his son. 
 May 25, 1878, was an awful blow: and still heavier that 
 of his wife, who died at Edinburgh on Advent Sunday in 
 the same year. Many know their graves, in Addington 
 Churchyard, side by side : ' Mother and Son.' 
 
 The life of dignified drudgery went on a little longer. 
 It was at the Royal Academy Banquet of 1880 (he wrote 
 his speeches for such occasions) that he said, ' I am sure 
 that the general effect of looking day after day upon a 
 hideous building is debasing — I will not say demoralising.' 
 The words have often been quoted to the end of improving 
 Scottish parish kirks. Tait had no knowledge whatever of 
 music. No man (with an ear) who sat by him in Canter- 
 bury Cathedral while the Litany was sung, will ever forget 
 it. In a loud speaking voice, the Primate produced a 
 
ii6 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 discord which made the nerves tingle. Being at Paris, he 
 ' went almost every day to the Madeleine.' Shade of 
 Lord Shaftesbury ! Then at Lambeth, on just this June 
 day, ' Interviews and business all daylong till I was nearly 
 mad.' On July 23, 1882, the diary says, ' Still alive, but 
 very shaky.' In August he was from Monday to Thursday 
 at Selsdon Park with the Bishop of Winchester, ' alarmingly 
 feeble.' Yet the humour lingered : To a worrying applicant, 
 ' Tell him he is a consummate ass, but do it very kindly.' 
 But he ran down fast : on Sunday, September 3, he 
 thought he was dying. Some weeks more were given in 
 the quiet sick-room at Addington as the days shortened 
 But ' it is better I should go now.' Early on a Saturday 
 morning all were summoned. A separate farewell to 
 each : then the benediction in a steady voice. ' And now 
 it is all over. It isn't so very dreadful after all.' 
 
 He went at seven on Advent Sunday morning. It 
 was on that day, four years since, that his wife had gone 
 before him. He was seventy-two. As Chalmers said of 
 another Primate, ' He had passed through the fire of 
 worldly elevation, and the smell of it had not passed 
 upon him.' It was Archy Tait of Glasgow College that 
 died. 
 
117 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 DEAN STANLEY OF WESTMINSTER* 
 
 ' You could not make Stanley a Bishop : he writes such 
 an abominable hand.' And indeed when in departed years 
 the not infrequent letter came from him, one could but go 
 over it repeatedly and write above each word what perhaps 
 it meant. Then gradually the sense appeared. Little 
 things, we know, may keep a great man back from what 
 he would like : and in the latter years Stanley would have 
 liked to be a Bishop. Doubtless that illegible manuscript 
 came nearer to the question of his fitness for the great 
 office than his incapacity to put on his clothes, the way he 
 cut himself in shaving, the unconsciousness whether he had 
 taken his necessary food, and the awful confusion in which 
 he kept his bedroom. But there were other reasons, as 
 everybody could see. Outsiders naturally think that the 
 greatest men in the Anglican Church should fill its highest 
 places : forgetting that these are places of special and very 
 exceptional work, for which men so illustrious as Dean 
 
 ' The Life and Correspondence of Arthur Pcnrhyn Stanley, D.D., late 
 Dean of Westminster. By Rowland E. Prothero, M.A. , Barrister-at-law, late 
 Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford. With the co-operation and sanction of 
 the Very Rev. G. G. Bradley, D. D., Dean of Westminster. In Two Volumes. 
 London : John Murray, 1S93. 
 
ii8 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 Church, as Stanley, as Liddon, are far less fitted than 
 others who must be placed a thousand miles below them. 
 
 I heard the words : they were said onl)' to myself. I 
 looked at the stern face, which was gazing right on. We 
 were walking, pretty fast, round and round the cloister of 
 St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle : for an hour exactly, 
 on that day of drenching rain. The speaker was the 
 Great Duke's nephew, Dean Wellesley of Windsor : who 
 knew very many strange things, and (now and then) spoke 
 out with a startling freedom. If I durst but record what I 
 have heard that remarkable man say, how these pages would 
 be read ! Yes, and how fiercely what might be written 
 here would be contradicted by divers cautious and sub- 
 servient souls : who would contradict it precisely because 
 they knew it true to the letter and the spirit : not to add 
 the fact, 
 
 I am not to begin my account of Dean Stanley's Life, 
 and of his Biography, by any attempt at an estimate of his 
 character, and of the actual work he did in this world. 
 Many have already essayed to do all this : and, so far 
 as concerns the facts, I do not much disagree with what I 
 have seen said by anybody. Stanley's character was easily 
 read : its lines were very marked : and the man was 
 transparent sincerity. You might like him and approve 
 him or not : it was easy to understand him. He awakened 
 [the keenest possible likes and dislikes. You might think 
 his work in the main a good work : )-ou might think 
 it mischievous and .soul-destroying. Thirt}- }cars since, 
 when I had said something in his praise, a very stupid and 
 
DEAN STANLEY OF WESTMINSTER 119 
 
 illiterate Scotch parson said to me, ' Dean Stanley ! He's 
 a pickpocket. He gets his stipend under false pretences.' 
 A very hidebound and narrow soul once refused to meet 
 him in this house, because he was ' a Latitudinarian.' 
 The religious paper called Christian CJiarity stated that 
 Stanley's teaching led directly to INFIDELITY : so was the 
 word printed, for emphasis sake. Keble and Pusey, saintly 
 and sincere, refused to preach in Westminster Abbey when 
 he was there : thus * coming out and being separate.' The 
 lovable Liddon declined at first : but thought better of it 
 and did preach : of course admirably. The well-meaning 
 Lord Shaftesbury was ' alarmed ' when Bishop Tait made 
 Stanley one of his chaplains : ' The Bishop knows not the 
 gulf he is opening for himself When Temple was made 
 Bishop of Exeter, Dr. Pusey averred that he had ' partici- 
 pated in the ruin of countless souls.' It may be hoped 
 that the good man was mistaken. Who now has a word 
 to say against the decorous and excellent Bishop Temple 
 of London .'' All this is merely the way in which theo- 
 logians express themselves. It was even as my dear old 
 Professor of Divinity, Dr. Hill of Glasgow, lecturing to his 
 students, briefly made an end of a great movement by 
 saying, ' those pestilent publications, the Tracts for the 
 Times.' And it mattered just as much when the saintly 
 Dr. Muir of Edinburgh declared in my hearing at least 
 fifteen times, that to kneel at prayers and stand at praise 
 in the Kirk was of the instigation of the Devil. Long ago, 
 when John Knox in this city spoke of * the Trewth,' he 
 meant his own opinions. And when he spoke of the Popish 
 
I20 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 devils, he meant people who did not agree with him. All 
 these things are outgrown. Had we lived then, and held 
 strong convictions, we should have spoken even so. 
 
 In this room where I write, when I look up from my 
 table I see the eager little figure with the sweet refined 
 earnest face standing before the bright fire which to him 
 was life, and visibly expanding in its warmth. When I 
 close my eyes, I hear the voice flowing on and on, a very 
 torrent of eager speech : uttered where he was sure of 
 sympathy, if not of entire agreement. Tulloch's grand 
 presence is by, and his silent attention. The lovable 
 Huerh Pearson sits in that chair which I can touch : it was 
 always Arthur and HugJi. In writing, it was H. P. I 
 look at these shelves, still here as when he saw them : I 
 behold Stanley eagerly going along one side of the chamber, 
 and saying with great rapidity ' I could begin at one end 
 of these shelves and read on to the other.' Till of a 
 sudden, * No : I stop here : I could not read this.' It was 
 a volume of sermons by Guthrie : to whom, strange to sa}% 
 he never did justice. And indeed on a September Sunday 
 in Edinburgh in 1 862, he ' heard ' two preachers, one Guthrie 
 and the other not : and strongly expressed his preference 
 of the one who in popularity was pretty nearly nowhere in 
 the general estimation. Hugh Pearson was with him all 
 that day : it was that evening that Stanley, in absence of 
 mind, .seized up a piece of buttered toast in his fingers and 
 handed it to Pearson, who received it after a moment's 
 hesitation. It is not from these volumes that the living 
 eager Stanley looks out : but from one's own remembrance 
 
f 
 
 DEAN STANLEY OF WESTMINSTER 121 
 
 of words and looks, greatening and brightening upon one 
 since I took up the pen. One's eyes are dimmed : thinking 
 of the little vanished hand : thinking of the pleasant voice 
 that is still : seeing the beautiful refined face : discerning, 
 plainly as when present, the worn little figure standing in 
 front of that fire, turning from side to side, and pouring 
 out a stream of speech which was entrancing ; and some- 
 times quite incisive enough. Stanley was a lovable saintj_ 
 but there was nothing of the sheepish about him. He 
 could defend himself And he could stand up bravely for 
 any one whom he held to be oppressed and persecuted. 
 
 One remembered Froude's saying, sometimes : that 
 Stanley could be t remendously provoking. Provoking in 
 the same way in which Newman was : just one sharp 
 sentence in a long discourse which pierced somebody to 
 the quick, which reached him where he felt most keenly. 
 It was so in that farewell sermon, when he left Oxford for 
 Westminster. It was in Christchurch Cathedral : he 
 chose the place. He had long been silenced as a preacher 
 in Oxford so far as that might be. And now h e quote d to 
 divers of those outstanding men who ruled the great 
 University the words of Chalmers concerning it : ' You \ 
 have the finest machinery in the world, and you don't 
 know how to use it' It was distinctly presumptuous in 
 Chalmers to say so ; an outsider, speaking in great igno- 
 rance. It was extremely irritating when Stanley repeated 
 it. I vividly recall another occasion, over many years. 
 Dr. Lees of St. Giles' at Edinburgh and I had dined at 
 the Deanery on a Sunday, before a great evening service 
 
122 MEN Ax\D MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 in the Nave at which Stanley was to preach. The long 
 procession entered in all due state : the Choir first, then 
 many clergy : and amid that surpliced train, walked 
 side by side, unvested, the two ministers of the Scottish 
 Kirk. We sat in the line with divers Canons, on chairs 
 arranged in order. I remember yet how the fine old man 
 next me shrank away as from pollution. Had I been a 
 Canon, I should have done exactly the same. To him, 
 after the training of his life, it was even as it would be to 
 me if a Muggletonian, incapable of spelling, were set to 
 preach in the parish church of St. Andrews. Which 
 indeed may quite possibly be after I am gone. But as 
 Stanley told me he once said to John Bright when the 
 great Tribune developed his views as to what was to come 
 of the Church of England, — said with extreme rapidity, — 
 ' I hope I may be dead and buried before that comes.' 
 The view developed was as to the actual method of dis- 
 establishment. All the parish churches were to be put up 
 to auction, and sold to the highest bidder. Then Stanley 
 added, with a ghastly look, ' Think of Westminster Abbey 
 being sold by auction ! ' Two suggestions were made, 
 neither of which pleased him. One, that the Ancient 
 Church would move heaven and earth to get it. Another, 
 that it might be carried away stone by stone and set up 
 again beyond the Atlantic. The serious conclusion was 
 that a national building like the great Abbey would never 
 be sold, but might be mediatised : remain as a grand 
 monument, attached to no religious * body.' As for the 
 parish churches, here for once Liddon felt even as did 
 
DEAN STANLEY OF WESTMINSTER 125 
 
 Stanley. I see the solemn expression with which Liddon 
 said, walking in the still October sunshine amid great trees 
 yet green, ' I don't see how the visible continuity of the 
 Church of England could be maintained if she were 
 stripped of the fabrics.' And indeed whatever Communion 
 possessed the Cathedrals and the parish churches would be 
 in the vulgar estimate the Church of England. I do not 
 know whether or not a most illustrious statesman is of the 
 same mind still concerning that proposed spoliation, as 
 when he said to Liddon in the most fervid tones, ' I would 
 fight with my hands to prevent tJiat ! ' 
 
 Considering how small a place St. Andrews is, it is 
 wonderful how much has of late been written about it. 
 The latest volume is Mr. Andrew Lang's. It had to be 
 bright and charming, coming from that pen : but not every 
 one will quite take in how much vital, weighty, and impor- 
 tant truth is given there in the liveliest fashion, on pages 
 which sparkle and effervesce. But it is good both for 
 places and for persons to meet the occasional taking-down. 
 And St. Andrews is taken-down in these volumes. No 
 doubt we need it. A very friendly and able writer, essen- 
 tially a Londoner, in a most kind review of the present 
 writer, deemed it necessary to admonish him that the 
 death of the greatly-beloved Principal Tulloch did not 
 eclipse the gaiety of nations : and that the world got on 
 perfectly well without the sweet smile of Principal Shairp. 
 I knew it before : knew it perfectly : but those losses made 
 a terrible difference here. Now_JPean Stanley was so. 
 m uch to St. An drews, ' my own St. Andrews,' that it is 
 
124 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 trjHlng to findjiow.j/ery little St. Andrews was to him. 
 The words come back, ' our own University of St. Andrews ' : 
 and indeed he was Lord Rector when he said them : ' I 
 never can work so well as at St. Andrews : there is some- 
 thing here which is not at Westminster, which is not at 
 Oxford.' It is not that there was anything but absolute 
 sincerity in such sayings, and many more : ' I have got 
 into St. Mary's College, and I am happy ' : when housed 
 under Tulloch's roof It is that the intense sy mpa thy 
 which made him at home here, made him equally at home 
 in fifty other places. We could not expect to keep to our- 
 selves the man who knew so many historic cities, so many 
 famous men. And the Kremlin, St Petersburg, Rome, 
 Avignon, Nuremberg, were more by far than our wind- 
 swept ruins. It pleased him to sit in the General 
 Assembly : but it had pleased him incomparably more 
 could he have been at Rome when the Conclave elected a 
 Pope. One never forgets ' There's nothing in the world so 
 interests me as an ecclesiastical curiosity.' Some o fL_us_ 
 here he regarded as approaching to being ecclesiasticaL 
 curiosities. And when he first preached in the parish 
 church here, a brilliant London periodical had the philo- 
 sophy of the case ready. ' Dean Stanley, being tired of the 
 Abbey, is rushing about seeking all sorts of queer pulpits 
 to preach from.' 
 
 Or is it that the authors of these excellent volumes 
 know little or nothing of Scotland : and care even less ? I 
 cannot but think that if Stanley had written his auto- 
 biography, Scotland would have hulked larger: if one may 
 
DEAN STANLEY OF WESTMINSTER 125 
 
 use a horrible church-court phrase, in which, and the Hke 
 of which, Stanley delighted. He held them as wonderful 
 instances of extreme degradation of the language : and 
 having got a list of them from Shairp and myself (Tulloch 
 cautioning us not to give it) he poured them out when 
 presiding at the dinner of the Literary Fund. The bio- 
 graphy is a piece of most faithful work : the man is truly 
 represented here, even to foibles which we never thought 
 foibles. We can remember nothing but good of him. All 
 that is said in these two volumes is right, is fair, is labori- 
 ously accurate. But it must be said : The man does not 
 live and move, hurry about and eagerly talk, start up from 
 his breakfast and forget he has eaten nothing : quite 
 as it used to be. I know what the dignity of such a 
 biography demands : I bow to the better judgment of 
 Mr. Prothero and Dean Bradley : no writer could be more 
 competent than either : and the pen is always restrained 
 by a good taste which never for a moment fails. But still, 
 I look back : I see things through a mist of tears. I walk 
 in these streets, on the Links, beside the weary, bent, slight 
 little figure : Bishop Ryle of Liverpool is just the same 
 age, and they entered Oxford the same day : Would that 
 Stanley could have been given the like stalwart frame ! I 
 see him, just in from a four-miles round on the ' green,' 
 having promised to lie down and rest before dinner where 
 much talking must be, laid hold of by certain devout 
 women, and feebly starting to go out a bit again, looking 
 sadly bent and shaky : it was near the end. I hear the 
 voice, as he looked from the ' Ladies' Links ' on the green 
 
126 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 waves of the famous Bay tumbling in on the sandy beach, 
 
 * Ah, Westminster is very good, but there's nothing like 
 this there ! ' And a Scot likes not to read of ' the Rev. 
 James Caird,' as the great preacher of a preaching Church 
 and country for the last forty years. We call him the 
 Very Rev. John Caird, D.D., LL.D., Principal of the great 
 University of Glasgow. I see Stanley told that wc heard 
 much of Bishop Magec of Peterborough as a pulpit orator : 
 reminded that he had listened to both Caird and Magee at 
 their best : asked how he would place them. I hear the 
 answer, given without hesitation and with extreme fervour : 
 
 * Caird first : and the Bishop second, longo intervallo! Then, 
 preaching for Hugh Pearson in the charming church of 
 Sonning, when the organ was under repair. Service over, 
 H. P. regretted that the music was not so |jood as usual, 
 there being no organ. Then the great Dean, passing by 
 the pipeless case, ' Bless me ! Neither there is. I had never 
 remarked it.' It was driving from Twyford to Sonning 
 Vicarage that Stanley met what greatly pleased him. He 
 was just married. Lady Augusta and her maid were 
 inside the fly, and Stanley had climbed to the box beside 
 the driver. ' I see you have got Lady Augusta Bruce 
 inside,' said the friendly Jehu : ' I used to be at Windsor, 
 and knew about her there.' Said the Dean, ' Not Lady 
 Augusta Bruce now : Lady Augusta Stanley. She's my 
 wife.' To which the driver replied, with unsinuiiatcd 
 heartiness, 'Then, sir, I wish you joy. You have got about 
 the best woman in the world.' It may here be recorded 
 that the pulpit whence Stanle\' had descended on that day 
 
DEAN STANLEY OF WESTMINSTER 127 
 
 without an organ, drew forth one austere remark from 
 Bishop Blomfield of London. ' So you have got a stone 
 pulpit,' he said to Pearson. ' I don't like it. I prefer 
 a wooden pulpit. In most cases, it is much liker the 
 preacher.' 
 
 I have seen many photographs of Stanley, but that at 
 the beginning of the Biography is quite the worst I ever 
 saw. It is singularly unfortunate. It gives the idea of a 
 much larger man. And it has a fixed, stony look which is 
 far indeed from the mobile, ever-changing face we knew. 
 Of course, the features are there : but a stranger would 
 never guess how refined, how small they were, I have 
 seen Stanley, for a minute or two, look like that : two or 
 three times of the hundreds in which I have watched him 
 intently. Not in the pulpit of the Abbey did he look so 
 grave. Once, perhaps, sitting before a great fire in the 
 vestry of the parish church before going to preach, I saw 
 that look, and thought it strange. But even then, the face 
 was half the size which is here suggested. 
 
 ' I should have been a dull, heavy, stupid son of a 
 Cheshire squire, one of a sluggish race, but that my grand- 
 father married a clever lively Welshwoman ' : we have 
 heard these words more than twice or thrice. When 
 Arthur Penrhyn Stanley was born on December 13, 181 5 
 his father, afterwards known as Bishop of Norwich, was 
 Rector of Alderley : son of Sir John Thomas Stanley, who 
 in 1839 became the first Lord Stanley of Alderley. The 
 biography tells us that the future Dean was christened 
 Arthur, ' mainly, doubtless, in honour of the hero of 
 
128 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 Waterloo, whose name was at that time on all men's lips : 
 partly, perhaps, like the first-born of the first Tudor King, 
 in memory of his Welsh ancestry.' But this is a bit of 
 imaginative history : some here know better than that. In 
 this house, I have heard him say to a little boy, ' If I tell 
 you I was born in the second half of 1815, can you tell me 
 why I am called Arthur .'' ' There was but the one reason 
 known to himself In September 1824 he was sent to a 
 preparatory school at Seaforth, a quiet hamlet on the 
 Mersey, taught by Mr. Rawson the parish clergyman. He 
 was bright and clever : but he could not learn arithmetic. 
 The biographer docs not know, what I have heard Stanley 
 say, that Mr. Rawson declared that Arthur was the 
 stupidest boy at figures who ever came under his care, 
 save only one, who was yet more hopeless : being unable 
 to grasp simple addition and multiplication. But while 
 Stanley remained unchanged to the end, the other boy was 
 to develop a mastery of arithmetic altogether phenomenal. 
 He was to be the great Finance Minister of after years, Mr. 
 Gladstone : the Chancellor of the Exchequer who could 
 make a Budget speech enchaining. The future Premier 
 was a good deal Stanley's senior, but they met. The boy's 
 judgment is, ' He is so very good-natured, and I like him 
 very much.' Stanley had no ear for music ; and no sense 
 of smell. The latter implies the almost utter absence of 
 the sense of taste. I see and hear him at Tulloch's dinner- 
 table, when some mention was made (by one ignorant of 
 the facts) of a great man who lacked power of smelling, 
 vehemently tapping his nose, and exclaiming, '//ic/r, here!' 
 
DEAN STANLEY OF WESTMINSTER 129 
 
 He told how once in his Hfe, driving through a fragrant 
 pinewood in the Alps after a shower, he had what he 
 supposed must be the sense of smell for just half an hour : 
 ' It made the world like Paradise.' And indeed, any who 
 were allowed to penetrate into retired nooks in the Deanery 
 in departed days, were well assured that its master had 
 not that sense. If he had possessed it, the sanitary 
 arrangements would have been seen to, and the Dean 
 would not have died when and how he did. It is terrible 
 to think that the beautiful little face was not recognisable 
 when it was hidden for ever. Hugh Pearson was not 
 allowed to see it. Not that it mattered. As Samuel 
 Rutherford said, dying, 'Glory dwelleth in Immanuel's 
 land.' And the old friends have long since met There. 
 
 When at Seaforth, the boy was taken to a three hours' 
 missionary meeting at Liverpool, hard by. At the end 
 of it ' I felt rather sick, and had to go out.' I thought of 
 the day on which I went with him to hear a Privy 
 Council judgment. We were in what he called ' the dress 
 circle ' : but after an hour of Lord Chancellor Cairns : ' I 
 can't stand any more of this : Come away.' It was 
 pleasant, going from the Deanery to Downing Street, to 
 see all the cabmen, and a host of others, take off their 
 hats to him. And thus early in the bo\''s life began those 
 travels which to the last were such a delight and rest. 
 Well I remember, going away from St. Andrews, the last 
 words in the railway carriage, ' Travelling tires one in 
 body, but it is such an unspeakable refreshment of mind.' 
 But he went on, to a friend who was going abroad, * I 
 
 K 
 
I30 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 don't care a bit for snowy Alps : give me a historic 
 German city ! ' 
 
 All the world may rejoice that he went to Rugby : 
 not to Eton as the young Gladstone advised. On 
 the last day of January 1829 he entered the school he 
 was to make famous. And though Arnold was a great 
 and good man, there can be no doubt who made him a 
 hero to all who read the English tongue. ' I certainly 
 should not have taken him for a Doctor. He was very 
 pleasant and did not look old.' Stanley rose like a rocket 
 to every kind of eminence : always excepting his ' sums.' 
 With transparent delight he gained prize after prize. But 
 he had no capacity for games. Still his great talents, and 
 his entire amiability, secured him respect : ' prevented all 
 annoyance.' Here is a glimpse : 
 
 ' When after reciting his beautiful prize poem, " Charles 
 Martel," he returned from Arnold's chair so loaded with 
 prize books that he could hardly carry them, his face 
 radiant, yet so exquisitely modest, and free from all conceit, 
 that we outsiders all rejoiced at little Stanley's successes.' 
 
 Then he was elected a scholar of Balliol. And Arnold 
 told the boys that Stanley had not only got everything 
 he could at Rugby, but had already gained high honour 
 for the school at the University. Soon after going to 
 Oxford, the future Broad Churchman appears in an earnest 
 letter to his confidant C. J. Vaughan : whom it is enough 
 to name : 
 
 ' Alas that a Church that has so divine a service should 
 keep its long list of Articles ! I am strengthened more 
 
DEAN STANLEY OF WESTMINSTER 131 
 
 and more in my opinion, that there is only needed, that 
 there only should be, one : viz. / believe that Christ is 
 both God a7td man! 
 
 And he writes to his friend Lake of an acquaintance 
 among the freshmen : 
 
 ' A good type of his class apparently, who quotes the 
 Articles as scripture, the Church as infallible. I went out 
 a walk with him the other day : suddenly a look of horror 
 appeared on his face. " I did not know such a thing was 
 tolerated in Oxford," pointing to a notice on the wall. 
 I imagined it to be "something dreadful": It was an 
 innocent To the Chapel. " Oh," said I, " you mean the 
 Dissenting Chapel." " Yes, how could it have been 
 built here .? I wonder they did not pull it down long 
 ago."' 
 
 That youth was just as tolerant as great John Knox 
 himself. 
 
 But no attempt shall be made here to sketch that life. 
 There is not space : and such as would follow the history 
 will read, with profound interest, every sentence of the 
 biography. It grows always brighter and better as it 
 goes on. And it is written with entire sympathy : which 
 does not imply entire agreement. Mr, Prothero's theory 
 of things is probably about as near to Stanley's as Hugh 
 Pearson's was : as is the humble writer's. But who 
 could know the man, and not love him .' 
 
 In due time, First-Class at Oxford. And his famous 
 prize-poem, 'The Gypsies.' Soon beginning to chafe at 
 subscription : specially dreading the damnatory clauses 
 
132 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 of the Athanasian Creed. Some of us remember how, 
 long after, he laughed like a mischievous schoolboy over 
 a foot-note he had appended to an account of the Greek 
 Archbishop of Syra taking part in a consecration in the 
 Abbey. ' It is interesting to remember that this excellent 
 person, not holding the Double Procession of the Holy 
 Ghost, according to the Athanasian Creed, without doubt 
 shall perish everlastingly.' And he writes to H. P., in 1841, 
 ' I have read No. 90, and almost all its consequences. The 
 result clearly is, that Roman Catholics may become 
 members of the Church and Universities of England, 
 which I for one cannot deplore.' 
 
 He was ordained by the Bishop of Oxford, after some 
 hesitation on his own part. In 1846, after he had become 
 his father's chaplain, he writes of an ordination in which 
 he had taken part in Norwich Cathedral : 
 
 ' A heart-rending sight, half prose, half poetry, half 
 Protestant, half Catholic : an impressive ceremony with 
 its meaning torn away : a profession, really of some 
 importance, and claiming to be of the highest, dislocated 
 from its place in society.' 
 
 I have heard him tell the story of his first sermon, in 
 a village church near Norwich. Two old women, after 
 service. The first, ' Well, I do feel empty-like.' The 
 other, ' And so do I. That }'oung man did not give us 
 much to feed on.' Assuredl)- he did not preach ' a rich 
 gospel.' 
 
 One does not mind about Stanley being known by at 
 least four pet names. But it startles, to find the serious 
 
DEAN STANLEY OF WESTMINSTER 133 
 
 Tait, after his historic condemnation of Tract 90, addressed 
 as Belvedere and i>iy dear Greis. An unlucky associa- 
 tion brings back Goldsmith's ' I am known as their agree- 
 able Rattle. Rattle is not my real name, but one I'm 
 known by.' It is to be confessed that after he was Arch- 
 bishop, I have heard him called Potato. But that was 
 by a very high churchman, who held him as little better 
 than a Presbyterian. 
 
 Nothing need be said of Arnold's death, in June 1842, 
 nor of the famo us Life. * I have written just two books, 
 which really made an impression,' one has heard him say. 
 The other, of course, was Sinai and Palestine. When 
 Tait was elected Arnold's successor, Stanley was in deep 
 despondency as to the sufficiency of his scholarship. 
 During the Hampden controversy, Stanley wrote to his 
 sister in defence of Bishop Wilberforce's action. Stanley 
 did not think it wise, but he thought it sincere. And 
 the significant words occur, ' any act of undoubted 
 sincerity in him is worth ten times as much as it would 
 have been in another person.' Somehow, one would not 
 like to be defended in that particular way. On a Sunday 
 evening in 1847 Stanley preached in the College Chapel, 
 with the unfortunate drawback of having a glove on his 
 head : being quite unaware of the fact. Very like the 
 inaccurate genius who would date a letter the wrong month 
 of the wrong year. 
 
 In the autumn of 1849 Stanley's father died : curiously 
 at Brahan Castle, near Dingwall. Dean Hinds of Carlisle 
 was appointed Bishop of Norwich, and Stanley was offered 
 
134 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 the Deanery of Carlisle. He was not yet thirty-four. 
 Had he accepted, it would have changed the course of 
 another life. Tait was glad to leave Rugby for Carlisle. 
 Had Stanley been there, it is quite certain that Tait's five 
 children could not have died from the poisonous drains of 
 the Deanery : in which case Tait would not have been 
 thought of for the Bishopric of London, and the history 
 of the Church of England might have been different. 
 ' The real attraction ' of the Canterbury canonr}-, in 1851, 
 was that it made a home for his mother and sister. Swat 
 and Palestine appeared in March 1856. 'Nothing I have 
 ever written has so much interested and instructed me in 
 the writing.' The success was instant and immense. But 
 the saintly Keble felt called to testify. Yet Stanley 
 testified in favour of the Christian Year, when a ' rabid 
 Protestant ' declared it was of ' very improper tendency.' 
 * I confess my blood boils at such fiendish folly and 
 stupidity.' In August 1856 he was at Dumfries, and 
 \isited the beautiful churchyard of Kirkpatrick-Irongray, 
 where Jeanie Deans lies under a monument erected by Sir 
 Walter. It is a covenanting region, and Stanley was 
 greatly interested. In those days the writer was incumbent 
 of that parish: but he did not meet Stanley till 1862. 
 At this time it was put about that Stanley was to be Bishop 
 of London : but every one knows that in September 1856 
 Tait was appointed. It was a curious sight to sec men in 
 the New Club at Edinburgh shaking hands enthusiasti- 
 cally, and exclaiming, ArcJiy Tait a Bisliop ! Stanley soon 
 became Professor of Church History at Oxford. ' How 
 
DEAN STANLEY OF WESTMINSTER 135 
 
 many letters of congratulation do you suppose I have 
 received from residents in Oxford? One from Jowett, and 
 — not one beside ! ' Dr. Pusey, ' loving him personally,' 
 was constrained to point out that his views tended to 
 unbelief. Stanley replied in courteous terms, that many 
 good souls believed that Pusey's views tended to some- 
 thing in their judgment nearly as bad. I remember 
 Stanley saying that when he became Dean of Westminster, 
 the letters of congratulation reached 600. A good many 
 came from Scotland. But his really intimate friends were 
 few. ' From Hugh Pearson or Professor Jowett he had 
 no secrets.' Indeed to people far below these he some- 
 times told strange and intimate things not to be repeated. 
 But not one of them, though published ever so widely, 
 would diminish the reverence and love in which he was held 
 by all who really knew him. Surely he had not ' verified 
 his quotation ' when he wrote, ' Trust in the Lord, as 
 Cromwell said, and keep your temper dry.' 
 
 The story of Essays and Rcvieivs is fully given. No 
 one has ever related how the book came to be at all. I re- 
 member well how John Parker the younger told me that 
 when the scries of Oxford and Cambridge Essays which 
 that house published came to a close, they had two or three 
 essays on hand, paid for. So instead of casting them 
 aside, old Mr. Parker thought they might as well get a few 
 more, and make up a volume. This was done. The out- 
 cry was tremendous. But it sold the book as the Oxford 
 Essays never sold. The tour in the East with the Prince 
 of Wales came early in 1862. During it, his beloved 
 
136 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 mother died. That September, Stanley and Pearson 
 came to Edinburgh. And here the writer had the in- 
 estimable privilege of making Hugh Pearson's acquaint- 
 ance. Never on this earth was there a more lovable 
 man. And it was always most touching to see the friends 
 together. 
 
 In November 1863, Stanley was offered the Deanery of 
 Westminster. Dr. Wordsworth, afterwards Bishop of 
 Lincoln, and the most conscientious of men, preached 
 against the appointment from the pulpit of the Abbey. 
 Dean and Canon were to become warm friends. On 
 December 23, in Westminster Abbey, Stanley was married 
 to Lady Augusta Bruce. Nothing can be said of that lady 
 better than she deserved. It was the happiest of all mar- 
 riages. Not long after, he came to Edinburgh and gave 
 two lectures in the Music Hall on Solomon. Substantially 
 they are to be found in his Jewish CJiwrJi. A great 
 crowd listened. A worthy Philistine stated that they were 
 about as good as Kitto's Bible Readings. In the waiting- 
 room, before the lecture, Stanley was talking to the writer, 
 when a bright cheery youth, wearing the kilt, came tearing 
 in, and (morally) embraced the Dean enthusiastically. It 
 was Prince Alfred, then abiding for a space in Holyrood. 
 He sat next Stanley, on a crowded platform : and hearty 
 applause followed when the Dean said Solomon was ' like 
 our own Alfred ' : turning round in a marked wa)' to the 
 youth. On this visit, Stanley and his wife stayed with Mr. 
 Erskine of Linlathen in Charlotte Square. And the Dean 
 made the acquaintance of a good many outstanding 
 
DEAN STANLEY OF WESTMINSTER 137 
 
 ministers of the Kirk : hardly any of whom had taken the 
 trouble of attending his lectures. One remarked, when 
 ushered into a drawing-room, he gave his name as Doctor 
 Stanley. It was now that leaving our house. Dr. Grant of 
 St. Mary's said to the beloved Dr. Hunter of the Tron 
 Kirk of Edinburgh, ' Well, what do you think of the Dean ? ' 
 Dr. Hunter was about a head less in stature than Stanley. 
 But drawing himself up with old-fashioned dignity, he re- 
 plied, ' A most charming man ; but somewhat deficient in 
 personal presence ! ' His ' Lectures on the History of the 
 Church of Scotland,' delivered in Edinburgh, caused great 
 diversity of opinion. Which has to be. 
 
 Mr. Prothero gives, briefly, Stanley's dream of being 
 elected Pope. Some of us have repeatedly heard Stanley 
 tell it at greater length, and in a varied version. I think I 
 can recall it, nearly letter-perfect. Speaking with great 
 rapidity : 
 
 ' I don't usually attach any consequence to dreams : but 
 this was remarkable. When I learnt that I had been 
 elected Pope, I was in great perplexity. Not at all whether 
 I should accept or not ; I had no difficulty about that ; but 
 what name I should take. I thought of several, but I could 
 not please myself. Hugh Pearson could not help me. So 
 I thought I would go down to the Athenaeum, and consult 
 Jacobson, Bishop of Chester. Do any of you know 
 Jacobson ? Well, if you did, you would know that he is 
 the man that everybody goes to in perplexity ; the most 
 cautious of men. He said, I should take it as a great com- 
 pliment if you would take my name : William. Why not ? 
 
138 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 Somehow, it would not do. So I thought I should go 
 away to Rome, and see about things there. Forthwith, 
 with the rapidity of a dream, I found myself drawing near 
 to Rome : walking along the Flaminian Way. As I came 
 near the gate, a great procession came forth, to welcome 
 the new Pope. Then I suddenly remembered that in the 
 hurry of coming away from home, I had wrapped the 
 blanket of my bed round me : and that it was exactly the 
 colour which no Pope can wear until he is fully installed in 
 office. I was in great agony. For I thought to myself, 
 these people will think it most presumptuous in me to wear 
 that colour when I have no right to it. But, on the other 
 hand, I could not cast the blanket off, for I had not another 
 stitch of raiment about me. Driven to this extremity, of 
 course I awoke.' 
 
 The Papacy had somehow an extraordinary interest for 
 Stanley. Well I remember his saying : 
 
 ' My great wish in this life is to be Pope. Then I should 
 call a General Council. I should say, " Am I infallible? " 
 " Yes." " Is whatever I say certainly true ? " " Yes." 
 "Then the first use I make of my infallibility is to declare 
 that I am not infallible : that no Pope ever was infallible : 
 that the Church has fallen into many grievous errors, and 
 stands in great need of a Reformation.'" 
 
 When I related this to good Bishop Wordsworth, he 
 answered with a solemn face, ' Yes, and that night the Pope 
 would get a cup of coffee, and he would fall asleep and 
 never awake.' Another suggestion was made. When 
 Stanley had .spoken the words, a sudden loud outcry would 
 
DEAN STANLEY OF WESTMINSTER 139 
 
 be raised by those nearest, ' The Pope is taken ill : he has 
 gone mad ! ' A rush would be made upon him ; he would 
 be swept out of the Council ; and next day it would be an- 
 nounced that he was dead. But it is quite unnecessary to 
 discuss the steps which would practically be taken. 
 
 Long before, while still a Professor, Stanley and H. P. 
 had a private interview with Pius IX. I would I had 
 space to relate the details : they are most interesting and 
 strange. One only is given in the Life : How the Pope 
 said Dr. Pusey was like a church-bell : ' He induces others 
 to enter the Church, but he stays outside himself And 
 coming forth, Stanley's first words to Pearson were, ' Well, 
 that infallible man has made more stupid mistakes in 
 twenty minutes, than I ever heard any mortal make 
 before.' 
 
 I am not to say a word of his sermons and speeches at 
 St. Andrews : for I have told the story elsewhere, though 
 only about half Very true is Mr. Prothero's word of 
 Stanley's visit to the scene of the murder of Archbishop 
 Sharp (never Shairp) at Magus Muir. I know that well, 
 for I took him there. How solemnly he took it all ! ' It's 
 an awful name. Magus Muir. Great part of the horror of 
 the story comes of the name.' The Laird asked Stanley 
 to write an inscription for the rude pyramid he put up to 
 mark the spot. But the inscription was too ' Broad ' for 
 old Mr. Whyte Melville. For it was equally complimentary 
 
 ' Dean Stanley at St. Andj-ews : published in Fraser's Magazine, and now 
 Chap. VIII. in the Recreations of a Country Parson. Third Series. Also in 
 the two volumes Twenty-Jive Years of St. Andrews, passim. 
 
140 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 to the murdered Archbishop, and to the conscientious and 
 devout souls who murdered him. 
 
 The year 1874 saw Stanley's culmination. In the 
 words of Archbishop Tait, ' No clergyman, perhaps, who 
 ever lived, exercised over the public at large, and especially 
 over the literary and thoughtful portion of it, so fascinating 
 an influence.' 
 
 His wife's death, on 'the Day of Ashes' in 1876, 
 changed all this world. Yet even after that, he could be 
 very bright and gay. Well I remember going with him 
 round Henry VH.'s Chapel, how the eager flow of speech 
 stopped, and he silently pointed to her resting-place, and 
 turned away. Also how, going into the Abbey to preach, 
 he got with great speed into his surplice (' I don't believe 
 Stanley ever possessed a cassock,' were the words of an 
 eminent friend), and entering his library with a solemn face, 
 he silently patted the bust on its cheek, and then signed to 
 me to follow him. When he went to preach elsewhere he 
 carried ' The Order ' with him in an old newspaper. There 
 is no doubt, he got downhearted about his work. I have 
 heard the words which are recorded, * Everything I do is 
 sure to fail. The public have ceased to read or listen to 
 anything 1 can tell them.' Yet at a meeting of the C.C.C. 
 Society in the Deanery, he was at his very brightest, on the 
 beautiful evening of Monday, May 30, 1S81, that day seven 
 weeks that he died. Now and then, his spirits were up- 
 roarious. He uttered cries of approval of a paper read by 
 one who could not agree with him in everything. As it 
 grew towards midnight, I took Dean Stanley's hand for 
 
DEAN STANLEY OF WESTMINSTER 141 
 
 the last time. 'Yes, I'll preach for you on a Sunday in 
 August, if you will put me up for a few days.' These were 
 the final words I heard him say. 
 
 Hugh Pearson wrote, ' He passed away in perfect peace 
 — two long sighs, and not the slightest movement of the 
 head or hand. There was no suffering throughout, thank 
 God ! ' 
 
 And H. P., soon to follow, added : 
 
 ' What can one look forward to in the future for the 
 Church without him .'' For myself the light is gone out 
 of life.' 
 
 But the days of mourning are ended ; and we recall life- 
 like little details with a smile. How he enjoyed the letter 
 which came to him after the figures were set up in the 
 reredos at the Abbey, which began : T/iou miserable idolater I 
 Not less cheering was another communication, assuming a 
 poetic form, which began : ' In old Cockaigne did Liddon 
 Khan, A stately preaching-house decree.' Then the day 
 on which Archbishop Tait, having written out a telegram 
 at a country office, was addressed : * And wha may ye be 
 that tak' this cognomen .'' ' The Dean related the story at 
 a bishops' dinner at Lambeth ; but could elicit no more 
 from the cautious Primate than ' A vety good story.' Bits 
 of observation : ' I never walk along a street in an English 
 town without seeing some name on a sign -board which I 
 never saw before.' This, in contrast with Scotland, where 
 the same surname of old served a county. Nothing pleased 
 him more, preaching at St. Andrews, than when an old 
 woman with a huge umbrella joined herself to the little 
 
142 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 procession entering the church, and walked a long time 
 close behind the Dean. ' It could not have happened in 
 Westminster Abbey.' In graver mood, writing of a visit 
 to St. Andrews : ' I am grateful to have a record of days so 
 delightful ' : the absence of the incomparable wife being 
 ' the one shadow deepening and darkening over what else 
 would have been unmixed happiness.' 
 
143 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 HUGH PEARSON 
 
 A LITTLE memoir of Hugh Pearson was printed, and sent 
 to his friends. It is somewhere in this room, but I cannot 
 find it to-day. I do not need it for my present purpose. 
 I wish to show the greatly-loved man I knew. If I had 
 found the volume, I should have turned it over, and then 
 shut it and laid it aside, and written from my own memory 
 and heart. While I live, I shall vividly remember the 
 face and the voice, many looks and many sentences. I 
 close my eyes and I see him : sitting in a large chair which 
 I have just touched with this long quill. The days were 
 in which I used to say to m}'self, over and over, Principal 
 Tulloch is dead: not being able to take it in. It was 
 exactly so when Hugh Pearson died. 
 
 I know well that all the hours I spent with him were 
 but a very little part of that honoured and helpful life. 
 But they were quite enough to leave with me, for ever, the 
 clearest idea of the manner of man he was. It is a very 
 loving estimate of a man as true, kind, lovable, devout, as 
 ever lived. It did one good to be near him. I fancy it 
 is theologically certain that every human being must from 
 time to time do wrong. I cannot remember that Hugh 
 
144 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 Pearson ever did wrong at all. Always wise : always good : 
 always kind. No wonder that the biographer could say 
 that from Pearson {and just one other, Jowett) Arthur 
 Stanley had no secrets at all. Some of us, far below 
 Stanley, could have told Pearson anything. 
 
 It all comes vividly back, this Spring morning : from 
 the first bright look at Edinburgh in August 1862, more 
 than thirty-one years ago : through pleasant Sonning, 
 which to me was always a glimpse of Paradise : Stanley 
 used to say that Sonning church and vicarage were the 
 ideal English church and parsonage, and Pearson the ideal 
 English parson : then days in this house, red-letter days. 
 Above all, a day comes back, a sad day. Pearson had his 
 little individual ways. One was that he would come to 
 stay at a friend's house, without giving any notice. He 
 was ever far more than welcome. One August day, after 
 a long lonely journey (which I think made him feel rather 
 desolate), he came to this door : it was his first visit to St. 
 Andrews. He made sure he was at home : knowing what 
 a welcome awaited him here. But the faithful domestic 
 who had stayed behind to see the house shut up had to 
 tell him that we had all gone off that morning to Perth- 
 shire for six weeks. She told us that she had never seen a 
 man so knocked down. I know the smile of anticipation 
 that was on the face when he came to our door. But he 
 asked if he might come into this study : and he rested here 
 a little and then departed. The moment I heard, I wrote 
 begging him to come to us where we were : but it took days 
 before he got my letter, and he was back in ICngland. 
 
HUGH PEARSON 145 
 
 Then, years after, the last sight of all of the kind face, sit- 
 ting beside him as he read the Lessons one morning in St. 
 George's Chapel at Windsor. How he enjoyed the stately 
 worship of that magnificent church ! When appointed a 
 Canon of Windsor, he wrote, ' You know cathedral service 
 is everything to me.' For twenty years his father was Dean 
 of Salisbury : and amid such surroundings Hugh Pearson 
 grew up, and there his ecclesiastical tastes were formed. 
 They never left him. And though he was Stanley's dearest 
 friend, the type of churchmanship was not quite the same. 
 Well I remember, walking about with him at Sonning, his 
 saying sorrowfully of a bright youth who had become 
 quite too Broad, ' His faith is a wreck.' But he passed 
 rapidly from sorrowful thoughts : and pointing up to a 
 beautiful change he had made on the vicarage since my 
 last visit, he said, ' A Nuremberg window.' He felt sad 
 things deeply : I have seen the face look very sorrowful : 
 but he thought it morbid to dwell on such, if one could 
 righteously escape them. 
 
 There arc two volumes in this room, greatly prized. A 
 little one, bound in purple (he minded these things), called 
 Hymns for the Services of the Church. No Editor's name 
 is on the title-page. But there is a Preface, signed H. P., 
 and dated Sonning, Advent, 1867. The other volume is a 
 vellum-bound In Menioriain : which bears ' In memory of 
 Hugh Pearson, from his Brother W. H. Jcrvis.' The date 
 is December 9, 1882. On the evening of a Sunday in this 
 Lent, I turned over many letters which had been carefully 
 tied up ; all beginning ' My dear A. K. H. B.,' all ending 
 
 L 
 
146 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 ' Ever affectionately yours, H. P.' Alas, there is one, written 
 on January 7, 1882, whose last words are ' I am most 
 thankful that 1881 is gone : I breathe more freely.' One 
 has known the feeling of being thankful that a trying year 
 was past : hoping something better. But the end was 
 drawing near. Only three months remained : and I have 
 heard him say that he was so interested in the progress 
 of the Church and world that he would like to be allowed 
 to watch them for a few more years. On Easter Day, 
 April 9, 1 882, he was at early Communion : and he preached 
 at evening service, telling the people it was his fortieth 
 Easter Day at Sonning. On Thursday in that week he died. 
 
 If you preserve only letters of special interest, it is a 
 pathetic thing to untie a little bundle after a very few years. 
 There, along with that prophetic letter from H. P., is the 
 large round hand of Bishop Phillips Brooks : the clear 
 beautiful writing of Liddon : the hand, singularly like it, of 
 Dean Church of St. Paul's : the wonderful caligraphy of 
 Stanley : the scholarly writing of Froude, not always easily 
 read : the clear page, legible as print, of Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes : two letters from historic Edgewood, signed Donald 
 G. Mitchell; whose Reveries of a Bachelor so reached the 
 youthful heart ; and the solitary letter which ever reached 
 this house of the charming Rector of Bishopsgate, that 
 Rogers whose name has such affinity to theological science. 
 
 I never can forget my first sight of Hugh Pearson : the 
 extreme brightness of his look, and the cordiality of his 
 greeting. Stanley and he had come to Edinburgh ; and 
 on the evening of Saturday, August 30, they dined with Dr. 
 
HUGH PEARSON 147 
 
 Crawford, the Professor of Divinity. The day before we 
 had come back from England, where we had spent that 
 August of 1862 : and in the house of Sir Frederick Pollock 
 I had met Stanley for the first time. He said he was soon 
 to be in Edinburgh, and would come and see us : all we 
 knew of Pearson was that he was an English clergyman, 
 and a great friend of Stanley's. Three hours that evening 
 I listened to Stanley's talk : and Pearson's was just as in- 
 teresting. They wished to come to church next morning : 
 and our one Sunday in Edinburgh, passing from Devon- 
 shire to the Clyde (for August and September were holiday 
 then) was happily theirs too. I took to Pearson that da}', 
 as I never had taken to any other man, save only Bishop 
 Thorold of Winchester. Stanley might be the more 
 famous man : Pearson was the more charming. I do not 
 presume to say that Pearson took to me unworthy : but, 
 as matter of fact, he often told me that he did. I shrink 
 from anything that looks presumptuous : for within these 
 few days an anonymous soul, writing to me, with incredible 
 bitterness, a letter of an abusive character, declared that he 
 does not believe that I ever spoke to even one of the 
 eminent men of whom I have made mention on various 
 printed pages. So I fear I have unintentionally rubbed 
 that kindly Christian the wrong way. And it would be 
 vain to assure him that he is mistaken. In any case he is 
 thorough. He reminded mc of a charitable old man who 
 declared aloud in my hearing, he knowing that I was a son 
 of the manse, that ' there was not a minister of the Kirk of 
 Scotland who would give up a plate of pudden or a 
 
148 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 tummler of toddy to save the souls of all the people in his 
 parish.' I was but a lad : but I plucked up courage and 
 uttered an outspoken reply. 
 
 It was that evening that Pearson said to me, Stanley 
 liaving expressed some disapproval of Bishop Wilberforce 
 of Oxford, ' You may speak of him as you like : but he is 
 the show man of the Church of England ! ' I remember 
 too, ' Like all the Wilberforces, he has the gift of sympathy.' 
 Yet Pearson was anxious that we should understand that the 
 Bishop was not a mere mass of geniality : he could show his 
 teeth upon occasion : which I suppose is still needful in this 
 world that a man may be respected. The idea is some- 
 times simply brought out by simple folk. A presumptuous 
 bagman, entering a coach drawn by a horse along a little 
 line of rails up to a Perthshire village, said, in depreciatory 
 tone, ' A very innocent railway.' ' No that Ennocent,' said 
 the driver with much indignation : ' No that Ennocent : 
 we kellt a man ! ' There was a proper pride, too. 
 
 The record of the day says ' Stanley ; and a Mr. 
 Pearson, Rector of a parish in Berkshire : a most pleasant 
 man.' Ah, how well read they showed themselves to be, 
 both of them, in certain volumes by a young Scotch 
 minister concerning which his revered Seniors in the Kirk, 
 specially those of them who ministered to empty pews, 
 kept a silence as of the grave : broken only b\- the 
 occasional word of oblique condemnation. ' Not a credi- 
 table book from such a quarter ' : I have known. And I 
 remember well when it was said that Tlie Recreations of 
 a Country Parson was a rowdy, slangy, and Bohemian 
 
HUGH PEARSON 149 
 
 title such as no clergyman could decently use. So we 
 came away. In those days I had a deep veneration for the 
 great Church of England : which extraordinary kindness 
 experienced from its clergy of all degrees converted to a 
 warmer feeling. But I think I may say that Thorold, 
 Stanley, and Pearson, were the first of their order who held 
 out a warm hand to me. 
 
 Sunday morning was dull and dark. In August and 
 September the New Town congregations of Edinburgh 
 are scattered : and I was sorry that St. Bernard's, usually 
 quite as full as it could hold, must be ' thin ' : save for 
 tourists. These, in my latter years, quite made up for the 
 absent flock. Further, the Choir, which was amateur, did 
 not sing on these holiday Sundays. Scotland has greatly 
 changed in church matters. The afternoon congregation 
 now has dried up, as in England : but at that period, the 
 great service was the afternoon. For that, one's sermon 
 was fully written out : and read. But in the morning the 
 discourse was extempore : that is, one had sketched on a 
 single page the line of thought, but trusted to the moment 
 for the words. I never had varied this usage in the three 
 years I had been in Edinburgh : and though on Saturday 
 night the thought had crossed me that one should give a 
 prepared sermon to so great a man as Stanley, I resolved 
 that he must take his chance. I did not know then that 
 he was to hear me often enough, when I had done my best. 
 Stanley and Pearson were apparent, in the body of the 
 church : but after service, to my astonishment, Kingsley 
 walked into the vestry with them, looking very bright and 
 
I50 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 alert. The Oxford and Cambridge Professors, to their 
 surprise, had met on the steps of that Scottish kirk. Be- 
 holding these three visitors, I could not but say I wished I 
 had given them a discourse fully written out. I hear 
 Kingsley say, in a solemn voice, with an impressive catch 
 in it, ' He's modest about his sermon.' 
 
 It chanced that the sermon pleased both Stanley and 
 Kingsley ; though not prepared to that end. Scottish 
 preachers, in those days, used to lecture regularly through 
 a book of Holy Scripture in these unwritten appearances. 
 Thus the great difficulty of selecting a text and subject 
 was escaped. And I had simply come that morning to 
 the verse next in order. I have turned up my faded pages : 
 they are strange to see. The notes take up a small page 
 and a half. I see, yet, the eager glance with which 
 Stanley looked up when the text was read. It was St. 
 John iii. 5 : ' Born of water and of the Spirit.' I knew not 
 then, how Stanley, in his famous article in the Edinburgh 
 Review on The Gorham Controversy, had treated the 
 doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration. Neither did I know 
 Stanley's interest in the Standards of the Kirk. Having 
 said that many identify the two Baptisms, water and the 
 Spirit, or say they always go together : the discourse went 
 on, that fact so contradicts this teaching, that it has to be 
 fenced about, till it amounts to nothing. It was shown 
 that our Confession takes as ' High ' ground as an)- : the 
 grace in baptism is ' not only offered, but reall}' exhibited 
 and conferred.' It may be long latent, but it should come 
 out at last. But now I fear I went on a line at which 
 
HUGH PEARSON , 151 
 
 many would shake a dissentient head. I said that we did 
 not need to make up our mind whether children were 
 invariably regenerated in baptism or not : that our duty 
 was plain : to wit, to have our children baptised : and that 
 as for the exact effect, that was no concern of ours : it was in 
 higher hands. All we need is to know what to do : so far, 
 all is plain. Many would doubtless say that this was the 
 application of a very rationalistic common sense to this 
 solemn question. I had come to that point then : probably 
 without any help. For I fancy it is not the view of either 
 Scotland or England. 
 
 Kingsley came up with me to Great King Street, hard 
 by. The time between services, ' the Interval,' was brief 
 Morning service ended at 12.30. Afternoon service began 
 2.15. The three pleasant visitors went away to the Old 
 Town, to hear the famous and charming Guthrie in the 
 afternoon. I was sorry not to have them then. For St. 
 Bernard's was quite full. And I had a discourse, new then, 
 which in the next November was to stand XIII. in the 
 first volume of TJie Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson. 
 The material for that volume had already been copied out. 
 And that evening I was cheered by finding that I had 
 taken a line which Stanley thought made sermons readable. 
 He said that Newman's sermons were read very much 
 because he was the first who gave each sermon a title ; 
 instead of merely denoting it by its text. I did not know 
 this. But that afternoon's sermon claims to treat The 
 Vagueness and E?idlessftess of Human Aspirations. The 
 text was the famous ' Oh that I had wings like a dove ! ' 
 
152 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 And though a youth wrote it, an old man may say its 
 teaching is true. 
 
 They dined with Mr. Erskine of Linlathen. Then 
 Kingsley, tired, went to the Caledonian Hotel in Princes 
 Street, where his wife was : Stanley and Pearson came to 
 us at nine o'clock and stayed till eleven. One watches a 
 great man, rarely seen. I thought of the jagged collar, at 
 Pollock's in London : first beholding the man whose Life 
 of Arnold had been so much to many a young Scot. 
 Now, as he walked in first, I recognised an ill-fitting dress- 
 coat in which at that epoch he had been photographed. I 
 must not repeat the touching legend of the oleaginous 
 toast, which Stanley in absence of mind seized up in his 
 fineers and handed to Pearson. Pearson looked at it with 
 hesitation : but received and consumed it. Then they 
 talked of Guthrie's sermon. I had told them of the 
 indescribable charm of his manner : Never was more 
 touching and holding oratory in this w^orld. A great 
 orator, if ever there was one. I had told them how he had 
 impressed Thackeray. To my disappointment, they were 
 critical. * He had no particular message to deliver : just 
 the ordinary evangelical thing.' Then Stanley said : ' He 
 divided his subject into three " heads " : but he broke them 
 down : what was said under one head might just as well 
 have been said under another.' I began to see, that Sun- 
 day evening, August 31, 1862, when Stanley was just 47, 
 what I became very sure of afterwards : that to think alike 
 was the tie to Stanley after all. Guthrie's doctrine had 
 somehow repelled him. 
 
HUGH PEARSON 153 
 
 Long after, Pearson recalled that Sunday, so memorable 
 to me. He did so many times in conversation : but I find 
 a letter which had been quite forgot. I will run the risk of 
 being accused of conceit, copying some lines. For they 
 are interesting in themselves : and neither to Guthrie where 
 he is nor to me where I abide does it matter now what, 
 this man or that may say. ' Here is a return to the old 
 happy vein. I am delighted with Aly Vesi7y IVmdotvs. 
 How well I remember hearing you preach in St. Bernard's : 
 going with A. P. S. and Kingsley ! An admirable sermon : 
 which we all contrasted greatly to your advantage with 
 one we heard from Dr. Guthrie in the afternoon.' Well, I 
 had my day in Edinburgh : a bright warm day : but not 
 many t/iere would have said //lat. Then that letter ends 
 sadly. Lady Augusta was near the end. * Lady Augusta 
 is, I understand, improving very slowly. She sees no one, 
 and I can't help being anxious : but they tell me there is 
 no real danger.' Then the hearty conclusion, not quite in 
 the usual words : yet somewhat warmer than is common in 
 Scotland even between great friends. ' No more, my dear 
 Boyd. Ever yours most cordially, H. P.' Bishop Words- 
 worth, after more than forty years of Scotland, was 
 essentially an Englishman. So it is not an exception to 
 what has been said when my eye falls in this moment upon 
 a letter from him, ending ' Ever yours most truly and 
 affectionately, C. W. Bp.' 
 
 Having thus burst forth in what some good Christians 
 may hold an ebullition of conceit, let me balance it by 
 humbly presenting myself in the white sheet of humility. 
 
iS4 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 I lately read, printed as proof of incredible ignorance and 
 bad taste, how certain Americans, visiting Edinburgh, 
 went on a Sunday to St. Bernard's when they might have 
 had the privilege of hearing Dr. Guthrie or Dr. Candlish. 
 This painful fact was given as indicating a descent to 
 pretty nearly the lowest possible deep. This, more than 
 once. But here is a passage from the Diary of that really 
 honest and attractive man, George Gilfillan of Dundee, 
 written August 5, 1863. 
 
 ' It is now nearly a year since a Mr. Appleton, a brother- 
 in-law of Longfellow, called on me with a note from his 
 celebrated relative. I asked what ministers he had heard 
 in Edinburgh, and whether he had been to Guthrie's chapel. 
 " No, he had no interest in Guthrie. He had gone to hear 
 the two Edinburgh clergymen at present most talked of in 
 the States, Dean Ramsay and A. K. H. B." 
 
 ' How curious the chance medleys of fame ! And so 
 the American had heard of, and longed to hear A. K. H. B., 
 and had a contempt for Guthrie, and probably knew 
 nothing about John Bruce.' 
 
 ' The astounding ignorance of the man ! ' 
 
 Even such, as Hugh Pearson liked to tell, was the ex- 
 clamation (not to be taken seriously) of Bishop Wilbcrforcc, 
 when Pearson reported to him words of Pope Pius IX. 
 Pearson and Stanley had a private interview with His 
 Holiness, during which the infallible man (as Stanley said) 
 made more stupid blunders than he had ever known any 
 mortal make in twenty minutes before. One question was : 
 * Is not Vealbcrfoss a Professor at Oxford.^' 'Oh, no: 
 
HUGH PEARSON 155 
 
 Bishop,' was Stanley's reply. ' Ah, Vealberfoss is Bishop : 
 I did not know that' Hence the moan just recorded. 
 Another curious detail of that historic talk, which appears 
 to have been carried on in a singular mixture of French and 
 English. ' How is the Professor Pouse .-* ' said the Pope. 
 Stanley took up the question wrongly ; fancying the Pope 
 was asking if Stanley, then an Oxford Professor, was cpouse, 
 married. Stanley was just going to be married : so in a 
 somewhat confused way he stated that Oxford Professors 
 might marry, but that he had not done so. Whereupon 
 the Pope, impatiently : ' That is not what I mean : I want to 
 know how is the Professor Pouse .'' ' The friends replied that 
 he was very well. Then the Pope summed up. ' Ah, the Pro- 
 fessor Pouse is like une cloche, a church-bell. He induces 
 others to enter the Church, but he stays outside himself 
 At this time it was very commonly put about that 
 Stanley was shortly to be a Bishop : perhaps even Arch- 
 bishop : not of Dublin, but of Canterbury. Pearson's 
 remark to me was, ' Very likely a Bishop. I should say, 
 very unlikely to be Archbishop.' That evening the two 
 friends talked of an idea which had suggested itself to 
 Stanley, who was eager for the drawing together of the 
 two Established Churches of Britain. Tulloch had said, in 
 his frank way, that he would have no objection to receive 
 Anglican orders : not as casting any doubt on the validity 
 of those of the Kirk, but simply as the legal qualification 
 to minister in English parish churches ; not to name the 
 holding of English preferment. So some shadowy notion, 
 never to come to anything, occurred, that a few Scotch 
 
156 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 parsons of the highest standing might in this sense be re- 
 ordained : and, still holding their charges in the Church of 
 Scotland, be made Canons of English Cathedrals. The 
 thing would not have been popular in Scotland. I re- 
 member with what bitterness a good man said, hearing one 
 of our best men named as conceivably so placed : ' Give 
 him a few hundreds a year more, and he would go over 
 altogether.' Then, on the other side, I heard a Bishop say, 
 ungraciously, ' What would our curates think, if a lot of 
 hungry Scotchmen were to get our prizes .'' ' One could 
 but suggest that a Scotchman, as hungry as any, for when 
 he took his degree he had exactly nothing but what he 
 earned, was at the moment Bishop of London. It was 
 
 plain that the national jealousy could easily be aroused. 
 Yet two Scots, both sons of the Kirk, were in a little to 
 hold York and Canterbury. 
 
 It was this evening that Stanley said, ' I'm a Canon of 
 
 the shabbiest Cathedral in England : but I'm a Professor 
 of the greatest University in the world.' At length they 
 must go : and in the lingering twilight of the North, I 
 walked up with them through the trees of the Queen Street 
 Gardens. Reaching the top of the hill, I said, ' Now 
 when you are made Bishops or Archbishops, surely you 
 will hold out a hand to us in the Kirk, who are not so very 
 unlike you ? ' ' Here is a hand,' said Stanley, in his most 
 fervent mood. Pearson said the like : and after that warm 
 grasp we parted. Nobody will care to know : but the 
 number of that house in Great King Street was 78. 
 
 Pleasant that it was twice ' Poor Thirty-Nine.' And dear. 
 
HUGH PEARSON 157 
 
 The first dwelling the writer can call his own in fee- 
 simple. Just so dear, that now, after nearly twenty-nine 
 years, that division of Great King Street is barred. As 
 Julius Hare wrote, ' Birth has gladdened it, death has 
 hallowed it.' 
 
 There is a gate in Ghent, — I passed beside it : 
 A threshold there, worn of my frequent feet. 
 Which I shall cross no more. 
 
 There entered Froude, the first house he ever entered 
 in Scotland : there Thorold, no more than Rector of St. 
 Giles' : though some of us made sure what was to be. 
 There Tulloch, oftentimes. There Macleod. Coming 
 down the hill to it, Froude told of the Devonshire farmer 
 Vi-ho, having seen a picture of the walls of Jericho going 
 down, walked round his barn blowing a ram's horn * till he 
 was like to burst,' with no result at all. But I must not go 
 that way. 
 
 From that day onward, H. P. began to write long and 
 interesting letters. But it v/as not till Shrove Tuesday in 
 1864 that I beheld Sonning. I was for ten days at St. 
 Giles' rectory in Bedford Square, already quite home-like : 
 and Pearson wrote that I must come down and end the 
 Carnival with him. On Tuesday, February 9, in the 
 loveliest of frosty sunshine, all the world gleaming, by the 
 Great Western to Twyford : thence, as H. P. said, ' you 
 must Fly.' I never had properly seen such a church and 
 parsonage before. One good of being so starved in the 
 bare sanctuaries then universal in the North, was that one 
 had a quite enthusiastic enjoyment of Anglican beauty. 
 
1S8 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 The entrance hall was square, panelled with black oak. 
 Pearson's study was delightful. The dining-room was 
 more like rooms in general : only that round the walls 
 were the portraits of innumerable Bishops. All special 
 friends of H. P. There was a very youthful picture 
 of him the Pope called Vealberfoss : specially odious to 
 that illustrious Prelate. ' Like nothing earthly but a hair- 
 dresser's man,' was his criticism : and indeed the hyacinthine 
 locks were much in evidence. Archbishop Longley was 
 there : not so pleasant of aspect as when older. He was 
 the first person I heard preach before the Queen : indeed 
 the only person save one other. I remember the sermon 
 perfectly : it was on ' neither circumcision nor uncircum- 
 cision ' : the conclusion was most beautiful. As I was 
 only sixteen, my opinion was probably of small value. 
 The last glimpse I had of the Primate was singular. In 
 Piccadilly, a horse had fallen : a little crowd was round it. 
 I was driven sharply against a little figure, contemplating 
 the horse. For he had lived long in Yorkshire. It was the 
 Archbishop, quite alone : extremely well dressed : and with 
 the self-same curious glance in his c}'e which Pius IX. 
 had. I hastened to take off my hat : but no one else 
 knew the good man. What facts H. P. knew about the 
 dignitaries of Anglicanism ! That day, specially, how they 
 were impoverished by the awful expenses of coming in to 
 their places. But the apartment which stands out in 
 memory in the Vicarage was the draw ing-room. Black 
 oak from floor to ceiling : and when lighted up with wax 
 candles (H. P. would have no other light in it), the warm 
 
HUGH PEARSON 159 
 
 dark home-like glow was never to be forgotten. The 
 record of that departed day is brief ' Perfect church and 
 parsonage : Pearson kindest of men. My ideal of a place 
 to live in.' I had to be at St. Giles' next morning, Ash 
 Wednesday, to hear Thorold and his curates ' do the cursin ' 
 to a moderate congregation : I never so grudged the rapid 
 passing of the day. 
 
 There were three curates : two of them English, and 
 quite charming : the third Scotch, and not wholly so to a 
 countryman. They were taught to address the Vicar as 
 Hugh. The sweetest-natured of men had his ways. 
 The Scotsman lived out in the country : the other two in a 
 charming cottage-dwelling in the beautiful village. Of the 
 church it need only be said that Stanley had not said a 
 word too much of it. Pearson got it in sad estate : but 
 he restored it. They were the first pillars of chalk I had 
 ever seen. When I spoke enthusiastically of the loveliness 
 of ' kirk and manse,' H. P. replied, ' Ah, the living is but 
 three hundred a year : think, when I go, of a vicar with six 
 children and only the living ! ' We went into the school. 
 Very pleasant, the pretty healthy children rising with a 
 word of welcome. The Christmas decorations were still 
 there. Church and vicarage are close together, in the same 
 enclosure. And under the church's shadow, Pearson 
 quietly pointed to his father's grave. The beautiful 
 Thames flows by, surprisingly small : a quaint old bridge 
 near. Here it was that Bishop Wilberforce, when weary, 
 came for a quiet Sunday : and was happy. I thought 
 Pearson, that day, the happiest of men. The devotion to 
 
l6o MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 him of his curates was delightful to see. But though his 
 acquaintance was so wide, there was one friend who stood 
 first : the talk went continually back to Arthur. 
 
 Much was said that day of friendly alliance if not 
 actual incorporation of the two National Churches. We 
 all knew how Bishop Wordsworth, preaching at the re- 
 opening of Chichester Cathedral, had taken for his text 
 ' I beseech Euodias, and beseech S}'ntyche, that they be of 
 the same mind in the Lord ' : the E and S standing for 
 England and Scotland. One was in perfect harmony with 
 the three born and bred Anglicans. The only jar was 
 when the curate came who had been born and bred in the 
 Kirk, and when he began to ridicule the heroic Communion 
 in which his father at that time abode. ' I'm a placed 
 minister ! ' he said, sarcasticall)-. The term, a placed 
 minister, implying one set in full charge of a parish, did 
 not appear to me in itself more ridiculous than the synony- 
 mous term, a benificed clergyman. It is a Scotticism, no 
 doubt : in use among the less educated : even as Auld 
 Lang Syne is Scotch for Old Long Since. Then, with a 
 laugh as at something very barbarous, the Scot (whose 
 speech bewrayed him though he assured me he was entirely 
 an Englishman) went on to state that when staying with 
 his father in Edinburgh, the father would come in from 
 church and say We had Vcitch to-day. I informed him 
 that I had heard an eminent law}'cr, coming from the 
 Temple Church, say We Jiad Vaughan this morning : and 
 I could see nothing in the statement to laugh at. Then 
 H. P. suppressed his subordinate : and explained to me 
 
HUGH PEARSON i6i 
 
 afterwards (what I had ah-eady surmised) that no one 
 minded what he said. I really cannot abide the Scot who, 
 before the Saxon, tries to burlesque the Church in which 
 he was born. Conscientious conviction (with however 
 little reason) that it is no Church at all, I blame not. And 
 between Liddon and myself, it made no severance. But 
 when a native Scot, the son of an Elder of the Kirk, 
 begins to talk to me of ' a God-appointed ministry and a 
 man-appointed ministry,' it makes a gulf And gazing 
 upon him, I recall Carlyle's downright words to a Scot 
 ashamed of his country, ' Oh man, ye're a puir, wratched, 
 meeserable crater.' 
 
 The little breeze of controversy lasted but a minute : 
 and when we ascended to that beautiful drawing-room 
 H. P. had so many interesting things to tell of eminent 
 persons heard of but never seen, that it was hard to go, 
 though returning to the very kindest of friends. And next 
 day it was made apparent to the Scot that even south ol 
 the Tweed days in the calendar are not always regarded. 
 For after Commination Service at St. Giles', and a fitting 
 sermon from him who was to be Bishop of Winchester, 
 the Day of Ashes ended cheerfully with a dinner-party of 
 twenty-four in the hospitable dwelling of Mr. William Long- 
 man, where were many eminent men. Here were Froude and 
 Ormsby, already well known. And I had my only glimpse 
 of Mr. Fitzjames Stephen, afterwards a judge. I had read a 
 brilliant paper by him in Frascr on my journey up, wherein 
 he laid down the sound principle that you should help a man, 
 as far as may be, through painful duty. But the illustration 
 
 M 
 
l62 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 abides in memory, painfully. ' We must not grudge the 
 hangman his glass of brandy.' The history of that 
 evening records that the fare was not Lenten. And I 
 remember well how Mr, Longman, not knowing how 
 elevated above all prejudice we are in Scotland, made some 
 apology for asking me on that penitential day. Just a year 
 before, Froude being with us in Edinburgh, I asked an old 
 curate of his father's to meet him : but received a solemn 
 statement that he could not dine out on a Friday in Lent. 
 On that day Dean Ramsay came to dinner without hesi- 
 tation. Perhaps he ought not, that saintly man, on being 
 told of the good parson's scruples, to h^ve held up both his 
 hands, exclaiming : W/iat a fool ! Of course, it was a quiet 
 gathering of some dozen men only, to meet the illustrious 
 historian. 
 
 That was my first view of H. P. in his beautiful home. 
 I was to know it well : and fain would expatiate. But my 
 space is brief ; and I must select occasions which stand out 
 in memory. One such was May 9, 1877. My daughter 
 and I spent that sunshiny day at Sonning : where it is 
 recorded that ' Church and house surpassed recollection.' 
 Pearson, as ever, the kindest of hosts : but the kind face 
 was sad as we walked about on the turf, he bewailing the 
 young friend who had come not to believe anything. I 
 never saw Pearson look so sorrowful : but he brightened 
 up, by-and-by. The forenoon was spent in and about the 
 church : after luncheon to see the good old Miss Palmer, 
 H. P.'s warm friend and supporter, in the grand house 
 near. John Locke was of her race : and it was strange, 
 
HUGH PEARSON 163 
 
 in the quiet library, to turn over Newton's Principia, 
 bearing in a beautiful hand that it was the gift of the 
 author. Then we drove to see the church where Tennyson 
 was married, and to a most beautiful little church which 
 H. P. had lately built. I was staying in London for a 
 fortnight's rest : Pearson said I must go to St. Paul's next 
 day, Ascension Day, to hear Dean Church. I always 
 shrink from pushing myself on any great man : but 
 Pearson insisted on giving me a letter of introduction, 
 which I can testify was effectual. For having left it at 
 the Deanery along with my card (I would not enter in), 
 within a few hours the E>ean called, I being out, and left 
 the kindest of letters giving me choice of three days to 
 dine with him. Three curates dined with the beloved 
 ' Hugh ' that day : very unwillingly we drove away near 
 8 P.M. to Twyford. I was to have another glimpse soon. 
 On Tuesday, May 15, a very gloomy day, I went early to 
 Windsor for a long day with the ever-charming Mrs. 
 Oliphant. By extraordinary luck, at Slough Pearson 
 came into the carriage : just made Canon of St. George's. 
 I see the bright face as he exclaimed, ' Some inspiration 
 brought us here together' : it was a happy inspiration for 
 me. More than once he wrote to that effect : each of us 
 had hesitated about moving on that dark morning ; and 
 next day I had the long journey to Edinburgh. Never 
 was H. P. brighter, happier, kinder, than on that memorable 
 day. I must not speak of Eton, whither Mrs. Oliphant 
 took me ; and where Tarver, Tulloch's son-in-law, showed 
 me everything : that would demand a lengthy chapter. 
 
i64 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 But all the afternoon about the Castle, and St. George's, 
 with Pearson. H. P.'s house was most quaint and delight- 
 ful : it seemed too much for humanity that any mortal 
 should have, within an hour of one another, two such 
 dwellings as Sonning Vicarage and the Canon's house in 
 Windsor Castle. But nothing could be too good for 
 Pearson. When I went back to London, and spoke of 
 those houses to Stanley, the Dean said, fervently, ' Ah, the 
 man and the mountain have met ! ' Pearson took me to 
 the Deanery, and introduced me to Dean Wellesley. I 
 saw the room where the body of Charles I. lay the night 
 before its burial : the queer squint through which, in the 
 Dean's study, you commanded the High Altar in the 
 Chapel : the Wolsey Chapel, and everything about the 
 grand church itself. Well I remember, as a boy, thinking 
 the Princess Charlotte's monument fine : now it appeared 
 hideous. And H. P. said, ' Isn't it sad that this horrible 
 thing is the most admired by visitors about St. George's ? ' 
 Dean Wellesley was frankness itself: I believe he was not 
 always so. Most interesting of all it was when Pearson, 
 the Dean, and the lowly writer walked up and down long 
 time on the terrace above the ' Slopes ' : well known of 
 old to readers of that daily chronicle so dear to Thackeray. 
 It was a charming scene. The trees below were growing 
 into clouds of intense green. Below stretched the watery 
 plain, Plton chapel standing out grandly. The heights of 
 Marrow made the horizon ; the two famous schools so 
 near. How much the Dean said of extreme interest to an 
 outsider to hear. And with what gusto he related a recent 
 
HUGH PEARSON T65 
 
 incident in the life of a good Canon, then in residence, 
 whose brother had been several times Prime Minister. 
 For absence of mind, and forgetfulncss of time and place, 
 surely that benignant dignitary was hard to parallel. Still, 
 it was rather mischievous to walk up and down with him, 
 outside the famous sanctuary, for twenty minutes after the 
 hour of a service at which he had to be present, giving him 
 no warning : and then, when choir and congregation had 
 been kept so long waiting, to suddenly demand if he were 
 going to church, and mark him tear away in breathless 
 horror. It appeared, indeed, that it was a needful lesson ; 
 the neglect being habitual. But it might have killed the 
 aged lord. On this day H. P. departed for Sonning, as 
 4.30 approached : and the Dean and I were punctual. I 
 wondered if anybody really cared as much for the Knights 
 of the Garter as the prayers implied. And I thought of 
 the wise remark of one set high : that though perhaps a 
 Sovereign could not be prayed for too much, it might be 
 too often. The speaker ought to know. 
 
 Everybody knows that Stanley was elected Lord Rector 
 of our University, and, following Froudes example, gave 
 two addresses to the students. Pearson had written to me : 
 ' I was in town, with Stanley, when the telegram arrived, 
 greeting him Lord Rector. It is very satisfactor}'. I 
 wonder whether I shall be able to hear his inaugural 
 address. Now I am tied more than ever.' H. P. heard 
 neither of his friend's discourses : but he made a visit to 
 St. Andrews, far too short, coming with the Rector to the 
 dection of a Professor. It was the year before those May 
 
\(6 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 glimpses of Pearson. Everything comes back so vividly, 
 that it is hard to think it is so long ago as Wednesday, 
 August 2, 1876. I had a great carriage waiting at our 
 awfully shabby station (now worthily replaced) : and 
 brought up Stanley, H. P., and Lord Elgin, who was Lady 
 Augusta's nephew and Stanley's Assessor in the University 
 Court. He was but a youth then, bright-looking but 
 silent. To-day he is Viceroy of India, as was his father 
 too. Pearson stayed with us : Stanley with Tulloch : 
 Lord Elgin had to go to a hotel. Both Stanley and 
 Pearson looked specially cheery. It was a beautiful day : 
 like the famous ' August the third ' of Bret Harte. Every 
 corner of the little City was lovingly dwelt upon, *ind 
 leisurely. The election took but a minute : then Stanley 
 and Lord Elgin joined us : and we were quite a large 
 party, all enthusiastic, as was fit. You may go round our 
 ruins when it is cold weather : but you will not see them. 
 It must be warm : that you may linger. We had a Bishop 
 with us : one of the early Suffragans. But, as Sydney 
 Smith remarked, ' Even Sodor and Man is better tharj 
 nothing.' Willingly could I linger upon the story of that 
 day : it has all come back. Tea here : then Stanley to 
 rest, H. P. and I a turn on the grand sandy beach. ' So 
 different from Sonning. Grand. Norway over there.' It 
 was an interesting party at dinner here that evening. 
 Besides my wife and me, only Stanley, Pearson, Mr. Whyte 
 Melville (the Novelist's father, my chief Heritor), Tulloch, 
 Professor Campbell, and Lord Elgin. Well I remember 
 Pearson's consternation when I said to him that the Earl 
 
HUGH PEARSON 167 
 
 was such a youth, besides being Stanley's subordinate in 
 the Court, that I thought I should make Stanley take my 
 wife to dinner. H. P. had a deep respect for the pro- 
 prieties : and he assured me that in England such a thing 
 might not be. It did not occur, in fact, in Scotland. 
 Stanley was quiet, at first : the blow had fallen on him. 
 But before the end of the evening he was brilliant. No 
 other word will do. Tulloch and he departed at 1 1 : but 
 very far into the night did Pearson's flow of charming talk 
 and reminiscence go on. He liked to speak of the eminent 
 men he had known to one who sympathised. It was that 
 night he said he grudged to grow old : Church and world 
 were more and more interesting. The next forenoon was 
 memorable. When I came down in the morning, the 
 benignant descendant of Robert the Bruce was smiling 
 before my study fire. He had to go by an early train, and 
 wished to have more of H. P. I do not think he could 
 have gone had he known what the day would bring forth. 
 In a little, Stanley and Tulloch came. I knew Arthur's 
 likings : and had the brightest of blazing fires. Stanley 
 stood right in front of it : and blazed brighter by far. I 
 never heard him so eloquent. He poured himself out : 
 he dilated in the warmth which was life to him. Tulloch, 
 H. P., and I sat and listened. What things we heard ! 
 Ah, there, this morning, is the fire : but the eager little 
 figure, alert from head to foot, and the beautiful face, are 
 gone. And H. P. and Tulloch are long away. At 1.30 
 we all lunched with Tulloch. And at 3.30 all drove down 
 to the railway : and Stanley and Pearson departed for 
 
I68 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 Megginch, which to A. P. S. was specially dear, I could 
 fill all the pages allotted me with my recollections of that 
 morning's marvellous talk. 
 
 The like may be said of my last visit to H. P. at 
 Windsor in the last May he lived : 1881. I was going on 
 my yearly visit to Bishop Thorold ; seventeen times now 
 without a break : ' quite the best of Ma)- meetings,' was 
 the hierarchical jest. Like divers kind old bachelors, H. P. 
 was specially pleasant to young women : and having learnt 
 that my daughter was in London, he hastened to call ; and 
 heard where I was going. His residence at Windsor was 
 to begin on May i. He went on, in his life-like wa}', ' It 
 will be cheering to see you, and I will ask some of the 
 Eton people to dinner. A glorious Easter Day here, and 
 the best services I ever remember. There were loi at the 
 8 o'clock communion, and nearly as many afterwards : 
 very cheering, considering that my whole population is only 
 750. So the great man is gone from us, and \\ith him all 
 the romance of politics. What a gap his death makes ! ' 
 Still, trouble could come, even to Sonning. In another 
 letter, * We have had a great loss here since I wrote to you, 
 in the death of my kind friend and squire, Richard Palmer. 
 He succeeded his brother, whom you remember. Now 
 there remains only one sister, the best person I have ever 
 known, or now ever expect to know. If I should survive 
 her, I should give up then, and retire for the rest of my 
 days to some cottage (perhaps in a disestablished church), 
 for I could not begin with a new i-i'giinc here.' 
 
 But I have recorded elsewhere ' about a twentieth 
 ' Twenty-five Years of St. Andrews : Vol. 11. pp. 140-4. 
 
HUGH PEARSON 169 
 
 part of the history of that visit : and dare not expatiate 
 now. Ah, Dean Welleslcy's revelations ! How many 
 things they have suggested to me, ever since ! Things 
 (sometimes) come right. But that Wednesday, May 18, 
 was a day of rain Hkc that of Loch Awe, and but that 
 Pearson had a christening in London, I should not have had 
 that unforgetable walk with the great Knower of secrets 
 in Church and State. I can but recall Coleridge's lines : 
 
 How seldom, Friend ! a good great man inherits 
 Honour or wealth, with all his worth and jjains ! 
 
 It sounds like stories from the land of spirits, 
 
 If any man obtain that which he merits, 
 Or any merit that which he obtains. 
 
 When we parted next day, after service at St. George's, 
 there was no thought it was for the last time. Nor did we 
 know that Stanley had just two months to come of this life. 
 His day was July 18. And though he spoke eagerly to 
 Pearson, in departing, the words could not be understood : 
 and Pearson was not suffered to see the changed face. 
 The Deanery of Westminster was pressed on Pearson when 
 Stanley died. But he wrote that he was not the man at 
 all. Many of us thought he was the very man. One has 
 known good men in whose case one would have suspected 
 some illusion, had they said they had declined the Deanery 
 ('the best thing in the Church of England,' was Bishop 
 Wilberforce's word, once himself Dean) : much more the 
 Archbishopric, like another whom I have named. Though 
 H. P. brightened, fitfully, in the remaining months which 
 were given him, the great interest had gone from life when 
 Arthur died. It was like himself that II. P. went: so 
 
I/O MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 beloved, so loving. 'Unexpected this. But God's will, 
 and therefore best. Yet it is a bitter wrench to leave all 
 you dear ones.' Poor Michael Bruce, dying at twenty, 
 had anticipated the feeling. ' I leave the world without a 
 tear. Save for the friends I held so dear.' 
 
 Of the little party, far more than friends, of that long 
 memorable forenoon here in this room at St. Andrews, 
 Stanley went first : Pearson nine months after him. Then 
 Tulloch, more than eight years since. I alone remain. 
 The youngest then : but this day older than any one of 
 them lived to be. 
 
 Thinking of Stanley's resting-place in the great Abbey 
 and of Pearson's under the green turf in Sonning church- 
 yard, one remembers how on that day I found that 
 Stanley had (strange to say) never heard of Beattie's fine 
 verse which contrasts two such-like. He was much im- 
 pressed by it when read to him ; and he took away a copy 
 of it to be put in the next edition of his JMcmonals of 
 Westminster Abbey. But the next edition had not been 
 called for when A. P. S. died. 
 
 Let Vanity adorn the marble tomb 
 With trophies, rhymes, and scutcheons of renown, 
 In the deep dungeon of some Gothic dome. 
 Where night and desolation ever frown : 
 Mine be the breezy hill, that skirts the down. 
 Where a green grassy turf is all 1 crave. 
 With here and there a violet bestrown. 
 Fast by a brook or fountain's murmuring wave ; 
 And many an evening sun shine sweetly on my grave. 
 
171 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 OF A WILFUL MEMORY 
 
 It was judiciously remarked by Mr. Carlyle (possibly on 
 more than one occasion), that a man in a fever is not a 
 strong man, though it may take six other men to hold him. 
 For the poor patient's energy is not available to any good 
 end : is not under control at all. Even so, I fear a memory 
 cannot justly be called a good memory though it retain a 
 vast amount of heterogeneous material, if it act capriciously, 
 and at its own will : absolutely rejecting (let us say) the 
 innumerable sermons one has heard, and treasuring up 
 preposterous Sonnets from the AfgJianese. 
 
 Various saintly persons, and some to whom that 
 adjective is in a lesser degree applicable, have stated that 
 the present writer has a great memory. The statement is 
 true under the serious reservation which has been indicated. 
 Anything useless : anything odd : innumerable small in- 
 cidents forty years old, whose history could in no way 
 be helpful to any human being : glimpses of nature, seen 
 in summer or winter, in his beautiful country parish, or on 
 a bleak beach unvisited through the life of a human gene- 
 ration : the look on a face in no way attractive, the face of 
 one he did not in the least care for : ill-natured and stupid 
 
172 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 speeches made in an unmusical voice : all these, and things 
 innumerable more, often press upon him in a way that 
 frightens : that revives as though it had happened within 
 this hour something which befell when he was five years 
 old. Long ago, an old gentleman (as I then thought him), 
 long departed, said in my hearing that he ' was astonished 
 at his own judgment' : he found himself so incredibly wise. 
 I remember, vividly, that at the moment I esteemed the 
 remark an injudicious one. But, in all sober earnest, I 
 know people who are frightened at their own memory : so 
 awfully vivid : so mighty to make past things live again 
 which they would give much to forget. It appears to me 
 that the punishment of past foolishness must be eternal : 
 unless there be Lethe somewhere. 
 
 I am not to permit myself to fall into too serious a line 
 of thought. All this has been pressed upon me by the 
 fact that certain lines have for two days kept ringing in 
 my brain which I had absolutely forgotten : which I read 
 in a London newspaper before I was ten years old, and 
 never once have thought of since : and which are abso- 
 lutely stupid. In those remote days, it was deemed 
 jocular to print passages in Cockney language : and now, 
 as I shut my eyes, I see the newspaper : it was called the 
 Sunday Times, though it came regularly to a house where 
 no mortal would have read a newspaper on a Sunda}-. I 
 think it may exorcise the intruding poem if I gi\e it here. 
 I will give it, letter-perfect : and I do not believe another 
 member of the human race remembers it. It was addressed 
 to Mr. Green's famous balloon : — 
 
OF A WILFUL MEMORY 173 
 
 Great Gawky, wonder of the hupper skies, 
 Oh how I loves to see yer body rise ! 
 There's lots of fear, although they tries to mask it, 
 As they hangs dangling in a wicker basket. 
 For me, wheneer I takes a hariel ride, 
 I means to book a place hin the hinside : 
 And, mounting huppards to the hupper skies, 
 I shant feel giddy : — 'cos I'll shet both hies I 
 
 Courteous reader, what do you say to a memory that of a 
 sudden, and that continually, recalls, and urgently presses 
 on one's attention, such material as that ? Could you lay 
 your hand on your heart, and say it was a good memory ? 
 At this moment, I put in that passage about hand and 
 heart, because suddenly the face of an aged lady presented 
 itself before me, and I heard her voice say, ' I should just 
 like to ask Sir James to lay his hand on his heart, and say 
 he has used me properly.' This important incident 
 occurred when I was not seven years old. 
 
 As the subject is poetry, there comes to my remem- 
 brance a poem, written long ago, by a most eminent man 
 whose reputation was rather in science than in polite 
 literature. Not but what he wrote prose most eloquently 
 and gracefully. Furthermore, when the writer was a 
 youth, that illustrious man proved to him a specially kind 
 friend. Few there are who know that Sir David Brewster, 
 once Principal of St. Salvator's College, St. Andrews, and 
 then of the University of Edinburgh, had ever soared into 
 poetry. I believe he did so but once. But his poem is 
 worthy of preservation. It is brief: but its construction is 
 very remarkable. Five lines : each line containing but 
 
174 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 two syllables : but they rhyme with an entire perfection 
 never elsewhere reached. They were a birthday tribute 
 to a sweet young girl whose name was Phoebe : who, if she 
 lives, must be an old lady now. They are highly compli- 
 mentary to that attractive personality : and then they pass, 
 with simple pathos, to contrast her early youth with the 
 poet's advanced age. Here thej^ are : — 
 
 Phoebe, 
 Ye be 
 Hebe! 
 We be 
 D. B. ! 
 
 It appears to me that a high level of excellence is reached 
 in this remarkable composition. No accusation of pla- 
 giarism can possibly arise here. I do not believe that any 
 poem, in any close degree resembling this, was ever written 
 since the days of Jubal himself And if he wrote anything 
 like this, it has not been handed down. It may be objected 
 that Jubal wrote in a language not susceptible of this treat- 
 ment. It is not so. As dear Bishop Wordsworth used to 
 say, talking of something awfully difficult in Greek versifi- 
 cation, ' There is a way to do it, if you can find it out.' 
 And I knew, with many others, a miraculous Hebrew 
 scholar, who translated into Hebrew the well-known 
 Scotch song ' Hame cam' our gudc man at e'en, And 
 hame cam' he ' : retaining the exact rhythm and giving 
 rhymes. I fancy this was the most extraordinary effort 
 ever made in the way of translation. 
 
 As these last words are written, they suggest something 
 
OF A WILFUL MEMORY 
 
 175 
 
 quite unlike them : by a sudden association transcending 
 that by which a crowd of schoolboys playing in the snow 
 suggested to Douglas Jerrold Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lec- 
 tures. The snowballs filled the air : the boys shouted : and 
 in that instant Job Caudle and his famous wife burst com- 
 plete on their author's view. 
 
 Dr. Black, minister of the Barony church at Glasgow 
 before Norman Macleod, used to ask students to dine with 
 him in a very kind way. Once I was there, a lad at 
 College. Dr. Black was talking of the difficulty of per- 
 suading eminent preachers to give one a sermon : for that 
 matter, preachers of no great eminence. He and another 
 Glasgow minister, having a holiday in Cumberland, found 
 there was a little Scotch kirk near : and on a Sunday 
 morning came to service rather late, and got into a remote 
 corner of the little building. But the eagle eye of the 
 minister spotted them : and in the intercessory prayers he 
 so expressed himself as to make quite sure of some aid 
 from them. For the good man's words were these (I hear 
 Dr. Black's voice uttering them in this moment) : ' Lord, 
 have mercy on Thy ministering servants, who have popped 
 in upon us so unexpectedly : one of whom will preach in 
 the afternoon, and the other in the evening,' 
 
 It was impossible to put the Scot, an exile in remote 
 England, in the painful position of having made a mis- 
 statement : wherefore they did preach. I have known the 
 like expedient successful, when employed by a very little 
 boy. His grandfather said to him that it was impossible 
 to take him out in the carriage for a drive that day 
 
176 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 'Then,' said the artful child, 'you'll have made me tell a 
 lie, for I told Robert ' (the coachman) ' that I was going 
 with you.' The little boy was a very engaging boy, and 
 the grandfather just about the very best of men. So the 
 result was quite certain. 
 
 In a Church where the prayers are made at the dis- 
 cretion of the minister, very strange intercessions are 
 sometimes presented. I remember well, ages since, hearing 
 old Dr. Muir of Glasgow, who was a real though eccentric 
 genius in his day, and of whom no English reader ever 
 heard, relate an incident which had been in his own know- 
 ledge. ' Mr. Smith was preaching at Drumsleekie : and he 
 had come to the concluding prayer, where we pray for all 
 and sundries {sic) : when he suddenly remembered that he 
 had forgotten to pray for the magistrates. So he put in 
 the prayer just where he was. Have mercy upon all fools 
 and idiots, and specially upon the magistrates of Drumsleekie. 
 He meant no evil, but the magistrates were not pleased.' 
 
 This at any rate was not so bad as when a vulgar 
 puritan, uttering a discourse which he presumably thought 
 was a prayer, thus expressed himself: Have mercy on that 
 miserable man, who was lately pouring forth blasphemies 
 against Thee. It was at a ' Sabbath-observance' meeting. 
 The miserable man was the Roman Catholic Archbishop, 
 a peaceful and devout cleric : and the blasphcmx- consisted 
 in stating that in his judgment there was no harm in taking 
 a quiet walk in the Botanic Garden at Edinburgh on a 
 Sunday afternoon. This awful supplication was uttered, 
 within my own knowledge, less than thirty years ago. I 
 
OF A WILFUL MEMORY 177 
 
 fancy that my reader will have no difficulty in deciding 
 which individual was ' the miserable man.' 
 
 The same Dr. Muir, on the same occasion (it was at a 
 dinner-table) related a curious story. I was a young 
 student of divinity, doubtless asked to fill a vacant place : 
 Norman Macleod sat next me, and listened to Dr. Muir 
 earnestly. Dr. Muir was a very great friend of Dr. 
 Chalmers. I can give the words. 
 
 ' Dr. Chalmers told me that he just once went to hear 
 the chief preacher of the Auld-Licht He was there in 
 good time : he was put into the Elders' Seat. It was a 
 terribly bare little building. The Elders were a grim set. 
 They kept their bonnets on their heads till the minister 
 entered : and they had each a large stick in his hand, 
 which they used for chappin' their noses through all the 
 service. The minister wore no gown nor bands. He gave 
 a very long sermon, full of sound divinity, but without the 
 smallest practical application, and without a vestige of 
 feeling. At length Dr. Chalmers got out, the dismal 
 worship being ended. And his word was, If these people 
 ever get to Heaven, they will live on the North side of it.' 
 
 This unutterably-dreary dissertation in Calvinistic 
 theology, without the remotest bearing upon actual life, 
 and listened to not with any idea of receiving instruction 
 but with a sharp suspicious watch lest there should be 
 anything unsound, or anything ' wanting ' (such was the 
 cant phrase), was the only part of the awful worship which 
 was held of any account. The prayers were 'the pre- 
 leeminaries ' : they were listened to, but not joined in. The 
 
 N 
 
178 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 Lord's Prayer was unsound. It was not a Christian prayer : 
 and it was ' a form.' Moly scripture was never read. 
 There was little singing, and that of a horrible character. 
 Good old Dr. Paul of St. Cuthbert's used to tell how the 
 first Italian music-master who came to Edinburgh (it was 
 when Dr. Paul was a boy), being a Roman Catholic had 
 no place then where to worship on Sunday with his fellows : 
 and used to wander sadly about the streets on Sundays. 
 One day he was passing the Tron Church, as the service 
 was drawing to a close. The Beadle came to open the 
 outer door, so that nothing might impede the rush of the 
 congregation the moment the last Amen was said (by the 
 minister only). The lonely Italian drew near the door, 
 and was startled. He said to the Beadle, ' What is that 
 horrible noise I hear?' The Beadle, much scandalised, 
 answered, ' That's the people praising God.' ' Do the 
 people think their God likes to hear that horrible noise ? ' 
 ' To be sure : of course He does.' The sad foreigner 
 rejoined, * Then their God must have no ear for music ' : 
 and sorrowfully shaking his head he walked awa)'. But 
 indeed, within these twenty years, a worthy man who left 
 many thousands to the Kirk, and has his portrait hung up 
 in a sort of shabby Valhalla, came to woiship regularly in 
 the parish church of St. Andrews. He found with con- 
 sternation that there was a good deal of music. And he 
 made his complaint to the minister of the parish whence 
 he came. He told, with extreme condemnation, of our 
 psalms, hynms, and canticles : and added, with intense 
 bitterness, ' Now I put it to you, if that's not just an aff- 
 
OF A WILFUL MEMORY 179 
 
 puttin' of time ! ' The notion that the praise was the 
 worship of the congregation had never entered the good 
 man's head. It was something done to give the minister a 
 rest. And indeed there have been vociferous preachers 
 who would run themselves out of breath, and then interject 
 two or three verses to be sung till they should be able to 
 be ' at it again.' 
 
 A bright young parson, too early taken, told me he had 
 hardly ever seen a country congregation more thrilled- 
 through, than when an admirable pulpit-orator was depict- 
 ing the probable upshot of a graceless life. He said many 
 things, which cannot be recorded here. But he summed-up 
 in a never- forgotten sentence : which the young parson 
 repeated with a voice choked with emotion : — 
 
 And the end of that man is the Ropp, the Rahzor, or the 
 Ruvver ! 
 
 Once, in my boyhood, I heard that orator : only once. 
 The hush was startling as he repeated, many times, ' But 
 there was no room in the Inn for poor Mary.' Each of 
 these last two words was pathetically and musically 
 lengthened out in a fashion almost incredible : reminding 
 one of the miraculously-prolonged notes of the silvery 
 bells of Antwerp Cathedral. With real pathos, and unmis- 
 takable effect, the orator painted in a realistic way the 
 straits of the Blessed Virgin. It did not equally carry 
 sympathy when he passed to denunciation. He stated that 
 in consideration of room not being provided for One of 
 whose personality the poor inn-people knew nothing what- 
 ever, the Almighty would have been justified in sending 
 
 N 2 
 
l8o MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 down an avenging force, and burning up the inn and all 
 the people in it : likewise all the inhabitants of little 
 Bethlehem; and furthermore all the country for many miles 
 round, with the unoffending children and other inhabitants. 
 He went on, 1 hear him now, ' Trusting that such are your 
 sentiments, I now proceed to' something else. Though I 
 was a little fellow, a trifle would have made me get up and 
 shriek out, ' These are not my sentiments at all. It would 
 be an abominable shame ! ' 
 
 The dear man, long gone to his rest, did not really 
 take in the meaning of what he was saying. Not any 
 more than many rude souls who use regrettable language : 
 * half-ignorant,' like the Brothers in Keats's exquisite 
 verse. And this brings to me the distant day on which 
 a saintly patriarch, set in charge of a little seaport, 
 spoke of the fashion in which his soul was vexed by the 
 sailors' communications to one another. Their parts of 
 speech were sad to hear. ' Ah,' said the preacher, in 
 solemn tones, 'the fearful Nouns, the appalling Adjectives, 
 and the trcmenduous (sir) Verbs, one hears down at the 
 Harbour ! ' I fear me much that this witness was too true. 
 But the sailors did not mean it: any more than the 
 Council of Trent designed its frequent A7tatJieina sit to be 
 taken literally. Tulloch was greatly touched when I 
 pointed out to him that the words ought not to be trans- 
 lated Let him be accursed. They ought merely to be 
 rendered, innocuously vilipending, He be blowcd. 
 
 With the mention of the dear name of Tulloch, an odd 
 remembrance revives. He was the Kirk's first Croall 
 
OF A WILFUL MEMORY i8i 
 
 Lecturer : getting four hundred pounds for six lectures 
 which did not cost him a great deal of trouble. His 
 subject was Sin. The volume was published by our 
 eminent firm in George Street, the Blackwoods. It sold 
 well. But a chief authority told me one day, as I sat in 
 ' The Old Saloon,' that it sounded odd when a message-boy 
 came in from a retail bookseller, exclaiming, ' Gie us six 
 Tulloch's Sins ! ' 
 
 It was not a Bishop, but only a Bishop's son, who 
 appeared much aggrieved by a statement once made by 
 the friend we miss continually. Surely humour was lack- 
 ing in that dutiful man, who would stand up for his father 
 when not attacked at all. But indeed the Principal stated, 
 with much gravity, that a lady had given him a beautiful 
 penknife, which he valued highly. One day, in the 
 Athenaeum, he laid it down on a writing-table, and going 
 elsewhere lost sight of it for a few minutes. When he 
 returned to recover it, it had vanished : and Tulloch never 
 saw it more. But the terrible thing was, that no mortal 
 had been near that fatal table save five or six Bishops. 
 Here the Principal paused : and after the manner of the 
 great orators he left his hearers to complete the sense. A 
 pause followed. And Tulloch resumed. ' It is very sad to 
 say that the person who had been nearest my knife was the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury.' 
 
 The little ways of departed friends are infinitely touch- 
 ing to me. Tulloch told me that when writing to a friend 
 in St. Andrews, even from Edinburgh thirty miles off, he 
 always wrote SL Andreivs, Fife. One thought of Dickens, 
 
i82 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 and the never-failing Rochester, Kent. There is but one 
 Rochester in England : while there is a lesser St. Andrews 
 even in Scotland, and several places beyond the Atlantic 
 bear the name. Yet Dickens was quietly persistent, when 
 told the additional word was needless. Stanley's unvarying 
 St. Aiidrezvs, N'.B., has taken a letter to New Brunswick. 
 A letter adressed from Birmingham to St. Andrezvs onl)-, 
 went to the incumbent of St. Andrew's parish in that city. 
 And Plumptre used to complain that a communication to 
 The Dea7zejy, Wel/s, often went to Wells in Norfolk, where 
 is no Deanery. The caution of the lovable Double-First 
 was, ' Mind, in writing to me, alwa}'S IVe/ls, Somerset! 
 
 The most invidious mention of this city was at a large 
 eligious meeting held in a town whose name I vividl}- 
 remember. There was a great hall : and two or three 
 thousand good folk were gathered in it who apparently 
 deemed themselves better than other people. Requests 
 were being made that divers souls, supposed to be in evil 
 case, .should be interceded for. One arose, and asked the 
 prayers of the meeting for a little town on the East coast 
 of Scotland, which was ' wholly given to idolatr}'.' Such 
 was the expression. A little city, with many schools, also 
 the seat of a University. Having thus m\-steriously 
 indicated the place, the excellent individual plainly felt 
 that no mortal could possibly guess what place was meant : 
 and putting his hand o\cr his mouth, he said to his friends 
 on the platform, in a hoarse whisper distinctl}' heard 
 over the entire hall, — St. Andravs ! Being very serious!}- 
 concerned in the moral estate of that cit)', I confess to 
 
OF A WILFUL MEMORY 183 
 
 have been somewhat startled when I heard the tale. For, 
 so far from estcemin^^ St. Andrews as worse than other 
 towns, I was strongly convinced that it was even a good 
 deal better than most of them. 
 
 Quite recently prayer was being offered in a certain 
 large gathering for something which may be good, or may 
 not. I have a clear opinion on that point : but that is of no 
 consequence. As certain words were uttered, a good man, 
 deeply sympathising with the sentiment, loudly exclaimed 
 Hear, hear! With many more, I was much disgusted. 
 But I was also considerably perplexed. JVIio was it that 
 the wild enthusiast desired to move to closer attention } 
 Who is generally understood, in Christian assemblies, to be 
 the Hearer of Prayer ? The incident appeared to me a 
 very awful one. 
 
 A pleasantcr remembrance of that exclamation comes. 
 A poet and a genius, whom the writer seldom sees but 
 holds in warm affection, was once speaking of the prepos- 
 terous and idiotic fashion of Scotland whereby the minister 
 in the Kirk having finished his prayer, adds the Avien, the 
 congregation keeping dead silence. ' Why,' said that man, 
 enlightened beyond his surroundings, ' for a man to say 
 Amen to his own prayer is just as if he were to say Hear 
 hear to his own speech ! ' Though not more idiotic, it is 
 in fact a great deal worse. For if the speaker did thus call 
 attention to the sentiment he uttered, he would at least 
 not be putting himself in stupid and cantankerous contra- 
 riety to the old and good way of Christian people from the 
 first until now. But the unhappy thing here is, that many 
 
i84 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 worthy folk are in the behef that they are following the 
 order of Christendom, when they arc vehemently contend- 
 ing for some ugly and stupid fashion which is unknown save 
 in an unappreciable fraction of the Church Catholic. An 
 excellent old lady, listening at eighty years to the familiar 
 chanting of the psalms for the very first time in her life, 
 stated to me that ' it was a kind of lilt.' As for a certain 
 hymn, well-known outside of Scotland as the Te Deuni, it 
 was 'just like the quackin' of ducks.' A minister who at 
 length succeeded in getting made a ' Charity ' D.D., told 
 me that the Tc Deiiin was utterly unfit for public worship : 
 forasmuch as it led one over such a number of subjects as 
 'to leave the mind quite bemuddled.' In this Scottish 
 parish, I am thankful to say that we have sung that 
 grandest of uninspired hymns every Sunday for near 
 nineteen years : and until now our minds are no more 
 bemuddled than before we began that pleasant conformity 
 to Catholic order. 
 
 Still, the opinion of all the people among whom you 
 live has an awful weight. You remember the poor M.A. 
 who was constrained to declare that ' the world is as flat 
 as a pancake.' Happily, the general consensus some- 
 times leads one right. It was touching, when a rustic 
 seeking baptism for his child was questioned by the parish 
 minister on matters more elementar}' than seem needful. 
 ' But how do you know there is a God ? ' The homely 
 answer was, ' It's the clash o' the kintra ' : which means the 
 belief of everyone he knew. The poor man was quite right. 
 It is not every human being who is called to 'prove all things. 
 
OF A WILFUL MEMORY 185 
 
 I do not know that among the many visitors to this 
 place we have ever had one more interesting than a man 
 whose face suddenly looks wistfully at me, though he is 
 some hundreds of miles away. Twice has William Ernest 
 Henley come to St. Andrews, each time for two or three 
 days: twice I have met him and talked with him elsewhere. 
 He is little more than forty, but he looks much older. Few 
 of a suffering race have had to bear what Henley has gone 
 through : and I never knew a sufferer bear his burden more 
 heroically. His volume, called A Bool' of Verses, was pub- 
 lished in the summer of 1888, and it came very straight to 
 many hearts. The first part of it, ' In Hospital : Rhymes 
 and Rhythms,' has an awful realistic power. Quoruvi pars 
 magna fui is nothing, to express the sombre and terrible 
 truth here. But there is far more in Mr. Henley's verse 
 than the uttering of a most exceptional experience. If 
 there be such a thing at all as the ipsissiuia poetic inspiration, 
 the incommunicable spark, you have it continually there. 
 I durst not try to read uncounted lines aloud, from that pen. 
 The Song of the Sivord has come this year of '92 : in the 
 summer of '90 there was a remarkable volume of prose, 
 Vieivs and Reviews. The prose is admirable : but many 
 write prose well in these days. And the views set forth are 
 often exceptional : an unfriendly critic would say crotchety : 
 they are vitally their author's own. It is the verse which is 
 unapproached, in its own way, by any : it sets its writer on 
 high. Here is a Poet : there can be no question about 
 that. 
 
 Mr. Henley was brought to Edinburgh to edit what was 
 
i86 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 at first called the Scots Obseji'er : but in a little the 
 headquarters were moved to London : it is the National 
 Observe}' now. When he first came to this place, it was 
 in company with the writer's dear and tried friend Charles 
 Baxter, to whom Louis Stevenson has dedicated two of his 
 books : a distinction of such a kind has seldom befallen 
 an Edinburgh W.S. One evening the friends dined here : 
 and Henley left on one's mind the impression of a very 
 singular individuality. He was most interesting, and indeed 
 charming : but he was quite unlike anybody else one knew. 
 His whole heart was in his paper, then just started : and I 
 remember the eagerness with which he carried off, for stud}' 
 at home, one of the earliest volumes of the Saturday 
 Review. I bound that periodical for many years : in 
 divinity calf with red edges : I wonder if any other human 
 being ever did the like. But when a distinguished Professor 
 died, and at the sale of his library twenty-three bound 
 volumes of the trenchant paper went for eighteen shillings, 
 I ceased to bind it. And practically, the volumes are very 
 rarely opened : any more than the volumes of a monthly 
 magazine. Thirty years since I had a friend who possessed 
 Frascr from the first number. Though the volumes were 
 curious, and interesting, they took up much space and they 
 were dusty : and my friend would willingly have given 
 them to any one who would have carried them away. 
 
 In reading much of Mr. Henley's vcr.sc, one feels that 
 there is something terrible about a man who resolutely tells 
 the truth : utterly ignoring what we poor souls wish were 
 true. There are those who will relate an old church legend 
 
OF A WILFUL MEMORY 187 
 
 for its pathetic beauty, not minding that indeed it is not 
 true : touched by it just as much as though it were 
 true : even as the man whose faith failed him till he was 
 sure of nothing still delighted in the h}^mns which he loved 
 of old : moved as in past years by Rock of Ages though 
 not believing there was any Rock of Ages at all. 
 
 On this page, I am yielding to inexplicable associations 
 as did Mrs. Nickleby herself: wherefore let it be said that 
 the wilful memory, as the last sentence was written, brought 
 back vividly a day left forty years behind : if one may vary 
 Wordsworth. Coming out of Keswick on the top of a 
 coach bound for Penrith, and crowded with tourists, the 
 coachman pointed to a white house on a hill with his whip, 
 and uttered the enigmatic words, ' That's where Towser 
 lived.' * Who was Towser } ' ' Oh, Towser, that wrote 
 books.' A traveller mildly said, ' I think you must mean 
 Southey.' ' Well,' said the driver, in a loud and indignant 
 tone, ' Southey, or Towser, or something of that kind : I 
 don't care.' Such is fame. It had been different, two days 
 before, driving from Bowness by Thirlmere to Keswick : 
 now enjoying the privilege of the box-seat. Passing by 
 Rydal, the question was put, ' Did you know Mr. Words- 
 worth ? ' ' Oh yes, I knew old Wordsworth ver}- well : He 
 was ver}- fond of the box-scat was old Wordsworth.' I am 
 not sure that the coachman was personally ver}- familiar 
 with the great poet's works : but he was extremely well 
 aware that * old Wordsworth ' was esteemed by many as a 
 very great man. Familiarity had not diminished reverence. 
 There is a simple-minded conviction with many that it is 
 
i88 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 impossible anyone well-known to them can be a person of 
 high eminence. That conviction was clearly expressed in 
 my hearing when I was a lad at College. I had said, in 
 the hearing of an old lady whose brother had been a St. 
 Andrews Professor, something implying that Chalmers was 
 a great man. Her niece, a young woman, sat by. The 
 startling words came, ' Ye need not say that in this house ! 
 Jessie there has sat far too often on Dr. Chalmers's knee to 
 think him a great man.' I was struck dumb. And the 
 good old lady, going back to the estimate of a remote day, 
 summed up with the exclamation, ' Daft Tam Chalmers !' 
 As she closed, a voice, stilled for a generation, went on : 
 not addressing me : not speaking of Chalmers. ' Yes, he 
 was a good man : an excellent good man. Only you could 
 not believe anything he said.' That was his only weakness. 
 And his divagations from truth were always in the way 
 of exaggeration. And his very name was appropriate. 
 It was brought in nicely in a little poem about him. Here 
 
 it is : — 
 
 You Double each story you tell : 
 
 You Double each sight that you see : 
 Your name's Double-U E Double-L, 
 Double-U DoubIe-0 D ! 
 
 For the old gentleman's name had been Wcllivcod. The 
 thing was a little awkward. We were in the beautiful 
 dwelling of a delightful old man, kind to me in \w\ }outh : 
 and who was pretty near the incarnation of absolute 
 truthfulness : hating even playful colouring-up. And his 
 Christian name was Wellwood ! ' I trust,' said he, with just 
 
OF A WILFUL MEMORY 189 
 
 a tinge of asperity, ' that it does not follow that all who bear 
 the name are to take that line ? ' Many disclaimers instantly 
 followed. It was he, that dear old gentleman, who when 
 on a bright summer morning walking with him under his 
 fine trees and seeing the grass golden under the sun of 
 July I said to him 'What a lovely place you have here ! ' 
 replied, with a sigh, ' Yes : if you could have a nine-hundred- 
 and-ninety-nine years' lease of it ! ' And silence fell upon 
 us. It would not do to have to go away. North of the 
 Tweed, such a lease means for ever. Two brothers, kindly 
 devoted to one another as the Cheerybles, abode together 
 in that sylvan home : and I was the young parish minister. 
 I blushed, I did indeed, when the venerable man in a 
 meeting of the parishioners once said, ' We're all just a 
 pleasant Family : and that's the head of it.' Little fit, 
 indeed. And, as plain fact, the head of all of us was hard 
 by : and he governed us paternally for our good. I went 
 back, years after I was no longer a country parson, to that 
 beautiful region : one brother had departed, and the elder 
 of the two was left. I see the kind yet firm face, as he 
 held my hand a space and looked at me intently ere we 
 parted for this life. And I do not think that when 
 Alexander was gone, Wellwood desired that long lease 
 any more. Long-since reunited : where things arc better 
 by far. ' Heaven is better than Kentuck,' was the word of 
 Uncle Tom. And Paradise is better than the sweetest 
 spot in unforgotten Kirkpatrick-Irongray. 
 
 Did the ingenuous reader ever receive a letter from a 
 total stranger, stating that the stranger wanted 60/. to pay 
 
igo MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 a lawyer's bill incurred through pure wrongheadedness, and 
 requesting the reader to send that sum by post ? Such a 
 letter came to me a little while ago. And it was not a bad 
 joke : it was very serious earnest. The stranger lived some 
 hundreds of miles away, but still in Scotland. He appeared 
 to think I combined unlimited wealth with extreme sim- 
 plicity. Modest as the livings of the Kirk arc, there are 
 those who fancy the clergy of Scotland are ver}- rich. I 
 hear, to-day, a very astute old farmer say (thirty-five years 
 ago) ' We know that the ministers are full of money.' It 
 was the only time I ever heard the phrase. And I re- 
 membered how Charles Lamb had said that Coleridge was 
 ' full of fun.' But that is a quite different condition. .\nd 
 in these days of terribly reduced stipends, which appear 
 unlikely ever to increase, there is not much fun in rectory, 
 vicarage, or manse. 
 
 Another bit of clerical experience. I have a friend, a 
 parson, the incumbent of a Scottish parish. He is a very 
 decided churchman, and has distinct views as to schism. 
 Accordingly, fighting against his natural tendenc)', he 
 determined to be wonderfully friendly with nonconformists. 
 One morning, going to church, he met the dissenting 
 minister going to his place of worship. The representative 
 of the National Establishment held out his hand to the 
 Anti-State-Churchman : and said ' I wish you a pleasant 
 day's duty.' ' Ah, ah,' was the answer of the good 
 separatist as he rapidly fled away. Upon this my friend 
 resolved that he would try whether it were possible to elicit 
 a responsive good wish from the man unhappily dixided. 
 
OF A WILFUL MEMORY 191 
 
 For seven successive Sunday mornings he took the worthy 
 man's hand, uttering the Hke kind sentiment : but he never 
 drew any friendly reply. For a day or two, with an 
 astonished air, the response continued to be ' Ah, ah.' 
 Then it appeared that a rejoinder had been meditated. It 
 assumed the form, ' A cold morning.' ' Very cold indeed,' 
 my friend sorrowfully subjoined. ' It was awkwardness,' I 
 said to him, as he told the story. ' Ah no : it was not.' 
 And he sighed. 
 
 As these last words are written, a cloud descends upon 
 the humble writer : the remembrance of a grievous dis- 
 appointment. It never wholly passes away : sometimes it 
 revives painfully. This Christmas-eve brings it back : it 
 fell upon a Christmas-eve. At that period I was twelve 
 years old. But the scene is vivid as ever. 
 
 Upon that day, two school-boys might have been seen 
 leaning against the window of the chief pastry-cook of a 
 little Scottish town. No such tarts are now made by man 
 as those that good man made. A wealthy farmer of the 
 neighbourhood came up, and stopped when he reached us. 
 Placing his right hand in his pocket, he rattled a vast 
 amount (so it seemed to us) of coin ; and said, with a 
 benevolent air, ' Boys, is there onything there tempin' you ? ' 
 By tempin', let the English reader understand, the worthy 
 man meant to convey the notion of tantalising, or exciting 
 the desire of enjoyment. ' Boys,' he repeated, ' is there 
 onything tempin' you .-* ' With characteristic modesty we 
 preserved silence : but a suppressed giggle and a rapid 
 glance at the pocket made our feelings very manifest. 
 
192 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 Already, in fancy, were we enjoying the sustenance to be 
 purchased with the hberal tip we made sure was coming. 
 The good old man then said, ' Ah, boys, I see there's some- 
 thing tempin' you ' : and again rattling his money in his 
 pocket he walked ofif and was seen no more. Long since, 
 that benevolent soul has gone where cheesecakes are not : 
 but the incident dies not in the wilful memory. And now, 
 when at times few and far between we revisit the schoolboy 
 spot, and pass that corner, where new boys loiter as we 
 loitered then, again I behold the puffy red face, and hear 
 the wheezy voice say in apoplectic tones, * I see, boys, there's 
 something tempin' you.' 
 
 Of a sudden, I see a cheery face, of a man in middle age 
 who in great incompetence held an elevation of about the 
 dignity of a mole hill. He was explaining to me (a lad) 
 how great and influential he had been in a former sphere 
 of uselessness. * In fact,' .said he, ' I was Omnipotent in 
 Little Peddlington ! ' How pleased with himself the good 
 man seemed ! I could but utter an inarticulate murmur, 
 as of awe-stricken admiration. I was very young. And I 
 have ever shrunk from giving offence. 
 
 The incident recalled another day, in a village among 
 the hills. A little man, with a deep voice, who was what 
 we call a ' Chapel-minister,' found a workman painting the 
 door of the place of worship without orders from himself 
 ' Who told that to be done ? ' The answer was, ' The 
 Factor.' Then came the dignified rejoinder, ' A greater 
 than the Factor is here ! ' 
 
 Graver thoughts come. A very clever and laborious 
 
OF A WILFUL MEMORY 193 
 
 man, the Professor of Divinity in a very great University (it 
 has near 4000 students), said to me that he had been read- 
 ing up some books of Roman theology upon the solemn 
 subject of Purgatory. He was much impressed by the 
 length of time for which it appeared some evil-doers would 
 be detained there. ' I wouldn't want to be let out after 
 thirty thousand years. I would be burnt a' to bits ! ' 
 
 A Scotsman says would where an Englishman would 
 say should. 
 
 Never did I see Stanley look more solemn than when 
 speaking of the life beyond all that is here. Once, he told 
 two or three of us, in this room, how some of Faraday's 
 friends began to speak lightly in his presence of what may 
 be There. Finally, one of them, turning to the great man 
 who was so happy in his simple faith, said ' What do 
 you really expect you will find on the other side of 
 death ? Will there be newspapers, and clubs, and dinner- 
 parties ? ' 
 
 In a moment, the smile passed from Faraday's face, 
 and with deep seriousness of expression and of voice, he 
 answered : 
 
 ' Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered 
 into the heart of man ' 
 
 Here Stanley's voice failed him. The beautiful little 
 face was strange to see. And deep silence was in this 
 room for a space. 
 
 In that inconceivably-remote age when the writer was 
 a lad at Glasgow College, he sojourned for a space in the 
 
194 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 vicinity of a little Scotch town, in a lonely region. The 
 inhabitants were incredibly pragmatical and self-sufficient. 
 Our biggest Scotch preacher ministered one Sunday in the 
 parish-kirk. I said to an aged inhabitant, ' Well, what did 
 you all think of Mr. Caird ^ ' The answer was prompt. It 
 was likewise idiotic. ' No much : we thought his sermons 
 no very weel conneckit.' 
 
 It may be feared that even such would be an austere 
 reader's criticism of the present chapter. It matters not 
 at all. 
 
195 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE NEW LITURGICS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK 
 
 The existence of the Church Service Society is a note- 
 worthy fact. On January 31, 1865, a meeting was held in 
 Glasgow, at which it was resolved to found a society whose 
 object should be ' the study of the liturgies — ancient and 
 modern — of the Christian Church, with a view to the pre- 
 paration and publication of forms of prayer for public wor- 
 ship, and services for the administration of the sacraments, 
 the celebration of marriage, the burial of the dead, etc' 
 At the annual meeting held at Edinburgh on May 30, 1890, 
 it was reported that the clerical members numbered, at that 
 date, 506; and the lay members 130. Of the clerical 
 members there were 495 resident and working in Scotland, 
 distributed through 70 Presbyteries. There are 84 Presby- 
 teries in the Church. Eleven clerical members were in 
 England, and abroad. These figures are striking, as in- 
 dicating a decided conviction and a strong feeling through- 
 out the Church of Scotland. But if the membership be 
 weighed, as well as counted, the figures become still more 
 striking, and significant. Good Presbyterians may like the 
 Church Service Society, or not. But the Society cannot 
 be ignored. It reckons among its members a decided 
 
 o 2 
 
196 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 majority of the most outstanding ministers of the Kirk. 
 And the names of Tulloch, Macleod, Caird, Milligan, Story, 
 and MacGregor, are well known beyond the limits of 
 Scotland. 
 
 The circulation of the Book of Common Order/ issued 
 by the Society, is a noteworthy fact. The first Edition was 
 published in 1867. The sixth Edition has been published 
 in 1890. The volume is not quite a cheap one : and, so far, 
 it has hardly been much read by the laity. But to men- 
 tion the Editions which have appeared gives but little 
 notion of the influence which the book has exerted. You 
 can enter few Scottish parish churches now in which you 
 will not recognise the beautiful and familiar sentences 
 pervading all the prayers : in which you will not find that 
 the old traditional floating liturgy (save in the instances 
 where its sentences are touching and admirable) has been 
 superseded by decorous and devout supplication which has 
 the true liturgical music and flow. The ' eloquent and 
 impressive prayer,' at which the congregation gaped in 
 wonder, really not thinking of joining in it : ' the most 
 eloquent prayer ever addressed to a Boston audience ' (and 
 a very awful reflection it is that the prayer was addressed 
 to the Boston audience) : is dead and gone. ' A most 
 eloquent address,' was the brief criticism of an English 
 
 ' Eux''^<''>«o»'. A Book of Common Order : being Forms of Prayer, and 
 Admini.stration of the Sacraments, and other Ordinances of the Church ; 
 Issued by the Church Service Society. Sixth Edition, carefully revised. 
 William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London. 1S90. 
 
 Church Service Society. Annual Report for 1890. With List of Office- 
 bearers and Members. 
 
THE NEW LITURGICS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK 197 
 
 Duke, when an eminent Scotch preacher had ministered at 
 a funeral : it had never occurred to the Duke that the 
 address was Prayer. And we all remember how the 
 petitions, though spoken to the Almighty were spoken at 
 the congregation : and conveyed information, or reproof, or 
 the speaker's views upon matters political and religious, 
 and his low estimate of such as ventured to think other- 
 wise. 
 
 Information: as 'Bless each one of the 1345 com- 
 municants who received the sacrament last Sunday under 
 this roof.' 
 
 Reproof: as ' Have mercy on those who permit trifling 
 excuses, which would not for a moment be suffered to de- 
 tain them from any engagement of business or of amuse- 
 ment, to keep them away from the place where God has 
 recorded His Name, and promised to meet with His 
 people.' (By an unattractive preacher.) 
 
 The speaker's views : as ' Lord, have mercy upon the 
 magistrates of Drumsleekie, such as they are. Make them 
 wiser and better.' 
 
 Estimate of opponents : as ' Lord, have mercy upon that 
 miserable man who was lately pouring forth blasphemies 
 against Thee.' The blasphemy consisted of declaring that 
 there was no harm in taking a walk in a Botanic Garden 
 on the Lord's Day. 
 
 It may be permitted to one who has been a member of 
 the Church Service Society from the first, and who has (in 
 the main) heartily approved the work it has done and the 
 
198 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 current of tendency of which it has been partly the cause 
 and much more the effect, to relate, as fairly as he can, the 
 story of the new Liturgies of the Church of Scotland. 
 
 There is not time to discuss the technical and conven- 
 tional meaning of the word Liturgy. Here, we are content 
 to take the word as signifying what is its signification both 
 etymologically and in ordinary parlance, ' a formulary of 
 public devotion.' We know that this is not the severe 
 ecclesiological sense. We know, too, that there never was 
 such a man as Lord Bacon : there was a Francis Bacon 
 who became Lord Verulam. We know also that there is 
 not the smallest warrant in holy Scripture for the imagery 
 of the besetting sin. But accuracy beyond what is generally 
 accepted is irritating to many. And these pages are 
 meant not to irritate but to soothe : if indeed that may be 
 in treating such a subject in Scotland. 
 
 It may be said, with confidence, that the growth of the 
 Church Service Society, and the wide acceptance of its 
 Book of Common Order, indicate a dissatisfaction, in the 
 minds of many, with the previous state of things as relating 
 to public prayer in the Church of Scotland. It was not 
 that the members of the Society, at its beginning, con- 
 templated the preparation of a Liturgy in the sense of a 
 Service-Book to be enforced (or even authorised) by law, 
 and to be continually used in churches. The Society, as 
 such, holds no opinion upon that question : as matter of 
 fact, the most diverse views exist within the Society upon 
 that question. And even those of its members who are 
 clear in favour of an authorised Servicc-Book, have ever 
 
THE NEW LITURGICS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK 199 
 
 been strong for retaining the privilege of free prayer. A 
 partial Liturgy, was the voice of Dr. Robertson of Glasgow 
 Cathedral and of Dr. Crawford, Professor of Divinity in the 
 University of Edinburgh : who were the first (within the 
 writer's knowledge) to indicate the flowing tide. I maj^ 
 presume to say that the suggestion startled one ; and it 
 was made in my hearing twelve years before the foundation 
 of the Church Service Society. All that the Society aimed 
 at was the elevation of the tone of common prayer, both in 
 devotion and in literary grace : by setting before youths 
 entering the ministry, and doubtless before their seniors 
 too if still capable of education, better models than the 
 chance-recollections of prayer offered by one's parish 
 minister, or by an occasional outstanding preacher. Such, 
 it is to be confessed, in their desire to keep the congregation 
 alert from first to last, rousing them from the comatose 
 condition into which people fall when wearily standing 
 through a prayer of thirty-five minutes wherein they could 
 have completed every sentence as soon as begun, did 
 occasionally pray in eccentric fashion. This was called a 
 striking prayer. ' We know there are blessings going to- 
 night, and we put in for our share.' ' It must be acknow- 
 ledged that hitherto Thy people have been in a sad 
 minority : but we look on to the day when they shall be in 
 an overwhelming majority.' ' For, as Thou knowest, men 
 do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of the national 
 emblem.' ' Teach us to remember that for every sermon 
 we hear, we must render account upon the Day of Judg- 
 ment' ' Thine was not the cheap charity which tosses 
 
200 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 away superfluities.' It is the writer's determination to give 
 no instances which have not come within his personal 
 knowledge. And he is quite prepared to indicate (to any- 
 body who has a claim to ask) the church where the ' First 
 Prayer ' on a communion Sunday morning (the congrega- 
 tion standing, save that about half had sat down in ex- 
 haustion and wrath) was somewhat more than thirty-five 
 minutes in length. And the officiating minister was a good 
 and able, though very narrow and bigoted man. His 
 prayer was not made up of rambling repetitions. It was a 
 good prayer, carefully thought out : only insufferably 
 tedious. He was a man incapable of saying, * And now, O 
 Lord, we will relate an anecdote.' Such a thing has been. 
 I have known a good member of the Free Kirk who, after 
 an awful wedding-service, wholly extemporised, and con- 
 taining a hit at Norman Macleod (at that period distrusted 
 by many for his views on the Lord's Day), approached a 
 parish clergyman, and said, with agony in his face, ' I 
 never was in favour of a liturgy before : but henceforward 
 I am clear for a printed service for marriages.' It was on 
 such an occasion that the words were uttered, ' We thank 
 Thee that Thou hast given us wumman, to make us 
 koamfortable.' 
 
 It is enough to indicate the sort of prayers from which 
 the Church Service Society desired to deliver the Church 
 and the country. I am not to suffer myself to recall, even 
 to my own memory, the sorrowful instances of irreverence, 
 folly, and vulgar clap-trap, which have too frequently 
 formed the matter of graceless anecdote. Everybody 
 
THE NEW LITURGICS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK 201 
 
 knows to what a degree such stories are put about in 
 Scotland. I have heard them told, from personal recollec- 
 tion, by Professors of Divinity who used to have to listen 
 to strange prayers : and never with more telling effect than 
 by a student of divinity who at the moment was Lord 
 Chancellor. It is no more than just to say that these 
 eccentricities in prayer are exceptional and abnormal : that 
 although one in a long life has heard such perhaps half-a- 
 dozen times, the strangest of them never were heard either 
 by one's own ears, or by those of any mortal known to us : 
 they are matters of floating gossip and tradition : certainly 
 much exaggerated, possibly absolute inventions. The 
 actual standard of prayer has always been good : on very 
 few Sundays in one's history have the prayers actually 
 heard in public worship been other than decorous and 
 devout : on many Sundays the prayers have been so 
 beautiful and uplifting that it seemed as if they left nothing 
 to be desired. And it is simply untrue that you cannot 
 join in what is called an extempore prayer. One knows 
 what has been said, times innumerable, by those trained to 
 a liturgy. But it is entirely a question of what you have 
 been trained to. No doubt there must needs be the act 
 of listening to the petition : the act of assenting to it : the 
 act of joining in it : but the mind acts with lightning 
 rapidity when doing a familiar work : and with a devout 
 Scot, trained to the old ways of the Kirk, when the prayer 
 is said by a minister in whom he has confidence, and whose 
 way he knows, the acts are practically simultaneous. Who 
 does not know that this is true ? When even so great and 
 
202 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 so fair-minded a man as the good Archbishop Whately of 
 Dublin declared that it is impossible duly to join in an ex- 
 tempore prayer, because you do not know what is coming, 
 all this merely proved to an old (or even a young) member 
 of the Kirk that the good Archbishop was talking of a 
 matter which his training had not prepared him to under- 
 stand. What he honestly declared impossible is perfectly 
 easy and natural to one brought up to it. You must serve 
 an apprenticeship before your work grows skilled work, 
 and so comes to be done with facility. You must be 
 educated up to joining habitually in either liturgical or 
 unwritten prayers. 
 
 But while we deny, firmly, that the absurd sentences 
 which have often been quoted south of the Tweed as 
 samples of Scotti.'^h public prayer are other than a prepos- 
 terous caricature of the actual wor.ship of the Kirk, it must 
 be admitted that a Scottish congregation is helplessly 
 in the hands of the officiating minister for its worship. 
 The congregation's sole security lies in the good sense, 
 good taste, and devout feeling of the minister. If he be a 
 fool, he can make the entire service as foolish as himself 
 The most admirable of liturgies cannot make the congre- 
 gation quite independent of those who officiate : as he will 
 confess who has heard the half-inspired prayers of England 
 irreverently gabbled, or (still worse), theatrically declaimed : 
 as he will confess who has heard a conceited, self-conscious 
 blockhead acting a lesson, of holy Scripture. But, in the 
 Anglican Church, it is hard to quite spoil the beauty and 
 devout felicity of the unimprovable sentences as they flow. 
 
THE NEW LITURGICS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK 203 
 
 It is not left to deacon or to priest or to prelate to decide, 
 possibly in extreme haste and under the most painful 
 nervous tension, through what fields of thought or feeling 
 the flock shall be led that day. It is sad, when the hungry 
 sheep look up and are not fed, through the exhortation : 
 but it is a bitter thing when devout souls would lift up their 
 heart, hoping for comfort or guidance, and are dashed 
 down from the help of prayer. You may smile, sorrowfully 
 enough, when you read the report in the newspaper : but 
 to any devout mortal possessed of average common-sense, 
 it must have been a very jarring and awful experience to 
 be present on that occasion (it was at a meeting held on 
 the Lord's Day) when a certain unbeneficed person, in the 
 orders of the Kirk, and in charge of a congregation, ' said, 
 in his opening prayer, that it was not fiddles or organs or 
 trumpets or hymns, or extracts from the writings of some 
 old sinner, who was perhaps in hell himself, but it was the 
 Holy Spirit that was needed in the Church.' ^ It is most 
 true, that there is but one Inspirer of all good prayer : but 
 did He inspire such prayer as that ? Coleridge said that 
 he never knew the value of the English Book of Common 
 Prayer till he attended worship at some remote churches 
 in Scotland. It may be doubted if he ever heard anything 
 quite so irreverent and unbecoming as that lamentable 
 sentence. And the woful thing is, that it is just the man 
 who could utter such words as to Almighty God, who 
 would be the last to feel his need of liturgical help. 
 Assuredly, in the Kirk, it has hitherto been plain that 
 ' The Scotsman, September i, 1890. 
 
204 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 those ministers who can pray the best without book have 
 been most anxious for a prepared formulary. For the 
 standard they set before themselves is so high that their 
 best endeavours fall sadly short of it. 
 
 Educated Anglicans, fairly well acquainted with the 
 worship of tribes thousands of miles off, are commonly so 
 ignorant of the ways of the other National Establishment 
 in Great Britain, that they may often be heard repeating, 
 in good faith, stories concerning the prayers of the North, 
 which any sane Scotsman could inform them were in- 
 credible and impossible. I have heard of a Cambridge 
 man who declared that in a parish church in Scotland he 
 heard a hymn sung wherein the lines occurred — 
 
 My heart is like a rusty lock, 
 Oh, oil it with Tliy grace. 
 
 Of course this was a falsehood. Quite lately, the writer 
 heard a lady of condition, incapable of intentional mis- 
 statement, say that in a Highland Kirk, she heard the 
 minister pray that ' as there is but one Shepherd, so there 
 may be but one sheep.' This would make the Church of 
 Christ very small indeed. But the good lady's ears had 
 failed to catch the final syllable : of course the petition 
 was that 'there may be but one sheep-fold.' It is a well- 
 known sentence of the floating liturgy : and Mr. Ruskin 
 would approve it. In equal good faith, the writer was 
 recently assured, by a lady, that she had been attending a 
 church where the minister absolutely refused to pray for 
 the Prince of Wales : specially excepting him from the 
 
THE NEW LITURGICS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK 205 
 
 usual supplication. Naturally, I enquired in what form of 
 speech this eccentric variation from ordinary form was 
 carried out. ' Oh,' replied the excellent lady, ' he said, 
 every Sunday, IVe pray for the royal family, ALL BUT 
 Edward P'/ince of Wales! I had no difficulty in dis- 
 cerning that the mistake arose through the minister's 
 peculiar pronunciation, Albert Edward being so rendered 
 as to sound all but Edward. Within the last few weeks, 
 the Moderator of the General Assembly was designated, 
 far South in the garden of England, The Mediator : this 
 by a person of high culture. When doubt was expressed 
 as to the accuracy of the designation, the impatient reply 
 was, TJie Mediator, or something of that kind. Let the 
 Anglican reader be cautious in accepting anything related 
 as to the Church of Scotland by hasty English tourists. 
 Such may relate very preposterous things. 
 
 Although liturgical prayer was beyond question the 
 use of the Kirk for long after the Reformation, it is to be 
 admitted that since the Revolution in 1688 read prayers 
 were, as the rule, unknown till within the last thirty years 
 in the national worship of Scotland. Anglicans will be 
 surprised to learn that read prayers were equally disused 
 when Episcopacy was established by law. To the Philistine 
 mind, Episcopacy means, essentially, the Prayer Book and 
 the surplice. But Scotch Episcopacy, till comparatively 
 recent days, knew neither the one nor the other. The 
 prayers were ' conceived ' : the robes were black : the 
 worship was not to be distinguished from that of the 
 Presbyterian Establishment. You had to watch minute 
 
2o6 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 details to make sure whether the officiating minister had 
 been ordained by a Bishop with Presbyters, or by a 
 Presbytery without a Bishop. Thus the characteristic 
 prayers of Scotland were what those who like them call 
 Free\ and those who dislike them, Extempore. In many 
 cases they were indeed extempore : made on the instant 
 for the instant : often extremely well. And assuredly an 
 able, ready, and devout minister attained to a very perfect 
 adaptation to time and place. One recalls the vulgar 
 quasi-argument of a vulgar person, about ready-made 
 prayers not fitting any more than ready-made clothes. In 
 some cases the prayers were written, and committed to 
 memory. In more cases, probably, they had through long 
 use gradually crystallised into a form : the same thing was 
 said every day, but it had never been composed : it had 
 grown. Surely this is in the experience of most Scotch 
 ministers. But the outstanding fact, apparent to all, was 
 that the prayers were said without book. Neither printed 
 nor written page lay before the minister. A strong and 
 brave man, here and there, brushed aside the tradition : it 
 never was law. No human being can produce the statute 
 of Church or of State which forbids the reading of prayers. 
 Chalmers read his prayers in the Divinity Hall : he read 
 them when Moderator of the General Assembly. A man 
 in a thousand had told his Presbytery that through failing 
 health he could not extemporise or repeat his prayers ; 
 and he got permission to read them. But it is unques- 
 tionable that it was a very startling thing to average 
 Scotch worshippers, when it was proposed that prayers 
 
THE NEW LITURGICS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK 207 
 
 should be read in church. It was only Restoration : it 
 was called Innovation. And the impression went about 
 that there must be some lack of the right spirit about the 
 man who could not extemporise his prayers. It became 
 necessary to argue the question of liturgical or free prayer, 
 as in the presence of judges to whom the issue was entirely 
 new. And there was a very strong bias against the dis- 
 turbers of the peace, the vilipenders of the good old way, 
 who proposed change. I heard it stated in a church court 
 that the reason why Dr. Robert Lee proposed to read his 
 prayers probably was that having wholly given over praying 
 in private, he had lost the power of expressing himself in 
 supplication : he being an evil man, not merely uninspired 
 by the Holy Spirit, but positively inspired by the Devil. 
 The Moderator apparently regarded this as legitimate 
 argument, for he did not intervene. And various members 
 of court vociferously conveyed their approval. 
 
 We all know the probable fate of any man who pro- 
 poses reformation : whether in locomotion, in aesthetics, in 
 politics, or in public prayer. But when the question of 
 worship came to be thrashed out, the reasons, if you set 
 aside mere prejudice, or a more respectable cleaving to the 
 dear old way, appeared to be all on one side. No doubt, 
 it took a little while to see this. Dr. Robertson died early : 
 Dr. Crawford, who had mainly started the movement, had 
 become Professor of Divinity, had been got hold of by 
 those who persuaded him that he must be silent, and in 
 fact never had the nature of the controversialist. So the 
 battle, at the first, was fought, all but alone, by Dr. Robert 
 
2o8 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 Lee. It was singular that it should have fallen to him. 
 He had little ear for the melody of liturgical prayer. He 
 valued dogmatic freedom incomparably more than ritual. 
 His taste, in matters ecclesiological, was exactly the 
 reverse of Catholic. His marvellous cleverness and smart- 
 ness, and his capacity as a hard hitter, seemed not quite 
 the characteristics of the man who was to mend the devo- 
 tions of the Church. He was as alert and bright a debater 
 as ever I listened to : but even a great Lord President 
 dismissed these qualities with the single word flippant. 
 And though a most amiable man, he was (in public) not 
 conciliatory. I was present in the Presbytery of Edin- 
 burgh when he was pulled up for the first time for his 
 ' Innovations.' They were as nothing to what is done 
 every day now in many churches. To kneel at prayer, 
 instead of standing (or lounging) : to stand at praise, 
 instead of irreverently sitting : to have the help of the 
 sacred organ : these were all, save the little printed prayer- 
 book, which had some modest beginnings of responses. 
 The Bible says, ' Let all the people say Amen ' : but the 
 Kirk had for a time said, ' Let nobody but the minister 
 say Amen ' : surely a most unscriptural and preposterous 
 fashion. The two estimable members of Presbytery who 
 brought up the matter. Dr. Simpson of Kirkncwton and 
 Dr. Stevenson of South Leith,werc studiously conciliatory : 
 indeed, upon the merits, they seemed thoroughly with Dr. 
 Lee : only they thought the law forbade such change, 
 however desirable. But the incredible bitterness of some 
 members against Dr. Lee filled a young parson, fresh from 
 
THE NEW LITURGICS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK 209 
 
 his beautiful country parish, with astonishment and even 
 with consternation. It appeared, however, ere the end of 
 the debate, that no love whatever was lost between good 
 Dr. Lee and his opponents. In fact, he was extremely- 
 provoking. It was in the Assembly Hall. I see Dr. Lee 
 arise to make his reply : lay aside a great wrap which used 
 to be called a Highland cloak : and stand out, keen, 
 polished, self-possessed, fluent : the ideal of a debater. I 
 fancy he had made up his mind that the Presbytery was 
 against him : for he took no pains to soothe them. ' My 
 congregation and I do this and that,' he said: 'Is there 
 any harm in that, most reverend Brethren } ' Then he 
 related, with great tact, a farther step in his progress : and 
 again and again, in most provoking fashion, came ' Is there 
 any harm in t/iat, most reverend Brethren ? ' The words 
 were said with an unconcealed sneer, which made it too 
 apparent that the speaker did not revere or even reverence 
 his brethren in the smallest degree. And many good men 
 were plainly rubbed the wrong way. 
 
 Coming to the essential merits of the question between 
 prayers written and not written : and putting aside such 
 collateral issues as whether liturgical prayers had actually 
 been used in the Kirk and whether they could constitu- 
 tionally be used again : the question became a very simple 
 one. For it is as certain as that two and two make four, 
 that, so far as concerns the congregation, public prayer is 
 always of necessity a provided form. It is never the ex- 
 temporaneous nor the free prayer of the congregation : it is 
 a form provided and imposed upon them by the officiating 
 
 P 
 
2IO MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 minister. The congregation cannot even (as with a prayer- 
 book) look at the service beforehand, and resolve whether 
 it be such as they can, in conscience, in feeling, in good 
 taste, join in and accept as their own. Nobody knows 
 what the form is to be till it is actually produced : not 
 even the man who is to produce it. Often, from sentence 
 to sentence, he is groping his way. Often, he knows not 
 what is to come next. Often, he feels deeply that he has 
 not said what he desired, and wishes he could withdraw or 
 amend the words. TJiat is to say, and By ivliicJi I mean. 
 Principal Tulloch told me, were words familiar to him in 
 the prayers of a fine old professor of his youth. 
 
 The question is not. Form or No Form .'' The only 
 issue is. Shall the form be provided deliberately, calmly, 
 with serious consideration, and by the combined wisdom 
 of a company of devout and earnest men ? or shall it be 
 provided in great haste, nervous trepidation, and utter 
 blankness, without a vestige of devotional feeling, by some 
 youth without religious experience, and quite unable to 
 interpret and express the needs and feelings of good old 
 Christian people tried in ways of which he knows nothing 
 at all ? Lord Campbell tells us that the morning he had 
 first to pray in the Divinity Hall at St. Andrews, ' I heard 
 the bell cease, and my heart died within me.' Is that a 
 fit mood in which to extemporise a form of prayer ? We 
 know, God be thanked, it is not always so. It is not even 
 commonly so. The form is provided by a good and ex- 
 perienced minister, well knowing the case of his congrega- 
 tion, tolerably free from nervousness, and with his memory 
 
THE NEW LITURGICS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK 211 
 
 stored with decorous sentences, the traditional h'turgy of 
 the North : he can hardly go wrong. But for arrangement, 
 for words, for all that is essential to public worship, neither 
 the congregation nor the minister himself has any assurance 
 of what is coming. Not merely on the minister's spiritual 
 frame, but upon the humblest details of his physical nature, 
 the congregation are helplessly dependent for their prayers. 
 ' The Spirit is not in this place,' said an emotional Evan- 
 gelist, preaching for good Dr. Craik of Glasgow : one of 
 the best and most cultivated of Scotch ministers in his day. 
 But Dr. Craik told me, with much indignation, * I said to 
 him, after church, that the Spirit would not be in any 
 place if a man ate two pounds of beef-steak at breakfast 
 that morning.' The statement was humbling. But it was 
 true. A physical miracle need not be looked for. 
 
 Many years ago, the writer was one of two who were 
 sent to ask the late Dr. Veitch, of St. Cuthbert's, to con- 
 duct the prayers of his brethren upon a specially interesting 
 and solemn occasion. Dr. Veitch was one of the ablest 
 and best ministers of his time : and he had not the smallest 
 sympathy with the Church Service Society. Indeed, he 
 disliked and distrusted it heartily. But he listened : and 
 I remember his reply, given very solemnly. ' No : I can- 
 not undertake the duty. Here, in my own study, quietly 
 by myself, I can think of what ought to be said on so 
 special an occasion. But I have not that command of my 
 nervous system that I could be sure of saying it when the 
 time came. So you must excuse me.' I was young then, 
 and I did not venture to say what came into my mind : * Is 
 
 p 2 
 
212 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 not that reason why, in your study by yourself, you should 
 write down the suitable petitions, and thus make sure of 
 saying them worthily when the time comes ? ' I knew well 
 that if I had said so much to good Dr. Veitch, he would 
 never have spoken to me again. But my belief then was 
 what it is to-day : and I thought I had hardly ever heard 
 a stronger instance of the service of liturgical prayer. Nor 
 do I forget what was said to me by a saintly minister who 
 for fifty years ranked high as any ; and who detested Dr. 
 Robert Lee and all his works. Each Sunday morning, he 
 said, he went to church under an awful burden of misery, 
 through his anxiety about his extempore prayers. He 
 was unutterably miserable in the vestry before service. 
 He was miserable while the opening psalm was being sung. 
 He was miserable when he stood up to begin his first 
 prayer. But he took the psalm which had been sung for 
 his theme : and he tried to cast himself on God's help : 
 and gradually the burden lifted, and he got on heartily 
 with his prayer, and peace came to him. I looked at the 
 beautiful face: and I thought. If the burden of conducting 
 public worship according to our order lie so awfully upon 
 a saint like you, with a record of half-a-century, what 
 ought it to be for me, going each morning to minister to 
 a great congregation of educated folk and to pray in their 
 name ? Not but what it lay heavil)- enough ; for in those 
 days the morning prayers were /'o/za jidc extemporised, 
 and continually varied : one went to church under great 
 nervous tension : but it was not quite like that morbid 
 terror of a far better man. But I knew too well what he 
 
THE NEW LITURGICS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK 213 
 
 would have said had I suggested that he might prepare his 
 prayers. That would have been ceasing to trust simply in 
 the Holy Spirit. Singularly, he never thought of trusting to 
 any supernal aid in the matter of his sermons. They were 
 carefully written, and read : which appeared inconsistent. 
 And the good man plainly thought that to go through this 
 superfluous misery each Sunday morning was ' spending 
 and being spent ' : it was the right thing to do. Well one 
 remembers the awful nervousness of our greatest preachers 
 in those days in the vestry before service ; and how one 
 envied the composure of Anglican friends in the like 
 circumstances. One would try to go through anything, if 
 the congregation were to gain vastly by the minister's 
 suffering. But the congregation did not gain at all. The 
 strain of conducting public worship was intensified to a 
 breaking pitch by requirements which could add nothing 
 to the edification of the flock, or to the beauty of w^orship 
 in the house of prayer. And when, as in Kyle, the 
 sermon had to be got by heart and painfully repeated, 
 often as a manifest schoolboy task by a poor man plainly 
 reading from his memory, and without a vestige of the 
 spontaneity of extempore oratory, one can but wonder 
 how the sair-Jiadden-doon minister lived through the thing 
 at all. 
 
 Ifs Peace : were the words of one of our outstanding 
 ministers, when I met him on a Sunday morning going to 
 his church : as he held out his handsomely-bound prayer- 
 book. And indeed the relief is unutterable : even to such 
 as have in their memory great store of devotional material : 
 
214 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 even to such as can without much strain extemporise their 
 prayers. I have seen men who used to be in abject 
 trepidation before service, now glancing over their Book 
 of Common Order with a calm and benignant face. Of 
 course, it is of no consequence whatever to the congre- 
 gation whether the prayers arc read or not. If the people 
 kneel down (so far as may be), and bow their heads, and 
 seek to join in the supplications, they will not know 
 whether the prayers are read or not, unless by their 
 being a great deal better than usual. One remembers an 
 ignorant busybody approaching his parish minister, and 
 saying that he ' felt it his duty ' to inform him that he 
 feared some of the congregation would be aggrieved by 
 Professor Story's having read his prayers at evening 
 service the day before. But the answer was ready- 
 ' Pray, how do you know that Dr. Story read his prayers .'' 
 I fear that instead of devoutly joining in the prayers you 
 were staring at the minister. I don't myself know 
 whether the prayers were read or not : and you ought 
 not to know either.' It is wholly for the minister to 
 consider how he shall best lead the congregation's de- 
 votions. There can be no more absurd superstition than 
 that the prayers are inspired in any sense which ab.solvcs 
 the minister from doing the utmost he can with the 
 faculties and opportunities his Maker has given. In 
 praying, and in preaching, as in all other human work, 
 heaven helps those who help themselves. And it is a 
 singular inconsistency that old-fashioned Scotsmen who 
 still maintain that the minister ought to rely simply on 
 
THE NEW LITURGICS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK 215 
 
 divine aid for his public prayers, would be extremely 
 indignant if the minister failed most diligently to prepare 
 his sermon. 
 
 There are singular people who object to liturgical 
 prayer on the ground that it lightens the burden of the 
 officiating clergyman. I remember vividly hearing one 
 such, many years since, exclaim, ' I like to see a man 
 burst out into a perspiration when he's prayin'.' His 
 desire was that the poor man's nose should be held as 
 close to the grindstone as possible, in the conducting of 
 public worship as in all other things. The speaker on 
 that occasion was not a churchman : but it may be feared 
 that a like sentiment is not unknown among the laity, 
 both rich and poor. We may venture to say that it may 
 be absolutely disregarded. And the kind of folk one 
 thinks of may be assured that the burden of the Scotch 
 clergy will remain quite heavy enough, though a prayer- 
 book were imposed by law to-morrow. 
 
 It is difficult, at this time of day, to believe that Dr. 
 Robert Lee and any who were supposed to sympathise 
 with him could have been regarded, and treated, as in fact 
 they were, by men of any account. And there is no good 
 in reviving the details of painful controversy, now happily 
 past. Yet one recalls the day on which a venerable clergy- 
 man, backed by two or three of the like mind, solemnly 
 declared to three suspected younger brethren, that all who 
 approved Dr. Lee's innovations were perjured persons 
 inspired by the Devil. A Professor of Divinity informed 
 the writer that ' nobody connected with Robert Lee ' would 
 
2i6 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 be thought of, for a desirable living near Edinburgh. 
 When Dr. Lee preached in the parish church of St. 
 Andrews for the University Missionary Society, a blame- 
 less Professor,' under the excitement of the time, screamed 
 out to certain ladies passing under his window, 'Are )-ou 
 going to hear Bobby Lee ? ' These words he appeared to 
 regard as a logical argument against Dr. Lee's ways. A 
 worthy Edinburgh minister said to the writer, on many 
 occasions, that the Lord President of the Court of Session - 
 had assured him that in case of the question coming before 
 him whether innovating ministers were entitled to draw 
 their stipends, he would decide that they were not. It 
 appeared so unlikely that a judge of high eminence would 
 inform a gossiping individual what his judgment would be 
 on a question not yet raised or argued, that those who heard 
 the story felt assured there was some strange mistake. 
 The writer has in his possession a solemn letter of excom- 
 munication addressed to himself by a saintly minister, long 
 a dear friend. The writer at that period had brought in no 
 innovation whatever. But he had publicly said that he 
 approved the bringing in of the organ in their respective 
 churches by his Father and his Brother. One smiles at 
 these poor attempts at terrorism : smiles at them now. 
 They were very serious things, less than fivc-and-twenty 
 years since. Nor should it be forgotten that innovation in 
 ritual was at that day supposed by many to indicate ad- 
 herence to a certain school of theological thinking : which, 
 though numbering Lee and Tulloch among its members, 
 * Sliairp. '• Lord Colonsay. 
 
THE NEW LITURGICS OF THE ^COTTISH KIRK 217 
 
 appeared not unlikcl}- to be crushed out. ' Execution 
 must be done,' was the word of men who, if uneducated, 
 were Thorough. ' Surely there is room for Macleod and 
 Tulloch without,' was the sentiment of a good man who 
 was Thorough if ever mortal was. Of course a man may- 
 be thoroughly in the wrong. And possibly some of us, at 
 that time and in those circumstances, should have been 
 wrong too. 
 
 Just a word may be said of the persoii?iel of the Church 
 Service Society from the beginning till now. Its first 
 President was Principal Campbell of Aberdeen. When he 
 died. Principal Barclay of Glasgow succeeded. After him 
 came Principal Tulloch of St. Andrews, And when that 
 great and lovable man went, he was succeeded by the 
 Duke of Argyll, who is now President. The present Vice- 
 Presidents (who have held office for many years) are 
 Principal Caird of Glasgow, Professor Story of Glasgow, 
 Dr. Snodgrass lately Principal of a College in Canada, and 
 Dr. Boyd of St. Andrews. In the Editorial Committee, 
 which prepared the Book of Common Order, and which 
 practically does the work of the Society, all schools of 
 thought in the Church are represented : High, Broad, and 
 Low. Professor Story is Convener. Among its members 
 are Professor Milligan of Aberdeen, Dr. Sprott, Dr. 
 Macleod of Govan, Dr. Leishman, Dr. M'Murtrie, Dr. 
 Cooper of Aberdeen, Professor Menzies of St. Andrews, 
 Dr. Mitford Mitchell, and Mr. Carrick of Newbattle. 
 Anybody who is informed on the present state of the Kirk 
 will understand the import of such a list ; and will know 
 
2l8 MEN AND ^1\TTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 how fairly the work is done when it is added that those 
 men, though widely differing on many points, work kindly 
 together. The sixth edition, just out, was prepared by a 
 lesser Editorial Committee, consisting of Professor Story, 
 Dr. Sprott, Dr. Boyd, Dr. Campbell of Dundee, and Dr. 
 Muir of Morningside. It is to be acknowledged that from 
 the outset until now, Dr. Story has been the leading spirit 
 in the Society : after him. Dr. Sprott. Both are men of 
 whom the Church may be proud. Dr. Sprott's knowledge 
 of Liturgies is wide and most accurate : and thirty-five 
 years since, almost alone, he held and taught his present 
 doctrine. Dr. Story is well known as, since Tulloch was 
 taken, on the whole the most outstanding speaker in the 
 General Assembly. For incisiveness, for grace, for the 
 occasional restrained touch of pathos, he will bear com- 
 parison with the best speakers in any deliberative assembly 
 in Britain. For the lighter sportive touch which, in prose 
 and verse, lightens ecclesiastical controversy, he stands 
 alone. And as trusty friend, on whom those who know 
 him best feel they can lean heavily year after }'ear, some 
 of us lack words to speak of him worthily. Of Dr. Leish- 
 man, who is minister of a quiet pastoral parish in Rox- 
 burghshire, it is enough to say that when one seeks to 
 picture the ideal Country Parson, learned, devout, peace- 
 loving, pretty close to the first meridian of clergyman and 
 gentleman, many of us think of him. And recalling the 
 self-denying holiness of Cooper, the wonderful combination 
 of zeal and tact in M'Murtrie, the genial earnestness of 
 Donald Macleod, the youthful learning of Carrick, and the 
 
THE NEW LITURGICS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK 219 
 
 lovable qualities of divers other friends on that Editorial 
 Committee, one wonders how they should ever be vilified, 
 even by the very poorest specimens of poor humanity. 
 The writer is proud to range himself with such good men. 
 He does not pretend to write of them impartially. We are 
 all ' right dear friends ' : and time does not chill such 
 affection. 
 
 It is noteworthy that Dr. Robert Lee, who had been the 
 very first (after Chalmers) to revive the custom of reading 
 prayers, although a member of the Church Service Society, 
 did not take an active part in the preparation of its Book 
 of Common Order. He had compiled a Prayer-Book of 
 his own, which was in use in his church of Old Greyfriars. 
 Possibly he was disappointed that the Society did not 
 adopt or approve his book : which in point of fact never 
 commended itself to some of the most active members of 
 the new organisation. The writer, for one, thoroughly 
 disliked Dr. Lee's book : not the less that he has heard it 
 read in church in the peculiar tone in which one might 
 read out a newspaper. The genuine liturgical flow was quite 
 lacking in most of Dr. Lee's prayers, which were to a 
 considerable degree original. They were likewise, very 
 naturally, flavoured with Dr. Lee's theology ; which was 
 more advanced than was in those days common. The 
 prayers of the Church Service Society tended to be 
 ' High ' : they were in any case severely orthodox : those 
 who compiled them did not think that at this time of day 
 originality was much to be sought after in public devotion, 
 and they drew their material from the Catholic Church's 
 
220 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 rich store of devout thought and expression. The music of 
 true Hturgical language, which never palls by repetition 
 and which lends itself so admirably to actual reading, was 
 a most marked characteristic of the Euchologion. The 
 prayer-book of the Church Service Society was, in all 
 respects, extremely different from Dr. Lee's. And in the 
 judgment of some who prepared it, it was beyond com- 
 parison better. 
 
 The first edition of the Euchologion was published in 
 the summer of 1867. It is interesting to mark how the 
 book has developed, and changed, in the editions which 
 followed, down to the sixth, published in Ma>' 1890. That 
 first edition professed no more than to provide material : 
 from which members might piece together their own prayers. 
 But it was a new departure : if a return to the older and 
 better way may be so named. The old ' preaching prayer,' 
 the ' eloquent and impressive prayer,' which even if it touch 
 at a first hearing docs so sicken upon repetition, was ab- 
 solutely discarded. The ancient, simple, and devout felicity 
 was brought back : and it seemed to many as though it 
 were doing any congregation a real kind turn to lead them 
 from the worst, and sometimes the intolerably bad, to that 
 which was infinitely better. The second edition, published 
 in 1869, still confined itself to materials for the construction 
 of a Sunday's service : while offering formal services for 
 Baptism, for the Holy Communion, for the admission of 
 Catechumens, for Marriage, and for the Burial of the Dead. 
 The third edition advanced to the provision of complete 
 services for the morning and evening of the five Sundays 
 
THE NEW LITURGICS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK 221 
 
 which may occur in a month. From that edition, progress 
 has beeen steadfast : not ahvays, it is to be confessed, in a 
 direction approved by all members of the Society. Some 
 of these regarded the prayers as too dogmatic in tone, and 
 the sacramental teaching too ' High ' : though no one has 
 maintained that it is higher than the authoritative standards 
 of the Kirk. Even to this day, when the Book of Common 
 Order is regularly read in many churches, and more or less 
 closely repeated in almost all churches wherein the younger 
 clergy minister, it is unusual to find the office for any 
 Sunday morning or evening read straight through. The 
 office is pieced together by the officiating minister, from 
 different parts of the book. Only thus can the seasons of 
 the Christian Year be followed, and the special circum- 
 stances of the congregation be recognised. In one or two 
 cases where these special prayers are ignored, and the 
 daily service read straight on, the effect is extremely 
 wooden and disappointing. It is exactly the opposite of 
 what was intended by those who prepared the volume. 
 
 Without further detail, which is uninteresting unless to 
 experts, let us look at the latest edition of Euchologion. 
 
 It is a handsome volume of 412 pages. It is divided 
 into three Parts. The First Part contains tables of Psalms 
 and Lessons for Ordinary and Special Services throughout 
 the )-ear : likewise the order of Divine Service for the 
 morning and evening of the five possible Sundays of the 
 month. The Second Part contains the Litany : Pra}'ers for 
 Special Occasions, and for the Christian Year: also addi- 
 tional forms of service for such as desire them. The Third 
 
222 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 Part, which for convenience is bound separately, contains the 
 order for the Communion, for Baptism, for the admission 
 of Catechumens, for Marriage, Burial, for the ordination of 
 Ministers and the admission of Elders, and for the laying 
 the foundation-stone of a church, and the dedication of a 
 church. We are not concerned to deny that several of 
 these titles imply a considerable change of feeling in 
 Scotland from that which prevailed even thirty years since. 
 Beginning with the ten morning and evening services, 
 we may say that some would much rather have had but 
 one morning and one evening service : suflficient variety 
 being given by the Psalms and Lessons for the day, and 
 by the prayers for the seasons. And at this point it may 
 be mentioned that, although the Society has given forth 
 no voice upon the subject, many of its leading members 
 strongly approve the fashion which has of late been 
 adopted in various churches, of placing the communion- 
 table at the east or quasi-east end of the building : setting 
 the pulpit forward, outside the chancel-arch and to one 
 side of it ; and using the pulpit only for the sermon : the 
 prayers being said by the minister so kneeling among the 
 people as to make it plain that he is not speaking to them 
 but for them. The beautiful parish churches of Govan, 
 the Barony of Glasgow, and St. Cuthbert's in Edinburgh, 
 may be regarded as representing the ideal now aimed at. 
 Those who have worshipped in them must h;i\c remarked 
 the deep devotion of the crowded congregations : the 
 manifest joining in the praj-ers and not merely listening to 
 them : and the marked distinction made, to the great 
 
THE NEW LITURGICS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK 223 
 
 advantage of both, between the devotional part of public 
 worship, and the preaching. It may be said with con- 
 fidence that while Prayer and Praise are made much of, 
 the sermon will not be vilipended : forasmuch as members 
 of the Church Service Society are the most outstanding 
 preachers of the Church, and are not likely to belittle 
 their special vocation. 
 
 It is known that the Directory states that the service 
 is to begin with prayer. And while most ministers have 
 felt that to join in hearty praise is the best means of bring- 
 ing a Scotch congregation into a unity befitting common 
 prayer, some have been in use to ask the people not to 
 ivorship God, but to compose their minds to the luorship of 
 God, by singing the opening psalm or hymn. Thus the 
 Directory was recognised. But the custom is antiquated. 
 And Burns has made classic the solemn Let us luorship 
 God with which the public services of Scotland in fact 
 begin. The first rubric of the first Morning (not Fore- 
 noon) Service in Euchologion runs thus : the words may 
 begin being a reminder of what is past : 
 
 The Congregation being assembled, Divitte Service may 
 begin witJi the singing of a Psalm or Hyvm ; then, the Con- 
 gregation still standing, the Minister shall say— 
 
 Suitable introductory sentences from Holy Scripture. 
 These are varied, and for the most part very happil}- 
 chosen. After these, the minister says Let us Pray : and 
 he and the congregation kneel down, and go on with what 
 used to be called The First Prayer. We prefer, now, to 
 say The Prayers. First, comes a brief Prayer of Invocation : 
 
224 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 at the end of which it is desired, but not ahvays attained, 
 that the congregation say Amen. Next, The Coifession : 
 followed by Amen. Then the prayer For Pardon and 
 Peace: a declaratory-absolution: with Amen. Next, 
 Supplications : prayers for divers graces, and for the season 
 of the Natural and Christian Year : full room being given 
 for free or extemporaneous supplication fitted to the 
 circumstances of the congregation assembled. All these 
 end with the Lord's Prayer, said aloud by Minister and 
 Congregation ; and ending with Amen, said by all. It was 
 felt that where the Lord's Prayer is said but once in the 
 service, it ought to come with the substantive prayers of 
 the people ; and not, as in fact it often does, following a brief 
 collect before sermon. And, as the people have not com- 
 monly the prayer-book in their hands, it is necessary to 
 preface the Lord's Prayer. Where this is not done, one 
 has sorrowfully remarked that it was half over ere the 
 congregation had fully joined in it. In the first Morning 
 Service the great Prayer is introduced in touching words 
 which some of us learnt from Archbishop Sumner of 
 Canterbury : Through Jesus Christ our Lord : in whose pre- 
 vailing Name and Words we yet further pray. I am aware 
 that this preface has been found fault with : some declaring 
 that they can discern no difference between it and certain 
 others of lamentable character : in whose beautiful words. 
 But he who says that may say anything. And few will 
 regard him. 
 
 Now follow the Psalms for the day, to be said or sung : 
 the Gloria ending each Psalm. In the sixth edition it is 
 
THE NEW LITURGICS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK 225 
 
 for the first time suggested that before the Psalms the 
 minister should say O Lord, open Thou our lips : the con- 
 gregation responding, and our mouth shall show forth Thy 
 praise. After the Psalms comes the Lesson from the Old 
 Testament : and it is particularly suggested that it close with 
 something other than Here endeth the First Lesson : which 
 in point of fact one generally hears. The rubric now says : 
 
 Then shall be sung the Hymn Te Deum Laudamus, or 
 other Hymn or Psalm, after zvhich shall be read a lesson 
 from the New Testament. 
 
 This being done, the rubric goes on : 
 
 Theti shall be sung the Hymn Benedictus, or other 
 Hymn or Psalm, after which may be sung or said by the 
 Minister and people standing. The Apostles' Creed. It would 
 be incredibly small scholarship to discuss the question 
 whether its name be true to fact or not. And where the 
 Creed is said at all, though the occasional inconsiderable 
 soul may ' leave the kirk ' on account of it, I can testify 
 that it is said heartily. 
 
 The Intercessory Prayers follow : it being suggested 
 that, first, the minister say The Lord be ivitJi you : the people 
 responding, And ze'ith Thy spirit. With doubtful propriety, 
 they close with the Thanksgiving. 
 
 Then a Psalm or Hymn is sung, or, when convenient, the 
 Anthem. While this is being sung, the minister who is to 
 preach enters the pulpit, and after a brief prayer For 
 Illumination preaches his sermon, ending with an ascription 
 of praise. It is most desirable that during this the congre- 
 gation signify their assent by standing up, and answering 
 
 Q 
 
226 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 Amen. A very short collect follows : after which the 
 alms of the congregation are collected, and laid upon the 
 Commun ion-Table. A final hymn is sung, which ought 
 always to be one in which the whole congregation can 
 heartily join : and the senior minister who has taken part in 
 the service closes it by pronouncing the Benediction. 
 
 Such is the Morning Service according to the new 
 Book of Common Order. The Evening Service follows 
 the like order, the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis coming 
 in place of the Te Deiiin and Benedictus. When these are 
 sung regularly, it is needless to announce them : and it is 
 touching and pleasing when the congregation stand up and 
 heartily sing them, unannounced. 
 
 In all preceding editions of the Euchologion, the 
 Intercessory Prayers came after the sermon. Several 
 influential members of the Society regret the change. It 
 is found that the congregation listen with greater interest 
 to the sermon when it comes last, and that any impression 
 made by the sermon was apt to be lost when it was 
 followed by lengthy prayers, of necessity somewhat formal 
 in character. Deep sympathy does not, in fact, attend the 
 public intercessions, either in Scotland or in England. 
 And the devoutest Anglican congregations are found to 
 greatly abridge them, however irregularly. 
 
 What has been said may give the non-professional 
 reader an adequate idea of the type of worship aimed at 
 by the Church Service Society. It is indeed liable to the 
 objection that it is not wholly unlike to that which, through 
 many ages, has commended itself to many millions of 
 
THE NEW LITURGICS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK 227 
 
 devout folk, belonging both to the Church of Scotland and 
 to other branches of the Church Catholic. It is hardly liable 
 to any other objection. And in deference to the wishes of 
 certain good churchmen of blameless record, provision is 
 made for the service being offered without the Apostles' or 
 any other Creed. The writer will not forget how earnestly 
 good Principal Shairp entreated that the Niccne Creed 
 should be given too. He has frequently heard it used in 
 Scotch kirks : and that by the saintliest and wisest. Of 
 course, if you do not believe any Creed at all, you are quite 
 right not to say one. But in that case, it is not wholly 
 clear how you happen to be either in the Church Service 
 Society or in the Church of Scotland. 
 
 It would be wearisome to any save the professional 
 expert to give any account of Part III. of Euchologion. 
 And such as desire to know it thoroughly had best 
 examine the book itself. I venture to say that devout 
 believers of all communions will regard it with thankfulness. 
 And where the Holy Communion is continually given to 
 the sick and dying, the order, being abridged, will be found 
 wonderfully touching and uplifting. The writer gratefully 
 acknowledges that it is many years since his revered 
 Professor of Divinity, the late Dr. Hill of Glasgow, showed 
 him how to drive a coach and six through that preposterous 
 misapprehension which for a long time forbade this blessed 
 ordinance just to those who needed it most. Said the dear 
 and dignified old minister, with great solemnity : ' j\Iy 
 young friend ' (the writer was once young), ' any minister 
 is free to celebrate the Communion anywhere in his parish 
 
 Q2 
 
228 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 where he can collect a congregation. And a congregation, 
 we know on the highest of all authority, may consist of two 
 or three.' The writer has given the blessed sacrament out 
 of church, times without number. But never, Roman-wise, 
 to one : always to a congregation. As for the Burial of the 
 Dead, there is but one sei-vice possible for the English- 
 speaking world at the grave. Read the sublime words 
 hundreds of times over, and you will find their pathos and 
 grandeur only grow. Ay, though you read them some- 
 times, in humble hope, over very poor Christians. Read 
 them over the revered and beloved ; and you will never 
 doubt their inspiration. 
 
 The worship of the Ideal National Church, it may be 
 said with confidence, should admit both the Liturgical and 
 the Free or Nonliturgical. The more cultured will ever 
 prefer a liturgy : will object to be helplessly in the 
 hands of the officiating minister for their prayers. Plainer 
 folk, who still look up to their minister as much more 
 learned and wiser than themselves, will be content that he 
 interpret their feelings and wants, in prayers made on the 
 instant for the instant. And there seems no reason what- 
 ever why a National Church should not provide both ways. 
 The best in both the Church of England and the Church 
 of Scotland have said so to the writer strongly. In recent 
 letters which one has read in the newspapers, it has been 
 made only too plain that good people have rushed to the 
 conclusion that what suits themselves best must suit every- 
 body best. Which is illusion. Let each have what suits 
 him. I fancy there is not a man in the Church Service 
 
THE NEW LITURGICS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK 229 
 
 Society who would grudge even the old 'eloquent and 
 impressive prayer' to such as feel they need it and it helps 
 them. And though no educated person can doubt that 
 liturgical prayer was the way of the Kirk in her best days, 
 and that Knox never dreamt of a Church without a Prayer- 
 Book, still, such questions really need not be debated. 
 They are of as little practical effect as the question whether 
 Knox knew what the locomotive engine would be to the 
 traveller by the Flying Scotsman. If this generation 
 chooses to have liturgical prayer, it will put aside as irre- 
 levant the issue whether the Church of three centuries since 
 had it or not. 
 
 It is indeed^ a great work, and a grave responsibility, 
 to provide supplications which may be used, in darkness 
 and light, by tried Christian people through many coming- 
 years : and the compilers of this new Book of Common 
 Order, themselves grown old, have felt it such. They see 
 defects in their volume ; but they do not think their 
 labours have been wholly unsuccessful. If there be some- 
 thing too much, perhaps, of the orthodox but wooden 
 infelicities of Continental Protestantism ; and of prayer, 
 absolutely without beauty or pathos, only commended 
 by the use of such as Knox ; the Editorial Committee have 
 gathered from many other fields too. They have desired 
 to draw from all sources where they could find what may 
 be helpful : venturing sometimes on a pathos beyond the 
 sober restraint of Cranmer and his co-workers : taking 
 from good men who left the Church below ages since, and 
 
230 MEN AND MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL 
 
 from some who were taken as yesterday. If they have 
 culled from the Anglican Prayer-Book many of its ex- 
 quisite collects, in their severe perfection, they have 
 ventured likewise to take from St. Augustine the pathetic 
 ' From Whom to be turned away is to fall, to Whom to be 
 turned is to rise, and in Whom to abide is to stand fast for 
 ever' : and they have placed on their page Dr. Crawford's 
 very real and comprehensive supplication, 'Grant us in all 
 our duties Thy help ; in all our perplexities Thy counsel ; 
 in all our dangers Thy protection ; and in all our sorrows 
 Thy peace.' And a hush falls upon most congregations 
 when, as Evening Prayer draws to its solemn close, our 
 Blessed Saviour is addressed as 'our life, the light of the 
 faithful, the strength of those who labour, and the repose 
 of the blessed dead.' 
 
THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 HELPED BY NATURE 
 
 I HAVE had a month of absolute rest ; I do not remember 
 when I had the Hke before. Thirteen hours of travel part 
 me from my parish : so that calls of duty which would be 
 irresistible if I were within two hours' reach are disre- 
 garded. The good people must learn to do without me. 
 And I am to be five Sundays absent from those dear 
 friends : of which four are already past. It is a mistake 
 for any clergyman to preach too regularly in his own 
 church, or churches. It is bad both for the congregation 
 and for himself One result is that the congregation tends 
 to become unreasonable in its expectations. Before this 
 little time of rest began, I had ministered in my own 
 churches on twenty-nine of the preceding thirty-one 
 Sundays : the two Sundays of absence being days of 
 specially exhausting duty in two great cities. Yet some 
 grumbled when I came away. I regarded them not, save 
 by recalling St. Paul's wish, that he might ' be delivered 
 
232 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 from unreasonable men ' : the accurate translation would 
 be ' crotchety men.' One's heart was more touched by 
 repeated communications, conveyed in the kindest possible 
 words, which represented that I was ' sorely missed.' That 
 is extremely proper. One would not like not to be missed 
 by kindly souls to whom one has given one's very best for 
 eight-and-twenty years. When I return home in a few 
 days, and take up the reins as often heretofore, let me 
 hope to be greatly valued. Though I have spoken, let it 
 be added, of absolute rest, it is such rGst as is consistent 
 with preaching morning and evening each Sunday here to 
 a very considerable congregation in a lofty church with a 
 great developed chancel, demanding no little exertion of a 
 failing voice. And when I make mention of preaching, I 
 mean (according to the use of the North) conducting the 
 entire service, save that the lessons are read for me. And 
 the service of Scotland takes it out of an aging man. 
 The lessons are read with no little dignity and solemnity ; 
 and that by a man who took his B.D. with high credit. 
 
 A man who is usually driven beyond his strength is 
 made to feel, in such a time of rest, that it would not be 
 expedient to retire from work altogether. The interest 
 would go from life : you would break down and depart. 
 You cannot live upon your past work : no matter how 
 long and hard it has been. And you forget things, 
 sorrowfully, when you have passed quite away from them. 
 The feeling, half painful, half pleasant, with which you sat 
 down and took up the pen, is wholly forgot when you take 
 up the pen no more. I know one who, having undertaken 
 
HELPED BY NATURE 233 
 
 to write a considerable book, no part of which was to be 
 pubHshed till all of it had been written, was painfully 
 possessed by a morbid fear that he never would finish it : 
 in which case all his labour would be lost, as (in point of 
 fact) it never could be finished at all. Wherefore he toiled 
 it it in a killing fashion : and often put on record in a 
 private history always very sad to read, that if he were but 
 suffered to finish this work, he never would attempt any- 
 thing more. The book was finished : was published : was 
 very successful : but though probably nobody ever read it 
 with greater interest than its author, he could not bear to 
 read the daily record of its composition. There is no one 
 you will ever pity more than you have pitied your own 
 poor weary self of departed days. And this without any- 
 thing of unworthy selfishness. Yet that solemn vow that 
 this work should be the last was broken like other vows. 
 You must work on, as long as you can work at all. It is 
 very hard, oftentimes, to work ; it is still harder not to work. 
 And above all, if it be the nature of the being to write, he 
 will write while he can take up the pen. 
 
 I did not come out to think of this at all. That 
 magnificent Strath : and this miraculous summer evening 1 
 It is but the twenty-sixth day of July ; yet already the 
 golden hue of harvest is widely spread forth below : where 
 the fine river winds down the broad valley, and the great 
 black hills rise above the yellow gleam. The scenery is 
 Highland ; vitally and unmistakably Highland ; yet it is 
 not like Perthshire or Argyllshire. It has a character of 
 its own : there is an undefinable but strongly felt difference. 
 
234 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 Stop : and gaze : and take things in. The ripening rustle 
 is at one's feet : there is a fresh warm breeze which makes 
 waves over the cornfields, which makes an ^olian harp of 
 the telegraph-wires overhead. The landscape, vast in 
 extent, is black towards the west ; where the way tends, at 
 the base of these great rounded hills, towards Loch Maree 
 and Skye. Eastward, where a few miles would bring you 
 to the sea, the valley widens into a considerable plain. 
 The plain is now in shadow : save that, far away, there is 
 an oasis of sunshine, a round expanse of blazing green and 
 gold amid the gloom : like the bright days of one's life, 
 which have gone away. When a boy, one would have 
 thought that the people who live in those paradisaical 
 fields must be happy. However that may be, I can 
 thankfully testify that this beautiful aspect of valley and 
 mountain, of dark wood and steely river, has pleasantly 
 helped one pilgrim to-day. You come out, with some 
 little worry stinging you ; and in the second plane of the 
 mind there is a long anxiety from which }'ou are never 
 free. But as you plod on, with a heavy foot, patient 
 Nature waits for your attention : gradually she takes hold 
 of it : weans you from your sad thoughts : smiles in your 
 face and murmurs in your car : till your old heart is 
 lightened wonderfully. 
 
 Just at this point two little school-girls came cheerfully 
 along the road, and smiled brightly upon the stranger. 
 They stopped, and in the soft pleasant Celtic voice related 
 what their names were, and their years : also the six miles 
 of daily walk to and from school, and how hard were their 
 
HELPED BY NATURE 235 
 
 lessons. Their ages were ten and eleven : their lessons 
 appeared to me far too long and difficult. But the chil- 
 dren looked so bright and happy that I felt sure their 
 instructor was kind and reasonable. The westering sun 
 shone upon the little faces ; and a threepenny-piece to 
 each made the faces delightful to see. So we parted, 
 having become old friends. As the little feet tripped 
 away, 1 thought of Longfellow's lines ; and wondered how 
 far they had to go. If one were the possessor of a four- 
 leaved shamrock ; ah, if one were but for a moment what 
 Martin Elginbrod, sleeping under the sod in the Highland 
 churchyard, dared to imagine ere he lay down to his rest : 
 how good and happy these little people would be. I note, 
 with great approval, the outward signs of reasonable hap- 
 piness and goodness in the grown-up folk who abide all 
 about here : and I am hopeful. I trust the little feet, 
 when grown bigger, may never go far south of Inverness. 
 Specially I hope that they may keep far away from 
 Glasgow. 
 
 If I could venture to set down all that came into my 
 mind during that lonely walk, it would not be quite 
 suitable to this page. For I wandered off into tracts of 
 theological thinking : and wondered at grim yet sincere 
 religionists in lovely regions like these, who have set up 
 for God a bigger and more powerful devil, selfish and 
 touchy beyond expression ; as little like the blessed truth 
 and the merciful Saviour as any horrible Hindoo image 
 with seven heads : and then have given the holiest name 
 to that ghastly idol. I remember well a faithful preacher 
 
236 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 of my youth, who complained bitterly of a worthy soul 
 who spoke of a number of happy children, hardly beyond 
 infancy, as little angels. ' Little devils' roared the kindly 
 preacher of the hopeful Gospel : ' tJiafs what they are I ' 
 Which statement was cheering to those entrusted with 
 their training. And yet, spite of Lord Palmerston's de- 
 claration that we are all ' born good,' it cannot be denied 
 that the heart-breaking sin and misery which have some- 
 times been developed in later and worse years must have all 
 been (in some sense) latent in the little heart when the 
 little face was so innocent and bright : having so lately 
 come ' from God, who is our home.' I do not care for the 
 rigour of logic ; as matter of fact, it does not lead us to 
 vital and essential truth. That comes oftenest by sudden 
 intuition. And I will hold with Wordsworth as to the 
 place we came from : as to what we are when we come. 
 If ' Heaven lies about us in our infancy,' we cannot be 
 such ' little devils ' after all. Yet things may be latent. 
 Were all the processes of thought which arc written on 
 this page present in the formless fog which some would 
 make the origin of all things : potentially containing 
 every thing which ever was to be here ? Truly that fog 
 was a wonderful thing, if it contained not merely all trees 
 and flowers, those round hills with the purple heather 
 covering them, that green grass and yellow corn, all 
 diamonds and steel : but likewise the warm devotion 
 which I saw last night in God's house on divers rapt 
 faces, and this bewilderment with which I am now think- 
 ing of the whole question. It takes nothing from the 
 
HELPED BY NATURE 237 
 
 miracle of Creation, though you suppose that a ' first 
 impress ' gave to that unpromising original the potency 
 of all that was to be. ' I know that Thou canst do every- 
 thing.' The patient sufferer said those words long ages 
 ago. The wonder is not diminished if everything was 
 done at once. 
 
 It was a great Double-First, the most wrong-headed 
 of the race, who put in print the tremendous declaration 
 that he really thought that Mr. Fletcher of Madeley was 
 better than Christ. And one thought, under that sudden 
 blow, with what unspeakable horror that kindly saint 
 would have heard of the comparison. Down in the dust 
 at the pierced feet ! That is where he would have held 
 himself worthy to be placed. And the first prayer would 
 have been for forgiveness to the poor soul that dared 
 that awful comparison. Yet, if kindness is to be measured 
 by the immediate removal of pain and evil without regard 
 to law and to consequences, there are many good women 
 and good men who are a great deal kinder than God 
 Almighty. That poor old creature I prayed with to-day, 
 who has never been free from grievous pain for two }'ears, 
 and has no prospect before her but of increasing agony 
 till it kills her : do you think if I had been able to work a 
 miracle I should have come out of the cottage door leaving 
 her as I left her ? That little boy coming along the road, 
 that human being of five years old : do you think I should 
 leave him the farthest chance of going to the bad if I had 
 the power to make all his life good and happy? Well : 
 there is One who could do all that : and does not. My 
 
238 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 faith is firm that it is because He has good reason : and 
 that all the crushing perplexities through which we cannot 
 see any more than through that granite cliff will be cleared 
 up some day. But why the long weary ages of sin and 
 sorrow, at all ? Why should even Carlyle be able to say, 
 looking round this terrible world, ' He does nothing ' ? It is 
 not so much a moral government under which this universe 
 goes on now, as the faint dawn of a moral government 
 coming. Yet there is enough to make Matthew Arnold 
 see that ' the stream of tendency makes for righteousness.' 
 There is enough to make Ruskin cry aloud with the voice 
 of an old prophet, believing where he cannot prove, that 
 * you are ultimately to get — exactly what you are worth.' 
 Yet, with it all, it cannot be denied that every Court of 
 Justice, every magistrate sitting on how humble soever a 
 judgment seat, every police-constable, is doing all he can 
 to mend the imperfection, the slowness of God's moral 
 government. When I behold a male brute abusing a 
 poor woman, and intervene in the most decisive manner 
 and that on the instant, is it not because though the mills 
 may grind exceeding small, yet they grind a great deal 
 too slowly for me ? It really does not suffice to me that 
 I should look on as the cruel blows fall, and say, ' Ah, it is 
 punishment enough for you that you are such a brutal 
 savage, and you will quite understand that in about thirty 
 years.' Yet it is to be remembered, too, that the burning 
 wrath which has stirred in me at callous cruelty, and the 
 prompt measures taken to stop it, form part of the lagging 
 administration of the great Lawgiver whom we cannot see. 
 
HELPED BY NATURE 239 
 
 It is the old saying, God mend all. It is the old reply 
 (which surely Himself inspired), Nay : but lue imist help 
 Him to mend it. 
 
 I do not know that any reader, seeing the track of 
 thought into which I have got, would say that Nature 
 has helped me much on this bright evening. Yet true it 
 is that these black hills, and that great strath now blazing 
 in the sinking sunshine, have made thoughts bearable 
 which sometimes are not bearable at all. After all, the 
 forlorn hope of humanity is but a very small minority : 
 though this is little comfort to those who are submerged, 
 who are beaten down. And there must be an unimagin- 
 able patience and power of looking on at hideous evil and 
 letting it just go on, in the almighty Power which is above 
 us all. Of a sudden, as a gleam from those ripening acres 
 comes to one's sight, some relief comes in a way which is 
 inexplicable. It was Arthur Helps, that wisest and kindest- 
 hearted of men, who said that an amusing little story takes 
 the heart away from trouble as much as anything in common 
 experience. 
 
 I have a friend who is a singularly helpful preacher. 
 And helpfulness is what we want now. Never in this 
 world was good man more free from self-conceit. Yet he 
 told me how for a moment he felt flattered, some little 
 He went to abide for a space at a little town by the 
 Western sea : where the resident parson is good, but 
 beyond words wooden. A homely elder approached him 
 on an early day : and said, very earnestly, ' Ye maun 
 preach to us some Sunday while ye're here.' My saintly 
 
240 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 and old friend was pleased. He said to himself, ' Here, in 
 this remote place, my reputation has reached before me : 
 and there is a general desire to enjoy the privilege of my 
 excellent ministrations.' But in that moment the cold 
 splash in the face came. For the devout old elder, hold- 
 ing up both hands, said with an earnest sincerity not to be 
 misinterpreted, ' Oanyboaddy, oanyboaddy, rayther than 
 Mr. Snooks ! ' As though he said, ' You're a very poor 
 hand : but the very poorest is better than the awful orator 
 v^^e hear weekly ! ' My dear friend felt the incident as 
 somewhat mortifying. But being the most self-forgetting 
 of mankind, and absolutely incapable of the arts of the 
 Pusher, he came next Sunday and did all he knew to 
 guide and comfort such as were needy. I know no man 
 who can do such work better ; very few who can do it as 
 well. 
 
 A Pusher is detestable, and contemptible. Some day I 
 may write an accurate history, fully vouched, of certain 
 Pushers I know. Yet it is not pushing, in any evil sense, 
 when a human being avails himself of legitimate oppor- 
 tunities, honourably open to him. Surely it was so when 
 a decent tenant-farmer, away in Cornwall, came to pay his 
 rent. This done, refreshments were offered. ' Will you 
 have port or sherry ? ' was said, in kindly tones, by as good 
 a woman as is known to me. But the dear man was not 
 one to miss a chance. He answered in a monosyllable, 
 uttered in a deep voice and with a solemn aspect. The 
 word was BaivtJi ! And he got them both : and departed 
 apparently none the worse. 
 
HELPED BY NATURE 241 
 
 I turn to go back to where is my temporary home : 
 recalling certain words of a forgotten or in any case unread 
 author, to the effect that there is natural scenery so sublime 
 that it could soothe even remorse. That of course is non- 
 sense : rank nonsense. A sudden bursting upon the view 
 of a scene of inexpressible awfulness might for the instant 
 quite engross the mind, to the exclusion of everything else : 
 but the terrible inward pang would speedily be back again. 
 It is quite another thing to say that nature can calm away 
 fret and worry. The stillness soothes nerves and heart : 
 the grand beauty takes us out of ourselves. Surely it has 
 been so since ' Isaac went out to meditate in the field at 
 the eventide.' Yet exceptions will occur. I know one 
 who once, thirty years ago, stood for a full hour in a 
 sheltered nook, whence he gazed on one of the grandest of 
 the Bernese Alps. The sharp peaks cut into the blue sky : 
 the great snow-fields were stretched out : every now and 
 then there came the thunder of an avalanche. And these 
 things were new and strange. Yet, all the while, the 
 thought of a petty and sordid trouble possessed him : and 
 the cowardly anticipation of vexation which seemed sure 
 to come, but which in fact never came. Ah, little things 
 are great to us little folk. And sometimes not even the 
 Alps can get at the quick of us. I knew, in departed days, 
 a very hard student who had gone in for certain competi- 
 tions whose result then seemed as life and death. As the 
 decisive day drew near, he was wrought into a fever of 
 anxiety, which ceased not waking or sleeping. Wherefore, 
 hoping to be calmed, he betook himself to his young sister's 
 
 R 
 
242 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 grave. It was in a grand churchyard : in a quiet spot of 
 it : and there, time after time, he tried to recall the sweet 
 face and the last words : tried to take in how little all 
 present anxieties would seem when he came to be laid down 
 there : how soon that might be : and even asked her if she 
 could hear him, to say a word up There for her poor rest- 
 less brother. Sad to say, these things availed not at all : 
 and he turned his steps towards the old quadrangles 
 unrelieved. That was his experience. In the issue, every- 
 thing went well. He got all he ever wished, or hoped. 
 But he said he would not willingly go through the like 
 again. And he wondered when people talked of academic 
 quiet. It seemed to him a specially nervous and feverish 
 life : for such as aimed at the highest rewards. Of course, 
 these men were few. The most took things easily. For 
 myself, when I look, most days, at the athletic and unworn 
 frame of a famous Senior Wrangler, I always think Hoiv 
 anxious you must have been ! Hard enough for him : much 
 harder for those whom he eclipsed. Yet he walks away, 
 with a grand swing, the most unaffected of men : just as if 
 he were nobody in particular. I suppose on most days he 
 forgets all about it. 
 
 We do not look far on, we who have grown old : we 
 are content with a little thing. That field of intense green 
 can meanwhile (God be thanked) soothe eye and heart. 
 The long slope of that great mountain (it is a mountain, 
 and a famous one), with the setting sun over it, is enough. 
 Far away from this place, I look continually at the top line 
 of a green hill against the sky : I see it every day. I can- 
 
HELPED BY NATURE 243 
 
 not explain how or why : but, as certain fact, it commonly 
 suffices to somewhat cheer. Often has one looked at it 
 when cheer was greatly needed. And on this beautiful 
 evening of a restful day, I have of a surety been helped by 
 gracious Nature. No doubt this gentle influence gets 
 home, because there is nothing now to greatly worry. One 
 has known times of great anxiety, not about things of per- 
 sonal concern but of public, wherein so mild an anodyne 
 would not have sufficed. You remember how Wordsworth 
 desired, * in hours of fear, or grovelling thought, to find a 
 refuge' in sublime architecture. The sonnets are renowned: 
 are classic : are quite beyond being quoted. Give us that 
 too : though there have been days in which Westminster 
 Abbey would not have helped : in which Winchester 
 Cathedral did in fact leave one very perplexed and 
 anxious. Beyond aesthetic thrill, there is something to be 
 found in a church : there is an end now of ' no praying 
 allowed here ' : though this strange help, which I have seen 
 sought with a face that seemed near to despair, may be 
 found under the shadow of Ben Wyvis as well as under 
 the roof of King's College Chapel. Indeed, there is no 
 limitation at all, either of time or place. We have supreme 
 authority that fault will not be found though we ' pray 
 without ceasing ' : though we ' pray everywhere.' 
 
 R 2" 
 
244 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 GROWING OLD 
 
 He was a big man, of stately and formal manner ; and he 
 had by several years over-passed the threescore and ten. 
 But he was well and cheery ; and under that pleasant 
 inspiration he of a sudden said to a cynical friend, who was 
 commonly ill and depressed — 
 
 ' I feel I am growing younger every day ! ' 
 
 ' No doubt of it,' was the unpleasing answer ; ' you will 
 soon be in your second childhood ! ' 
 
 Sour old soul ! He disliked people and things in 
 general ; and he steadily depreciated all merit save his 
 own. It was he who told me that the vilest preacher 
 he ever heard was a man named Caird. 
 
 ' After he had preached for five minutes, I should not 
 have been surprised if he had cursed and sworn in the 
 pulpit.' 
 
 Even such were the gracious man's words. Even such 
 was the pervading tone of all his criticism of every mortal 
 but himself When he had gone through life in this benign 
 spirit, he died. A devoted friend preached a sermon on the 
 occasion, and published it under the suitable title. Heaven 
 
GROWING OLD 245 
 
 the Believer's Home. I spare all comment. Not dukes and 
 princes alone have their toadies. 
 
 Twice before now has the present writer discoursed of 
 Groxving Old, each time with entire sincerity. But there 
 are human beings who feel the approach of winter too 
 soon. The extremest case was that of John Foster, who, 
 coming in from a walk, would say — 
 
 * I have seen a fearful sight to-day : I have seen a 
 buttercup.' 
 
 Premature, surely ; as the awfully cautious man 
 replied, when somebody congratulated him on being made 
 a Bishop : he having the Prime Minister's letter in his 
 pocket at the moment. Of course, that did not make the 
 event absolutely certain. In precisely similar circum- 
 stances, I know one who wrote : ' If all goes well, I shall 
 be ' such a thing. But when this writer produced his 
 earliest chapter Concerning Grooving Old (most of it was 
 dictated, not written, because he could not write), he 
 wanted a good deal of being Half- Way ; and he did not 
 understand things as he understands things now. Then, 
 after thirteen years, he recurred to the subject : giving the 
 result of lengthening experience. The first essay attained 
 a remarkable popularity : possibly (as a kind friend sug- 
 gested) because it did not deserve it. The second found 
 favour too, and brought many letters from unknown 
 friends. Now twenty years more have passed over : and 
 he takes this subject for the last time. I note that my old 
 friend, the Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, has rather 
 wearied people by too frequent references to his advancing 
 
246 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 age ; though (be sure) he never has said the hundredth 
 part of what he has felt. And there are those to whom 
 the rapid lapse of time is not a pleasant subject. The 
 writer has a very accurate memory (for some things) ; and 
 it has somehow been borne in upon him, of late, that when 
 a young woman has remarked that it is long since we last 
 met, and I have answered, ' Yes, it was just this time 
 thirty-four years ' ; a certain disapproval appeared on the 
 pleasant face. For a good and kindly face will be 
 pleasant to look upon for far more than thirty- four years. 
 
 We drop things we used to do : meaning that this 
 shall be only for a little ; thinking that after a rest we 
 shall begin again. Ah, no ! the pleasant old way, which 
 seemed an essential part of our life, is gone for evermore. 
 We begin to go to bed early, just till we get over this 
 weariness. But we are not to get over this weariness 
 here. It is indeed giving up ; but we fancy it is not, and 
 so comfort ourselves. It is not as with the idle lad, who 
 wrote home that he felt ' a growing indisposition to every 
 kind of exertion.' It is not that : the will to work is here. 
 We work all we can, and many times far beyond our 
 strength. I do not want to be selfish : and I know well 
 that it is a sore trial to any man when he begins to feel 
 his work beyond his strength. But it appears to me that 
 it is specially trying to the preacher when that comes to 
 be. Things arc so much the same ; you get into the 
 robes, which possibly tend to be somewhat shabby. You 
 ascend to the accustomed place easily enough ; it is not 
 as when the good Dean Hook, who thought aloud, not 
 
GROWING OLD 247 
 
 knowing it at all, said in a loud voice as he went up the 
 pulpit stairs in Chichester Cathedral — 
 
 ' I shall never get up ; I know I shall never get up. I 
 have got up, after all.' 
 
 By many years of training, the congregation has been 
 taught to look up eagerly ; there is the audible hush. But, 
 sometimes, there is the terrible exhaustion within. Every 
 word is an effort. It is a grievous thing to be giving your 
 sermon, watching for sentences to leave out, because you 
 really have not strength to say them. In such circum- 
 stances, the plan is to preach extempore : that is, if you 
 can. Unless things be very bad indeed : unless you be 
 what homely Scotch folk call ' very far through ' : this will 
 tide you over : you will get through without that painful 
 sinking, under which it sometimes seems as though you 
 were to faint off wholly. But you will be very dead-beat 
 when }'our work is over ; there will be that wretched 
 nervous weariness and restlessness which some know. Let 
 it here be said, that afternoon services are not for the 
 preacher who has grown old. Indeed, afternoon services 
 are now drying up, even in this Scotland where they used 
 to be the great ones. One knows churches which arc 
 quite full in the morning, and nearly empty in the after- 
 noon. Yet, through a stupid conservatism, people will not, 
 in many places, have the second service in the evening. 
 Even in Scotland, people are tending to come to church 
 just once on Sunday : which means just once in the seven 
 days which make the week : and it is not everywhere that 
 the evening service will be well attended. Only in ex- 
 
248 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 ceptional places will it be crowded. But the preacher who 
 is nearer to seventy than to sixty, and who must preach 
 twice on a Sunday, ought definitively to say that it must be 
 morning and evening. This, with a sleep, if it may be, 
 between. Morning and afternoon cannot be. When the 
 morning service is at eleven, and the afternoon at two, 
 it is flatly impossible. It will shorten a life which is 
 shortening fast enough already. 
 
 I know the reader is disposed to say. Why this bit of 
 autobiography ? Why this talking of shop ? Because 
 what is said is deeply felt : and the writer is thinking of 
 very many besides himself Each second Sunday it is 
 his duty to minister in a very large church at two P.M., 
 having just finished a morning service. He has done it 
 for many years ; but he cannot do it much longer. 
 Morning and evening services are still most enjoyable : 
 more so than forty years ago, But the afternoon is 
 painful penance : is all but impossible. There is reason 
 why it should be kept up ; and it will be kept up. I am 
 responsible for it ; and wish no other. But there will be 
 another voice : more equal to the duty. 
 
 It is perfectly understood by me, and by many more, 
 that there are folk who, if they get what they like, care not 
 at all what it costs to somebody else. ' He looked very 
 weary on Sunday,' I have known it said. But the answer 
 was : ' Yes, but the sermon was very touching.' I will not 
 signify of whom this was said : but it was said. I have 
 known those whose enjoyment of a grand Highland pass 
 was not in the least diminished, though the poor horse 
 
GROWING OLD 249 
 
 which pulled them along was plainly in miserable ex- 
 haustion, and sharp pain at every step. I have known 
 mothers and daughters whose enjoyment of extravagant 
 dress and entertainments was not in the least diminished 
 by the sight of the weary anxious face of the poor 
 struggling drudge of a man, who toiled to earn what they 
 tossed about gaily. xA.nd I wondered with wonder quite 
 beyond words how they had heart to do it. 
 
 Further, it is distinctly unwise, as well as wrong, for 
 any mortal to kill himself by excessive overwork. You 
 will get no thanks whatever. It will all be taken as a 
 matter of course. And the announcement of your demise 
 will be received with much composure. Just this day ten 
 years since, the writer had the opportunity of reading a 
 sketch of his life, in connection with a notice of his 
 removal. This was in a paper of high character and great 
 circulation ; not, indeed, published in the writer's native 
 land. Confusion had arisen between his lowly self and a 
 famous dignitary of the Anglican Communion. But what 
 most impressed was the composure with which the story 
 was told, ere passing to livelier topics. Not without a 
 start was the legend perused by certain under this roof 
 And a humorous friend, in a paragraph in a local news- 
 paper, set out that forasmuch as the journal of that day 
 announced that I was to minister in the parish church 
 here on the approaching Sunday, it appeared probable, 
 and indeed might be taken for granted, that I still 
 survived. Such a statement, when brought close to one, 
 strikes. I never forget the latest words said to me by an 
 
250 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 old friend, who was also a great scholar. He looked at me 
 intently, and said — 
 
 ' I am still alive, and able to express myself. But very 
 weak. Farewell.' 
 
 Human beings differ greatly, and one is no rule for 
 another. But I had made sure that as life drew to its 
 close, there would be little care touching the stings which 
 get at mortals through their vanity. Rather let us say 
 through their sense of what is due to them. And, indeed, 
 with many, through their having got to the end of their 
 tether, through a keen sense that they have got far better 
 than they deserved, through the transference of their 
 interest in the prizes and blanks of life from themselves to 
 their children ; this is so. It startled me when I saw one 
 of the best of men, a saintly scholar, who had seen four- 
 score years, and for very long had held the highest level 
 of the reverence of all who knew him, not a little discom- 
 posed when a very inferior man was put over his head to 
 a very insignificant elevation. I had thought he would 
 not have cared. But he did care. And singularly, all the 
 more that he thought the thing was done to vex him. I 
 knew the facts, and could hardly think there had been 
 any such intention. But had it been as he fancied, it 
 seemed reason for profound contempt for souls capable of 
 such behaviour. And I have known a singular trouble, 
 which can by possibility fall to very few of the race. But 
 the few to whom it falls feel it. It is, with general 
 approval, to reach one of the greatest places which can be 
 held by man ; to hold it nobly ; yet now and then to say 
 
GROWING OLD 251 
 
 to a very near friend, ' I'm not one of the great Exarchs of 
 MeHpotamus.' Doubtless very extraordinary places have 
 been held by very ordinary men. I sometimes walk about 
 a little Surrey churchyard where this is impressed on one, 
 deeply. And the most modest of men would not like to 
 be a mere stop-gap. Yet a truly great man once said, 
 ' For want of a better, 1 am ' — no matter what. Further, 
 the incapables who have been set on high have generally 
 been the very last to discern their incapacity. Our great 
 genius wished that we might ' see ourselves as others see 
 us.' It is far better not. If some mortals had that vision, 
 they would flee to the wilderness and be seen no more. 
 And even ordinary decent folk, fairly-well filling modest 
 positions (such as the present writer), are not a little 
 startled when someone gifted with the perilous gift of 
 mimicry, takes them off in gesture and voice. ' Surely 
 never so ridiculous as that ! ' has been the anguished cry. 
 * That mass of awkwardness, and apparent self-conceit, 
 was never me I ' Grammar had to yield to the emotion of 
 the moment. There is some, consolation in the reflection 
 that all imitations have to be somewhat caricatured. Yet 
 the fact may have been bad enough. 
 
 There was a professor long ago, in a little city where 
 homely supper-parties were the use. One evening late, in 
 his own dwelling, a clever undergraduate was giving 
 imitations of some of his colleagues in the Chairs of the 
 University. They were perfectly rendered, and were 
 received with peals of laughter. The good professor, in 
 an evil moment, said — 
 
252 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 ' But you have not taken me off. What am I 
 like ? ' 
 
 The youth had tact enough to say that the professor 
 had no peculiarities, and so could not be represented in 
 that special way. 
 
 The professor still insisted. The youth sunk into 
 silence ; but in a little while, when conversation had 
 become general, a wild yell was heard, and the youth was 
 seen violently scratching his head, and in extraordinary 
 tones uttering some philosophical propositions. 
 
 ' Who on earth is that ? ' said the bewildered in- 
 structor. 
 
 First silence ; then a general roar. The professor 
 discerned the state of matters, and said with great 
 asperity — 
 
 ' We have had quite enough of that kind of thing, 
 young man.' 
 
 The party soon broke up. And I fear the under- 
 graduate had made an enemy. 
 
 It was a great Chief Justice, many years removed, who 
 was listening with much approval to the story, told at his 
 own table, how a scoffing young member of the Bar had 
 been giving imitations of the manner of divers judges of 
 renown. It was unwisely remarked — 
 
 ' But even your lordship is not safe from the ribaldry 
 of that graceless young man.' 
 
 On the instant the Lord-President drew himself up to 
 his very stateliest ; and, with an awful accent, and a most 
 extraordinary gesture, said — 
 
GROWING OLD 
 
 253 
 
 ' I was not aware that I had any pecooHarities of 
 manner ! ' 
 
 The rest was silence. But people thought much though 
 they said nothing. 
 
 Was it that professor, or was it another, who was kept 
 in awful subjection by his wife ? Whoever he was, he too 
 had a party at supper, all men. At a late hour the 
 masterful woman retired, and the professor was (for a 
 space) free and open. He began to expatiate, like John 
 Stuart Mill in his famous volume, on the subjection of 
 women. He demonstrated their inferiority to men in all 
 respects ; and specially maintained that in every dwelling 
 the wife must be made to know and keep her humble 
 place. 
 
 ' In fact,' he summed up, * every man should be Julius 
 Caesar in his own house.' 
 
 There was universal approval. But in that self-same 
 moment, the door of the chamber was opened. An awful 
 head appeared, arrayed in the fashion of that distant 
 period. It was she who must be obeyed. And a terrible 
 voice, which crushed the stoutest-hearted guest, ex- 
 claimed — 
 
 ' Gentlemen, it is quite time that you were all away 
 home. — And you, Mr. Julius Caesar, walk away up to your 
 bed!' 
 
 The beaten man arose, and without a word he slunk 
 away. Long experience had taught him who was the 
 stronger. 
 
 Looking back, as one looks back now, one feels very 
 
254 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 deeply how far the recorded history of a day comes short 
 of giving the reality as that day went over. That is, to 
 a mere reader. Yet if you wrote the history yourself, and 
 if your memory be good, you have but to look at the lines 
 on the faded page, after ever so many years : and the 
 whole life of that time is brought back. The old time 
 comes over you ; and the little story is infinitely pathetic. 
 Everyone knows- what Wordsworth wrote about ' A day 
 like this which I have left full thirty years behind.' Less 
 than thirty years will suffice. Just to-day, the writer 
 looks back upon this day forty-two years. 
 
 ' What do you think of the old place. Lord C ? ' 
 
 That was the question. He had come back, at the 
 height of success and fame, an old man, to where he had 
 been a little boy. He came to the dwelling of a very 
 aged lady who had known him then : and having rested 
 awhile, he went out alone, to revisit the scenes of child- 
 hood. Then he returned, and silently sat down with her. 
 
 ' What do you think of the old place ? ' 
 
 He said nothing. Rut he put down his head upon his 
 hands, and sobbed like a little child. I knew the man : and 
 once at something I said, I .saw the tide of remembrance 
 come back ; though this time he only smiled. But it was 
 a very sad smile. 
 
 There arc drawbacks about the faithfully kept diary, 
 written regularly at morning and evening of ever}' da)'. 
 The great drawback is, that it brings back the past too 
 faithfully. There is no mirage ; the beautiful haze is not 
 allowed to gather. Not many people in these times read 
 
GROWING OLD 
 
 !55 
 
 'Grongar Hill.' Not many have ever heard of Dyer; but 
 his lines suggest themselves : lines which possibly sug- 
 gested far more famous lines which begin the ' Pleasures of 
 Hope.' The distant summits which look so beautiful, 
 ' clad in colours of the air,' are ' barren, brown, and rough,' 
 when you come near them. ' The present's still a cloudy 
 day,' and the diary makes the long-past present. One 
 thought tenderly of the dear old time, pensive and 
 hallowed ; but you open the page, and though you had 
 carefully left out all mention of what was painful, it is 
 there between the lines ; it comes back again, the jarring, 
 the worry, the petty provocation, the shabby dodge, the 
 lying mischief-maker, and, as Dyer put it, ' still we tread 
 the same coarse way.' Yet, remembering all this, the 
 gains are great. The path crumbles away behind you, if 
 you have not told the story of it. And in these latter 
 days, in which you forget things sadly, you do not feel 
 that you have lived at all the time which is not recorded. 
 It was but yesterday, under the shadow of Ben Wyvis, 
 here farther north than I have even been before, that a 
 good man said to me, of a sudden — 
 
 * What's the good of keeping a diary ? ' 
 
 I said just one brief sentence. The speaker was a 
 stranger, and one felt we were so hopelessly out of sym- 
 pathy that one could not be troubled to say more. Now 
 and then one meets a stranger who is disposed to argue. 
 In almost every case, the thesis he maintains is that black 
 is white, that two and two make twenty, and the like. I 
 never on any account argue with him. A further word : 
 
256 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 the diary will keep you up to your duty. You must work 
 hard and steadily indeed, if your work looks much when 
 written down. Very much may be told in a word : the 
 long wearing exertion looks so little. Think of Elihu 
 Burritt's ' Forged fourteen hours, then Hebrew Bible four 
 hours.' How could he do it? It is as Mr. Dickens' modest 
 statement : ' I thought of Mr. Pickwick and wrote the first 
 chapter.' 
 
 Two things are certain. One, that there is no wish 
 whatever to be younger. Dickens was a youth when he 
 wrote that we should all be young again if we could. Philip 
 Sidney was young when he wrote of the shepherd boy, 
 piping ' as if he would never grow old.' Lord Lytton, 
 indeed, appeared to grow old unwillingly : so did my dear 
 old Professor, Buchanan of Glasgow. But the healthy 
 thing is to be glad and thankful one has got on so far, 
 fairly well. There is deep interest, indeed, in the career of 
 those who are to follow you. The second certainty is that 
 you are well-pleased, and quietly grateful, when the day is 
 peacefully through. It has brought many prosaic duties, 
 the same daily, and though the work of some is exciting 
 many times, yet things quietly attempted and done have 
 generally earned repose. Then the evening rest is wonder- 
 fully grateful, when there is no worrying interruption : and 
 to the aging it must be as a law of the Mcdcs — No work 
 after the last meal of the day. Thus kindly sleep comes 
 on most. And, as the great preacher of my youth, Henry 
 Melvill (who never got his due, and is forgotten), once said 
 in his eager way, 'What can lie give thcni better?' 
 
GROWING OLD 257 
 
 Though I fear now, that is not the meaning of the famous 
 text. 
 
 Finally, you have learnt not to give utterance to much 
 you have come to think : you keep it to yourself It might 
 be met with vehement argumentation. It would find no 
 sympathy. And after all these years, you recognise your- 
 self You, lined, and white, and sometimes shaky, are the 
 identical being at whose round, rosy face, you looked in 
 the glass when you were a little boy. It was of poor 
 Prince Charley, in the degradation of the closing days, 
 that the true genius, Louis Stevenson, sang in touching 
 lines. They will not come true, unless there has been 
 moral and spiritual degeneracy. 
 
 Sing me a song of a lad that is gone ! 
 Say, can that lad be I ? 
 
258^ THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SUNDAYS THERE 
 
 They were curious : very unlike Sundays at home. But 
 many things here are unHke things at home. To arise in 
 a great hotel, very handsome and pleasant indeed, yet 
 where the guests number a hundred and twenty : to have 
 one's breakfast in a large apartment, as one of that con- 
 siderable company, amid the inevitable stir and bustle, not 
 to say clatter and hubbub : to discern many signs that the 
 men who abide under this roof are quite emancipated from 
 Scottish ideas as to the observance of the Lord's Day : 
 these things are strange. Then to walk away by a path 
 through fragrant clover, which makes all the air delightful 
 to the sense : to enter into a pretty church, fitted to the 
 place (for its west front reproduces that of Fortrose Cathe- 
 dral), where one has the pleasant sense of freedom from 
 responsibility which can never be in a church of one's 
 own : to find there a large congregation, very many of 
 which have plainly never been in a Scottish kirk before : 
 who know not what is meant b}' a paraphrase, and arc in 
 some cases surprised to find that there is any praise at all : 
 who introduce innovations into the worship which startle 
 the natives, as frequent and heart)- responses o{ Amen, and 
 
THE SUNDAYS THERE 
 
 259 
 
 prompt arising in sympathy with the ascription which 
 concludes the sermon, turning in so doing towards the 
 altar : those things are pleasing indeed, but some of them 
 are unfamiliar. As for the cheering attention and the 
 perfect hush with which the exhortation is listened to : 
 these things happily never fail. After the first few sentences, 
 one feels at home. And never anywhere did brighter or 
 more sympathetic faces give heart to any preacher. 
 
 The church is new ; and it had to be built wholly by 
 voluntary liberality. Wisely, instead of producing, com- 
 plete, a structure of inferior character, the builders have 
 made the first outline of a really fine church. The chan- 
 cel is temporarily furnished in the very plainest way, and 
 there is no stained glass at all. For years to come, there 
 will be scope for devout wealth to bring its offering here. 
 But when the church is furnished as it is made to be, it 
 will be (for Scotland) a beautiful one. All will come in 
 time : let us hope, in our time. 
 
 Little things surprise good folk who have never wan- 
 dered bej'ond that lovely strath. A good girl of possibly 
 twenty years, coming out of church, said to a companion, 
 in a bewildered fashion, but with the soft pleasant Celtic 
 voice : ' It's the queerest service I ever saw. He read 
 every word of his sermon.' Doubtless the discourses she 
 is in use to hear are in Gaelic, and Gaelic is the language 
 of poetry and oratory ; every Gaelic preacher holds fortli 
 quite extempore ; sometimes, too, with an unsimulated 
 fervour which sweeps away even such as do not understand 
 a word that is said. Yet in this place, where the ' kist of 
 
26o THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 whistles ' might have been deemed unknown, a good har- 
 monium accompanied the singing ; the organ is a luxury 
 and can wait. And in the little choir which was got to- 
 gether for those Sundays, there was one charming voice ot 
 such wonderful power, sweetness, and expression, that it 
 was not surprising that its possessor is well known over 
 that region (which is a wide one) as ' the Patti of the 
 North.' Furthermore, for every good and charitable pur- 
 pose that voice is lifted up as freely as beautifully. 
 
 Scottish folk, young and old, quite readily ask for 
 information. I had touching little instances of an un- 
 sophisticated curiosity. Yet none come back more vividly 
 than one near at hand, and not a week old. I was coming 
 out from a certain grand churchyard, having fulfilled a 
 brief sad duty there ; and under the western gable of a 
 cathedral which was once magnificent, was putting off my 
 gown. Four little individuals approached : two boys, two 
 girls, the eldest not six years old. They were in no degree 
 in awe of me : which is my desire. One boy, speaking for 
 the rest, said to me with an anxious look, ' Were ye 
 preachin' .? ' — 'No, my little folk,' was the reply; 'I was 
 burying a poor young woman.' A pause ; then, solemnly, 
 and with a latent thought of self, came the question, ' Was 
 she big ? ' Big means grown-up, in these parts. ' Yes, 
 she was seventeen : much bigger than \^ou, and a very 
 good girl. But even little people like you may have to be 
 brought here. Are you good children ? that's the great 
 thing.' The four voices answered together, firmly, ' Ye.s.' 
 Then a word of blessing, and we part. They were not in 
 
THE SUNDAYS THERE 261 
 
 the least afraid of the solemn but cheerful burying-place ; 
 there is nothing here about a funeral to cause the old 
 heathenish horror I remember long ago. Yet there was a 
 personal concern : implied, though not expressed. One 
 recalled the old man in Ayrshire, who after a burial said 
 to the minister, ' Div ye ken what I aye think at a funeral ? ' 
 The minister expected some devout reflection ; and made 
 enquiry what it was the old man thought so regularly. ' I 
 aye think ' ; he paused, awe stricken : ' I aye think, I'm 
 desperate glad it's no' me ! ' 
 
 The minister was disappointed. Yet it must be admit- 
 ted that a famous verse in the famous Elegy conveys, in 
 more graceful language, a not unsimilar sentiment as to 
 the fashion in which poor humanity quits ' the warm 
 precincts of the cheerful clay.' It depends, doubtless, 
 greatly on the present mood, how we shall think of the great 
 change. There was absolute sincerity when the greatest 
 Scotsman (and surely all but the best), hearing of an old 
 friend's death, wrote with a failing hand, ' I could have 
 wished it had been Sir Walter.' 
 
 Does Sunday begin with Saturday evening ? I used to 
 be taught so, long ago. Not at all in the sense that the 
 evening and the morning are the day : or that the sacred 
 day ended when Sunday's sun went down. It was rather 
 because a certain quietude of spirit was becoming, in 
 preparation for the holy hours which were drawing near. 
 It was thought that one could not pass very swiftly from 
 worldly worries or amusements to elevated devotion of 
 heart. But where I abide, we have changed all that ; and 
 
262 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 though any scene of special gaiety would still be commonly 
 regarded as unbefitting the evening of Saturday, a little 
 quietly cheerful society is deemed a very good preparation 
 for the special duties of the Lord's Day ; even for such as 
 are to minister in its public worship. The mind passes 
 with a helpful rebound from the gay to the graver : when 
 health and heart are as could be wished. It was in a 
 specially bigoted region that a lugubrious Pharisee once 
 said to a brisk bright friend of mine, departed : said, in a 
 dolorous whine, ' Whawt's the best preparahtion for a weel- 
 spent Sahbath.?' My friend told me that he saw the 
 question was not put in good faith, but with a view of 
 estimating his condition : ' tr}-ing his speerit ' ; and accord- 
 ingly he replied, in the most matter-of-fact tone, and with 
 a cheerful intonation quite removed from 'the Bible twang 
 — ' Well, I should say, a good night's sleep.' But the 
 Pharisee, looking upon him as from an immense elevation, 
 and conveying clearly that he was in benighted case, made 
 reply, ' Naw, a gude warsle wi' Sawtan ! ' Then departed, 
 casting an unfriendly look upon my good friend. It was 
 not as when one, known to mc, was extremely pleasant in 
 his talk with those who did not belong to his Communion ; 
 but somewhat spoiled the effect by stating that he felt it his 
 duty to be civil to heretics in this life, forasmuch as he had 
 no hope of ever seeing them in any other. 
 
 It indicates a great breaking away from old fetters, to 
 look round this Saturday evening. For this is in Scotland, 
 and very far North. Yet cheery dancing is going forward 
 in this great chamber, to the music of a very decent band 
 
THE SUNDAYS THERE 263 
 
 set upon a dais at one end of it. It is no longer regarded 
 as a duty to be ' unhappy on Sunday,' or unhappy because 
 the blessed day is drawing near. Innocent amusement is 
 judged a very fit and right thing, by all whose opinion is 
 of the smallest value. Dancing is esteemed a very pleasant 
 and innocent amusement. And the Kirk has advanced 
 several thousands of miles since the day when it condemned 
 ' promiscuous dancing.' There is no doubt at all what that 
 meant. Once, in the house of my revered old Professor of 
 Divinity (just as devout and good a Christian as I ever 
 knew), I was present (being a youth of twenty) at a great 
 dance. And, having conveyed his charming daughter to 
 her seat, I said humbly to my admirable instructor (who 
 rose just as high as is possible in the Kirk), 'What exactly 
 is meant by that " promiscuous dancing " which is so 
 severely condemned ? ' With a benignant yet extremely 
 dignified smile (no one not a fool would presume upon 
 him), he answered, ' Of course it meant that men and 
 women should dance together. There was no harm in 
 men dancing with men, and women with women. But,' he 
 went on, casting a kindly eye upon the gay groups round, 
 ' that way of thinking has quite fallen into desuetude.' 
 And indeed it appeared to me that it had. 
 
 If a thing be done at all, it is right that it should be 
 well done. i\nd the dancing here was remarkably good. 
 It was pleasant to behold the graceful activity of various 
 pretty young women ; for the dances were by no means 
 walked through. But it was a singularly touching and 
 impressive spectacle to witness divers huge men, of 
 
264 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 eighteen, twenty, and twenty-two stone, flying about 
 wildly in Highland reels, and uttering the frequent yell. 
 I know how Lord Eldon, long Lord Chancellor (thinking 
 only of himself, and not at all of a suffering community), 
 said, ' Never give up ' ; but I really think that .when a 
 man's head is bald, and his hair (if any) white, he had 
 better give up dancing. For dancing, he looks like a fool; 
 and one pities the poor girls who must dance with him. 
 But the stout men were only in middle age, and their 
 activity was pleasing and pathetic. It brought back to 
 me a picture of not many years ago. The stately Bishop 
 Wordsworth of St. Andrews was not merely one of the 
 greatest scholars of his time, but one of its chief athletes. 
 A dear friend of mine who is a great preacher, but a very 
 little man, was with me here ; and we were walking with 
 the Bishop about his pretty garden. We came to a fine 
 tennis court, provided when the house was a College Hall : 
 and in an evil moment the Presbyter challenged the Prelate 
 to a game. The Prelate was fourscore ; but the wonted 
 fires were wakened. And how Presbytery went down 
 before Prelacy ! I see, clearly, the grand old man of 
 six feet four flying about like a boy, with ready hand 
 and eagle eye. The Presbyter did his best ; I can 
 say no more. It was a humbling sight. The action of 
 his legs haunts me still. And he generally missed the 
 ball. 
 
 Though belonging to the Kirk, I did not mind ; I 
 rather liked to see my Brother smashed. I am free from 
 sectarian prejudice. It did not use to be so in this country. 
 
THE SUNDAYS THERE 26 
 
 But \vc are emancipated. Let us relate a significant fact, 
 bearing upon this statement. 
 
 It was a winter afternoon, darkening fast to night. 
 There was intense frost, and on a country road the snow 
 lay six inches deep. It was in Scotland. I will say even 
 more : it was in Aberdeenshire. A good man, the Head of 
 a Roman Catholic College, was walking home in the failing 
 light, when he beheld in the middle of the road a dark 
 object in the snow. Drawing near, he found a little 
 cobbler from the neighbouring hamlet, lying unconsciously 
 drunk. The Jesuit could not leave him to perish. So 
 with difficulty he raised him from the ground, and with 
 great difficulty he managed to steer the helpless fellow- 
 mortal to his house, half a mile off. Though unconscious 
 at starting, he had partly regained his senses when he 
 reached his own door ; and he uttered some words of 
 thanks. The good-natured priest said — 
 
 ' Maybe ye wad not be so ceevil, if ye kenned who I 
 am.' 
 
 But the answer was ready. Not without dignity, the 
 half-articulate cobbler replied — 
 
 ' Ou ay, I ken ye fine. Ye're a Cawthlic Priest. But 
 I'm a man aboon a' prejudice ! ' 
 
 The incident was essentially Scottish. Taking all the 
 circumstances into view, one may say it could not have 
 occurred in England. And why should not a poor man, 
 who works faithfully with his hands, be free from prejudice : 
 iust as free as though he were a Prince or a Peer ? 
 
 When I was a small boy, aged twelve, I was sent to 
 
266 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 school, and each Sunday was compelled to go twice to 
 church. I remember well, how I thought to myself, con- 
 tinually (I durst not say it out), that if preachers were 
 anxious to be as tiresome as possible, making their sermons 
 absolutely incapable of being listened to by young or old, 
 they could do no more than they did. The daughter of a 
 great Chief-Justice told me that sixty years since she and 
 her sisters, clever girls, were marched regularly to a church 
 I have seen, hideous outside and abhorrent inside, where 
 they suffered tortures through an awful tediousness un- 
 known elsewhere. ' The very idea of ever feeling the least 
 interest in anything said in church never entered our 
 heads ! ' Those were the days of what was called ' High- 
 handed Patronage,' in which a man was stuck-in to a place 
 in the Kirk not because he was fit for it, but because 
 he had influential friends. And possibly the idea in the 
 Patron's mind was as that in the mind of George II., who 
 declared that his experience as a King had led him to the 
 belief, that any man in Britain zvas fit to Jiold any place he 
 could get. Vividly I recall how at that early age, I used 
 to look round on the congregation, and think it strange 
 to see the preacher going on in a solemn voice, and not 
 a soul listening to one word he said. I used to wonder 
 how he could do it. But gradually, as I grew up, I found 
 that one of these dismal orators would have thought there 
 was something wrong, had he (just for once) found a whole 
 congregation intently listening to him. And the suspicion, 
 and hatred, in which these awful souls held any preacher 
 who habitually held the congregation in that rapt attention 
 
THE SUNDAYS THERE 267 
 
 in which the proverbial pin could be heard to fall (there 
 were a few such even then), were quite beyond words. 
 The contempt and loathing, with which I heard, as a boy, 
 a dignified person speak of the early appearances of a 
 senseless creature whom he called Tom Chalmers, I never 
 can forget. Tom preached a sermon in the parish church 
 of St. Andrews (which I was one day to know well) on 
 drunkenness. For the first half of the sermon he showed 
 how pleasant a thing it was to get drunk : ' he spoke of 
 the wine reaming in the cup ' ; and then in the second half 
 he gave an awful per contra. That was his first manner. 
 But it was plain that the damnatory fact, not to be got 
 over, was that people held their breath as the youth went 
 on, who by-and-bye was to be recognised as the greatest 
 pulpit orator of the century. 
 
 I am quite sure the disgusted old gentleman had never 
 heard of Sydney Smith's axiom. Every style is good, except 
 the tiresome. But a boy could see that with him, and 
 people like him, any discourse which was not tiresome was 
 to be held in great suspicion. The probability was that 
 something was far wrong. 
 
 I was not a boy, but a young Doctor of Divinity, when, 
 thirty years since, I heard a good man, the dreariest preacher 
 of his day, loudly maintaining the sinfulness of fine churches 
 and bright services. The more dismal and disagreeable 
 anything was, the likelier to be the right thing. Good and 
 hearty music was to be feared. A twelve-hundred-pound 
 organ was an awful agency for the misleading of souls. 
 If you had no earthly inducement to go to church, you 
 
268 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 were possibly drawn by higher considerations. Of course 
 there is a measure of truth here. But I said to this 
 good man, that very interesting and impressive preaching 
 was just as really a worldly inducement as magnificent 
 praise or a stately church, while I never had heard those 
 maintain that preaching must not be too good who were 
 eager that music must not be too good. ' I agree with 
 you, cordially,' said my departed friend, ' and if I thought 
 people were coming to church for the pleasure of hearing 
 me preach, I would take pains to make my sermons less 
 interestinfT.' These ears heard the words. Somewhat 
 inconsiderately, I hastened to assure him that there was 
 no need at all for his doing that. For, indeed, his power 
 of emptying any church in which he ministered was 
 proverbial. And the wildest imagination had never pic- 
 tured any mortal as going to church for the pleasure of 
 listening to him. But I grieve to say that, though I spoke 
 in simplicity and affection, as one eager to save a good 
 man from needless self-reproach, the good man cast 
 upon me just as evil a glance as could come from so 
 good a man ; and speedily brought our conversation to a 
 close. 
 
 I sometimes wonder, in these latter days, what im- 
 pression the ordinary good preacher expects to produce 
 upon the congregation by each sermon preached. Surely 
 it is true, as was said by good Archbishop Trench long 
 ago, that when we begin we expect great things. 
 
 High thoughts at first, and visions high, 
 Are ours of easy victory. 
 
THE SUNDAYS THERE 269 
 
 I knew a lad, more than forty years since, who having 
 preached, with absolute conviction and great vehemence, 
 in a very crowded church on a dark winter afternoon, a 
 sermon showing how foolish it is to be bad (which truth 
 he had only found out a few days before), was filled with 
 absolute wonder that his sermon produced no apparent 
 effect at all, beyond causing an awful hush and many 
 startled faces. He knew three very bad fellows who were 
 in church and listened intently : and he made perfectly 
 sure that each would at once turn over a new leaf It was 
 not so. One very bad fellow did indeed remark, ' He 
 evidently believed what he said ' ; but no amendment of 
 life followed. Another bad fellow, who had been at 
 college with the preacher, observed, ' Surely he has become 
 very serious.' I knew a youth who was incumbent of a 
 pretty country parish, where he found that various re- 
 spectable persons got drunk on the market-day. One 
 Sunday, almost with tears, he denounced this sorrowful 
 inconsistency in eager words. A benign old farmer, old 
 enough to have been his grandfather, listened with great 
 approval : he not merely shook his head sympathetically, 
 but he waved his right hand to and fro, as though saying, 
 * Such are my sentiments! Yet the next day the youn-^ 
 parson met the aged man being driven home from market 
 very drunk indeed. Which things are discouraging. But 
 gradually that youth found that men in his own vocation, 
 after preaching on Sunday on the duty of meekness, fair- 
 ness, and kindness, as though they had been angels, went 
 on Wednesday to the Presbytery. There, in the matters 
 
270 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 of spitefulness, dishonest misrepresentation, and vicious 
 irritability as of a bulldog on whose tail the wayfarer has 
 inadvertently trodden, these good men, so far from being 
 angels, appeared as exactly the reverse. Surely we are 
 dealing with warped and odd material, dealing with poor 
 human nature. We should not mind so much if it were 
 thus only with our neighbours. But think : How is it with 
 ourselves? If I might venture to speak from what I 
 know, I should say that even an earnest preacher, who 
 believes his message fully, and not just about half, hopes 
 mainly to comfort the sorrowful Christian, and some little 
 to lift up those who are devout souls already, rather than 
 to arouse the indifferent, and bring back those who have 
 gone astray. But I will not believe but that to the very 
 end, even closing a little week-day meditation of a quarter 
 of an hour's duration, the preacher whom I call a preacher 
 hopes, and even clings to the belief, that some poor soul 
 has been helped and comforted. Sometimes, in hours of 
 deep discouragement, the message comes from somebody 
 quite unknown, somebody far awa}-, who has been helped 
 and comforted. Very big and strong men may possibly 
 receive such messages continually : I do not know. But 
 to some at a far lower level the lines of cheer come, some- 
 times, just when they need help as much as an}- : just 
 when near to the breaking-down. 
 
 It needs much wisdom, and much grace, to deal with 
 human souls. And the best ma)' man)- times meet sin- 
 gular discouragements. He was a saint, and a lyric poet, 
 who at a meeting of a kind of which I have no experience, 
 
THE SUNDAYS THERE 271 
 
 of a kind of which I Hke not what I hear, approached a 
 middle-aged lady of good descent and blameless life ; and 
 said, in an insinuating manner, ' Are you happy ? ' The good 
 lady considered for a little space ; and then made answer in 
 a very matter-of-fact tone, and in a single word. The word 
 was, MiddlirC. Somehow it shut the lyric poet up. 
 
 There are national differences. And there is a 
 difference between country and town. In Scotland, as a 
 rule, few desire to speak with the preacher after service. 
 And the few are always in large towns. But if a stranger 
 preach in a London church to a crowded congregation, it 
 may be held as certain that six or eight or ten, mostly 
 young men, will desire a word with him. And very 
 touching indeed is commonly what they desire to say. I 
 know not whether this would cease were any man 
 ministering regularly to a large London congregation. 
 Crying aloud to a multitude, all absolute strangers, is an 
 experience by itself But to deliver the message, ever so 
 sincerely, to a thousand (or two thousand) souls, mainly 
 the same souls Sunday by Sunday, is quite a different 
 thing. 
 
 One has known individual beings who, on receiving 
 testimony that they have been enabled to do some little 
 good, are in use to suddenly get up from where they are 
 sitting, to drop down upon their knees, and offer humble 
 thanks in the Quarter whence everj'thing comes which is 
 worth having. This, of course, when quite alone. 
 
 Thirty years since, a good man, unknown to the 
 present writer, made a severe attack upon him (in print) 
 
272 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 for what was described as Sham Reverence : in that the 
 writer, in an entirely secular magazine, had made some 
 such reference to God Almighty. The good man was 
 writing in a religious publication. And the special 
 accusation he brought against me was that I did not mean 
 what I said. How could the good man know } Of 
 course I never noticed his observations in any way : that 
 is, until now. 
 
 But, being condemned for Sham Reverence, I remem- 
 bered, very vividly, how, when a youth, a very eminent 
 man stated in my hearing that he once went to a little 
 place of worship where a homely preacher was holding 
 forth with great earnestness and sincerity. And sincere 
 earnestness is always to be respected : even where its 
 manifestations are odd. Yet it sounded strange when the 
 orator exclaimed : * Don't you remember the grand 
 testimony which was borne to Him by St. John the 
 Baptist ? Don't you remember how the Baptist said, 
 That is the Party which taketh away the sins of the 
 world ? ' 
 
 It was well meant, but very awkwardly expressed. 
 But I am perfectly sure that in the Highest Quarter 
 things are taken as they are meant. Which is a great 
 comfort. 
 
 Alexander the Great was a shabby little creature, to 
 look at. One day, when the great king was surrounded 
 by abject courtiers, a poor woman came in to plead for a 
 precious life. One very abject courtier was of stately 
 mien : so she cast herself on the earth before him and 
 
THE SUNDAYS THERE 273 
 
 poured out her poor heart. When she ended, the king 
 drew near, and said — 
 
 ' I know who it was you meant to speak to. You shall 
 have what you ask.' 
 
 Even so, much more confidently than I believe that 
 two and two make four, I believe that every earnest 
 prayer ever offered in this world came straight to the 
 only Hearer of prayer. The stricken mortal, with awful 
 earnestness, prayed to the only god he knew or ever had 
 the chance to know. It was no god at all. But the sup- 
 plication made its way to the right place : and was 
 mercifully considered There. 
 
274 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ALWAYS SOMETHING 
 
 It was not far North, in that quiet place often thought of: 
 but elsewhere, in a region which some would esteem as 
 somewhat towards the North too. They were walking 
 along a wooded avenue, and were drawing near a kindly- 
 dwelling, .linked in memory with several who have gone 
 away. Was it not yesterday that the venerable lord of 
 that pleasant spot told the writer how he had brought a 
 lovable genius, who was dwining, there for a space of rest : 
 and how the genius, feebly walking forth, sat down in the 
 west wind under a blossoming tree, and looked about, and 
 just said Paradise ? There is a turn, near the house, 
 where a vista has been deftly cut through branches, a 
 round opening, where green leaves frame the picture of a 
 little town, two miles off, and far below : dark towers and 
 ruins cutting against the blue sea. They stood, and gazed 
 in silence : and one said, quietly, but with pride, and not 
 with intention of conve)'ing information, TJiafs Sin 
 Tandreivce. It seems odd to the stranger, though not to 
 those accustomed to it, to hear the sacred name so pro- 
 nounced. But surely, speaking of so solemn a place, one 
 ought to speak accurately, and not without deliberation. 
 
ALWAYS SOMETHING 275 
 
 The writer will not be hurried, uttering such a name. Let 
 us say Saint Andrews ! 
 
 ' He was educated there/ one of the pilgrims went on, 
 ' the man we were talking of.' Then the speaker went on : 
 ' He's a born orator : no man more so. Tulloch, who 
 taught him any theology he knows, used to say that once 
 on a time he was standing in the quadrangle of St. Mary's 
 College, when the future preacher came in to make com- 
 plaint of some injustice done him in the matter of a small 
 scholarship. Tulloch had never seen the youtli before 
 But our lost Principal was wont to declare that though in 
 after years he beheld the orator swaying a crowd of thou- 
 sands, he never heard him so eloquent as when with 
 intense feeling he told the story of his wrongs on that 
 departed day. He was but a poor lad. But he was 
 pleading for very life. And there was no question as to 
 the pathos with which he did it.' 
 
 Ever so many years after, when he was an old man, 
 and had risen just as high as he could rise in that vocation, 
 I was present where he was charming near four thousand 
 people, playing upon the human mass like a great player 
 on a grand organ ; and eliciting the instant response 
 whether in tears or smiles. Not quite smiles, indeed : 
 rather howls. He told many stories, which had but a 
 distant connection with his subject : but that mattered not. 
 Criticism was impossible, then and there. The enthusiasm 
 was tremendous. And there was not much in some of the 
 stories : but how they were told ! One comes back. A 
 mother, questioned as to her daughter's approaching mar- 
 
 T 2 
 
276 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 riage. 'A nice marriage?' 'Just delightful, charming. 
 Everything we could wish but only one. That is, the 
 lassie just canna thole the man : she just hates him. But 
 there maun aye be a something.' 
 
 Anything in the nature of reflection on this touch- 
 ing legend would be superfluous. Suffice it to say that 
 the narration was received with immense applause and 
 laughter. Nobody appeared to have a thought for the 
 poor girl, constrained to marry a wealthy and respectable 
 man whom she detested. Possibly the reason was that 
 nobody believed the story. I have no doubt whatever it 
 was a pure invention. I do not say it was invented by the 
 wild orator. But it was devised by somebody else. And 
 then he accepted it, without any use of the higher 
 criticism. 
 
 But the principle is sound. ' There is aye a some- 
 thing.' Long ago, I was talking with a worthy man, a 
 Scotch parson, to whom a loss had befallen. The woman 
 with the finest voice in his choir had got married, and 
 gone far away. 'It's a loss,' he said. ' But as ae door 
 stecks, another opens. Something else will come and 
 make up.' 
 
 The words were wise. But let them not now be un- 
 derstood in the sense that when one good thing is taken, 
 some other good thing will come and take its place. They 
 are to be taken in quite a different sense : or (as I 
 think I have heard my boys express it) ' the other way 
 about.' 
 
 When some great trouble is taken away (and such an 
 
ALWAYS SOMETHING 277 
 
 event sometimes comes, even in this troublesome world), 
 for a while you are most thankful. You have peace : for 
 a brief space, even what may be called perfect peace. But, 
 gradually, when the real heavy sorrow has ceased to press 
 you down, other lesser ones, forgotten in its black presence, 
 assert themselves : come forward : grow in bulk and weight, 
 and demand your attention to them. Circumstances in 
 your lot, vexatious circumstances, but so small that a 
 fortnight ago you would have been ashamed to think of 
 them, begin to vex you now. I am supposing them real, 
 these worries : but if all real troubles go, fanciful ones will 
 come. Morbid fears : foolish remembrances of sorrows 
 gone by long ago, and best forgot : vivid and stinging re- 
 vival of old and even childish wrongdoings : till the needful 
 normal amount of disquiet is here again. ' There maun 
 aye be a something,' A certain degree of disquiet is due : 
 has to be. Anything will serve as a peg to hang it on. 
 You thought you would be perfectly thankful and peace- 
 ful if that great cross were lifted off you which for years 
 has embittered your life : if only such health and strength 
 were in your home as are in countless others : if some 
 anxious work were well finished which you fear to die 
 and leave unfinished, knowing that then it can never be 
 finished at all : if some modest measure of success were 
 at length permitted to crown hard and weary work which 
 hitherto has come to nothing. And truly, when you come 
 to know, you will be startled to find the deep assurance in 
 many men of their ill-luck, I am not to write high-flown 
 sentiment : or I might remind you of the firm faith which 
 
278 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 Dickens had, as you may discover in his most charming 
 book, that if a man marries the right woman, it will be for 
 the grand matter of soul-satisfaction, exactly the same as 
 if he went to heaven. Ah, look to the first page of your 
 St. Augustine : and read : and remember. ' Thou hast 
 made us for Thyself: and our heart is restless till it 
 resteth in Thee ! ' Much rubbish the Saint wrote : even 
 such were the words to me of good Dr. Lindsay Alexander, 
 pretty nearly his best Editor : but here are the words of 
 true inspiration. Now, suppose such success sent as 
 comes to one in a million : such a lot and such a home as 
 come to one in a hundred thousand : suppose the chiefest 
 worldly blessing which can come to aging folk, what 
 homely Scots call 'a well-doing family': and have you 
 not known how in such a case the ghosts of past care, 
 humiliation, ill-usage, injustice, foolishness and wrong- 
 doing, waken up and dog and haunt the unthankful 
 recipient of blessings beyond number ? I have known 
 ' the dark ages ' (so he called them) never cease from the 
 memory of one of the most honoured and successful of 
 men : the terrible struggle of those anxious years, long 
 past and gone : the bitter recollection of having been 
 victimised and cheated by smug folk, who if they had any 
 conscience were certainly never troubled by it : the sore 
 memory (in brief) of a host of sleeping sorrows which 
 ought never to have been awaked. 
 
 Do not say that all this is morbid : as though thus 
 you made an end of it. I tell you it is common in human 
 experience. The shadows of the pri.son-house, long 
 
ALWAYS SOMETHING 279 
 
 escaped from, darken the sunshine and the freedom of this 
 better day. 
 
 I have known one who, when great success came to 
 him, and great popularity, never could get away from the 
 bitter thought how he had been pinched and despised 
 through years when he was just as deserving as now. 
 When Edmund Kean, half-starved, was acting in barns 
 to a handful of ignorant bumpkins, he was just as great 
 a genius as when he was crovv^ding Drury Lane. Dickens 
 tells frankly how at the zenith of fame, he wept aloud 
 when he thought of the neglected little boy he had been. 
 I knew the meaning of a line I read at the end of a manu- 
 script sermon, written on the evening of a day on which it 
 had been given to a dense multitude of educated folk. It 
 ran thus ; ' First preached at Kennaquhair to forty-three 
 people ; several of them sound asleep.' 
 
 There are those who, when anniversaries come round, 
 will go back upon the awful blow that fell as on this day 
 these years ago. And the old time comes over them, in a 
 grievous way. I am not thinking of the day on which 
 one died : that ought to be ' kept ' for evermore : and the 
 remembrance does good, not harm. I am thinking of 
 crushing and humiliating trouble : sorrow darkened by 
 shame. Pass from that, my friend. I do not say that 
 madness lies that way : but of a surety ingratitude for the 
 past and distrust for the future. 
 
 I have known those who for fear of growing conceited, 
 resolutely and successfully put away the recollection of 
 cheering things. This without any affectation. Hardly a 
 
zio 
 
 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 soul, but themselves, knew the stern discipline they under- 
 went. It was needless. Quite enough of takings-down 
 will come, to keep us humble. That is, unless we be 
 foolish quite beyond words. 
 
 There was a man, long ago, who told me how after 
 many years of wearing anxiety, he came to a time in 
 which he had absolutely no troubles at all. He had got 
 (as Charles Kingsley said) ' all he had ever wished, and 
 more than he had ever hoped.' It was all sunshine for a 
 little space. He hardly knew himself for the same being. 
 But then the something came : the something which has 
 to be. He was possessed by an idea, w^hich he could not 
 dismiss, that somehow all the little provision he had made 
 for his children would be lost. And this, for weeks of a 
 bright summer, made up the normal load of care. It is 
 certain that human beings set in the highest places, great 
 nobles and kings, have had the heart taken out of all they 
 possessed by the Red Terror : the fear of a smashing-up 
 of society ; of anarchy. A decent mortal, not in any way 
 noble but a humble retainer (he had got made a baronet for 
 services rendered to an unimaginable monarch), said to an 
 official of the London and Birmingham Railway who 
 wanted to survey his little fields, that he would fight 
 against railroads to the last, for ' they would ruin the 
 noblesse of England!' Poor soul! The ^noblesse' was 
 not ruined at all, but made a very good thing of selling 
 land to the companies. But supjxising for a moment that 
 the ' noblesse ' could only hold on if the millions were 
 prevented from travelling about (even as the American 
 
ALWAYS SOMETHING 281 
 
 slave-holders could keep their place only while the slaves 
 were not suffered to read and write), I fancy the nation 
 would soon have made up its mind. It is self-evident 
 now that the thing to be thought of is ' the greatest 
 happiness of the greatest number.' 
 
 But there is entire freedom from fanciful fears in the 
 family which looked out on this world through that little 
 ' window in Thrums.' The man who works for eighteen 
 shillings a week, thankful that his little children have 
 their daily bread, has no alarm for a smashing-up of 
 society. And Southey, thankful towards the end of an 
 honoured and laborious life when in a certain February 
 he saw the means of support provided to the end of the 
 year, would never be disquieted about the possibility of 
 being bit by a mad dog, or of mass being some day said 
 in St. Paul's, or of the Athanasian Creed ceasing to be 
 said on certain great days. Very urgent and substantial 
 possibilities of want and sorrow are in the foreground : 
 and they quite shut out the view of transcendental 
 eventualities. These urgent possibilities are very real : 
 very terrible sometimes : but they deliver us from every- 
 thing else : even as a mortal disease keeps off all lesser 
 illness. But there must always be something. Ah, ' born 
 to trouble, as the sparks fly upward ' : that is, trouble will 
 come as certainly, as naturally, as the sparks ascend. To 
 ' live happily ever after ' is a thing which cannot be. And 
 a very great trouble, crushing you down, is good for you 
 in divers ways. It makes you absolutely forget lesser 
 vexations : such cease to be, in that sombre presence. 
 
282 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 It takes the nonsense out of you : it sobers you : in a 
 wonderful way. And it holds you in continual and most 
 real dependence on Somebody who can feel for you and 
 sustain you : who only can. In fact, it brings you to 
 your knees. I am quite sure that most men and women 
 who are going down towards the sunset have found this 
 out by abundant experience. 
 
 If you get everything this world can give (one man in 
 a million has done so), you grow sick of ' the whole con- 
 cern ' : to use Professor Aytoun's classical phrase. Perhaps, 
 like the wicked old Duke of Oueensberry, you are possessed 
 by morbid longings for that which cannot be : as that 
 the Thames should run dry. When someone said how 
 beautiful a spot he had by that royal river, he said in a 
 voice which forbade the thought of affectation, ' Oh that 
 wearisome river ! always running on, and never will run 
 away ! ' Without supposing that, I fancy that nowhere 
 does life turn to such listless vegetation as in some grand 
 dwellings. How children remember ! I was a little boy, 
 not ten years old, when I heard a great lady, to whom 
 someone had spoken of the loveliness of the scenes amid 
 which she lived, say with a weary sorrowful voice : ' It's 
 not life : it's vegetation.' I never named the incident till 
 now. But I understood it as well as I do to-day. I said 
 to my little self, ' I thought people living in a place like 
 this must be happy : but I see they're not.' There comes 
 back to-day, too, out of the misty past, another voice, 
 strange in a child's ear. A woman too. ' It's not trees 
 and rivers one wants : it's men and women ! ' Ah, sad, 
 
ALWAYS SOMETHING 2S3 
 
 sad, was that woman's after career ! One thought it strange, 
 a little later, to mark how the girls of a family of exalted 
 estate, living in one of the most beautiful domains in the 
 land, continually came forth from the Paradise within, to 
 walk for miles along the public road which skirted it. 
 There was the craving for change : the longing to break 
 bounds. You understand. I am not thinking at all of 
 the ' satiety ' of that vile humbug Childe Harold, who, 
 while posing as one weary of everything, was in fact in a 
 flutter of anxiety as to the success of the book in which he 
 explained that he cared nothing for anything. He, and 
 his delineator, were not so ' much very bad fellows, as ex- 
 tremely silly fellows, thinking it fine to be bad : and taking 
 credit for having done many evil things they never did : 
 even like certain contemptible idiots I have known. I was 
 but a youth when I heard one such talking in phrases 
 which were grammatically penitential of the terrible ill- 
 doings of his life, and the view he had got of the rotten- 
 ness of refined society. It was extremely plain that the 
 real spirit was one of windy boastfulness : boastfulness of 
 evil which in fact he had never done at all. I would have 
 given much, that I might pat him upon his empty head : 
 and say, * Oh, poor Rattle, you are a tremendous fool ! ' 
 
 But while Byron and all his heroes were contemptible 
 impostors, it is quite certain that mortals in no degree 
 romantic or even interesting, have of a truth, attained to 
 that general dissatisfaction which silly youths used to think 
 very grand. I remember, vividly, a sour old man of no 
 worldly standing, who, all his personal wants being fully 
 
284 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 provided for, and he having no one dependent upon him, 
 did in fact attain to a discontent very analogous to that 
 which made Porson, on a memorable occasion, ban ' the 
 nature of things.' As he could only put his position in 
 homely verse, people only laughed at him. But he was 
 just as rational as Childe Harold, and a great deal more 
 sincere. The refrain which closed each verse of his lyric 
 poem ran as follows : 
 
 As sure as daith I'm weary of the haill rickmatick. 
 
 The upshot of the matter is that if for any considerable 
 time there be nothing really wrong, you will by and by 
 invent or imagine something. I do not mean to grumble 
 about. You don't grumble. But to be secretly unhappy 
 about. I am not describing insanity. Only one who, 
 when surrounded with worldly blessings, kept vexing his 
 soul because thirty years before he had been very ill-used, 
 and that for a long time. I have known another who got 
 up the inevitable something, by continually recalling how 
 he had been bullied at school. And one who, having risen 
 high, and gained a reputation for wisdom, would harp (to 
 a special friend) on the depressing fact that at a certain 
 period of his early life, he had been (in his present judg- 
 ment) quite the greatest fool in history. No doubt he had 
 been, liut few remembered it save himself And he 
 never forgot it at all. 
 
 Let me recall to the reader's memory certain lines of 
 Archbishop Trench. 
 
ALWAYS SOMETHING 285 
 
 Some murmur when their sky is clear, 
 
 And wholly bright to view, 
 If but one spot of cloud appear 
 
 In their great heaven of blue : 
 And some with thankful love are filled 
 
 If but one streak of light, 
 One ray of God's good mercy gild 
 
 The darkness of their night. 
 
 Ah, my reader : the ' some ' are the selfsame people, 
 taken at different times ! 
 
 A closing word. Easily borne now is the sorrow, life- 
 long, and piercing, which is all over : easily borne, I mean, 
 by survivors : even by such as would have sympathised 
 deeply with it while it still lasted on. There is a pathetic 
 fallacy here. We recall with a smile what was no smiling 
 matter to the poor soul who felt he had spoiled his life. 
 ' Ah, that worthy man : what a home his wife gave him 
 for near fifty years. But it is all over now.' Yes : but it 
 is not a truism to say it was not over while it lasted. He 
 was a pattern of staid wisdom : and his wife was a hope- 
 less fool. He was an example of all the proprieties : and 
 his wife barely kept out of the Divorce Court. Think of 
 the wretched Premier, with a home which is matter of 
 tragic history. Think of the miserable Lord Chancellor : 
 how did he live and work at all ? But then they are dead : 
 and in the biographies the facts were lightly passed over. 
 The thing may be briefly told in a half-page, and nearly 
 forgot by the reader, which brooded like a black cloud over 
 half a century of life : and made peace impossible. 
 
286 THAT PEACEFUL TIME 
 
 They never tell, these wretched illustrious ones, what 
 vulture is tearing, as at Prometheus. Nobody mentions 
 what everybody knows. But that did not mend things, 
 while the awful time dragged on. It was a terrible reality 
 in its day, though the day is ended now. 
 
 A pathetic memory comes to me, over many years, of 
 a person in high estate who found the requisite trouble in 
 a not quite unusual way. I see in this room the intent 
 faces of Dean Stanley* and Principal Tulloch as I read to 
 them a sad letter which asked counsel. ' Must I go to 
 Hell if I can't believe everything in the Athanasian 
 Creed ? If I can't believe anything at all ? ' 
 
 I desired to back my own quite clear belief by quoting 
 that of others. 
 
 Stanley broke in, eagerly. ' Say No ! Act honestly 
 according to the light God gives you, and the quantity you 
 believe has nothing to do with where you are to go.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Tulloch ; ' say that! 
 
287 
 
 THINGS LEFT 
 
 ONE'S REAL LIFE IN THE LATTER YEARS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WHEN WE GET OUT OF THE WOOD 
 
 Before October goes : October with the russet leaves, the 
 wonderful stillness in the air of an afternoon, the red sun- 
 sets, the occasional summer-like warmth, the occasional 
 suggestion that goes through one eerily of the Winter chill : 
 there is a word to say. The foliage is lingering. Some 
 trees are ghost-like ; but many are thick, some are green, 
 some are crimson and golden. There comes the Delectable 
 Day, July for brightness only with a tenderer light : and 
 hearts that are growing weary are stirred with a vague 
 hopefulness like that W'hich stirs in Spring. Let a word be 
 said, before November whirls these leaves away in wrath, 
 of a singular and long-lasting human illusion ; often very 
 touching to see. 
 
 Let us think of the fashion in which, by our make, 
 we cleave to the hope of better days to come. It is 
 breaking-down, the last breaking-down, when that hope 
 quite goes. 
 
288 THINGS LEFT 
 
 A careworn man says to you, // is a struggle now : but 
 when I get out of the ivood, it ivill all be smooth. I have 
 heard it put, When viy ship comes home. But the wood 
 appeared to stretch away indefinitely. And the half- 
 hopeful speaker (speaking with a sorrowful face) could 
 have named no port in this world where that ship was 
 lading, whence it should put out to sea. With less of 
 imagery, it has been said in one's hearing, When I am not 
 so hard driven with work, nor so held doiun with anxiety. 
 It was a sweet little girl of six who said to me, When I get 
 well again. Then she scanned the sad faces round her little 
 bed, and added, quietly, But I'm afraid there's not much 
 chance of that. Of a truth, the next morning made it 
 plain that there had been no chance at all. Very simply, 
 and under a touching restraint, the great change drawing 
 near has always been (in my experience) alluded to. It 
 was said by one who knew perfectly. It's on the Cards. It 
 can do no harm now to say that never did I hear a pleasant 
 possibility in the far future told of with so life-like reality 
 and such manifest enjoyment of the prospect, as by the 
 great and beloved Dean Stanley, talking to a hopeful lad 
 of eighteen. And then, when you have got all that, I II come 
 and stay zvith you in your beautiful house, and zve shall have 
 a good time. But it was never to be. 
 
 I suppose a poor horse, struggling up a steep hill over- 
 loaded, has this notion in its chill understanding, that 
 it will get out of the wood, get through this terrible effort, 
 come to where there will be rest. I see, wherever I look, 
 in intelligent man, in the pocjr creatures whom we call 
 
WHEN WE GET OUT OF THE WOOD 289 
 
 inferior animals, even in the wistful aspect I have often 
 beheld on an October landscape, the indications of some- 
 thing infinitely solemn and pathetic, and very seldom 
 remembered by most. It is the vital belief (I dare not 
 again say illusion) that we are to get out of the wood ; that 
 the ship is to come home. There is an expectancy on the 
 lined face of all this universe ; and in its weary heart. 
 Somebody saw it, long ago ; and said what it was that 
 Vvould content it. Different folk, by necessity, will think 
 and feel differently. But, to some, grander words were 
 never written. Never was more comprehensive view : 
 never more sympathetic pathos. Oh, TJie earnest expecta- 
 tion of the Creature. Put quite away the carping and 
 peddling corrections of the Revision. There are the mag- 
 nificent words : not to be matched in Shakspere. 
 
 That is no illusion. That is sure to be. The only 
 question left us is, How wide shall be the reach of that 
 glorious Restoration, all won for us by His life and death .-* 
 But, ere we speak of that, all- satisfying, and adamantine in 
 its certainty, let us think of pathetic ways in which one has 
 known tried souls make sure that they had got out of the 
 wood when in truth they had not. 
 
 When one has written a full account of a worry which 
 was a very jarring experience to go tlu'ough, there is 
 an illusion present to some that the trouble has been 
 exorcised, and will not come again. When one has ver}' 
 seriously and deliberately spoken of old faces going out of 
 one's little world, leaving sorrowful blanks, there comes the 
 vain and unreasonable fancy that we have duly acknow- 
 
 U 
 
290 THINGS LEFT 
 
 ledged and recognised the fact, given it its due, and are not 
 to be troubled with the Hke again. We have gone through 
 that special aching ; and it is over. You sit down, on 
 a gleaming October morning, beside a friend : and he says 
 to you (this is fact). How I could go througJi it, ajid live, I 
 don't know. But I have done it. One has heard it said 
 with a composed face, a quiet voice : you knew what 
 strong self-restraint was before you : you knew it was 
 perfectly true. Did not both of you forget, for the time, 
 that there was more to come to-morrow? You had got 
 quite away, for those minutes, from As the sparks fly up- 
 ward: which means, you have doubtless been told, as 
 naturally and certainly as Newton's apple falls downward. 
 We must through much tribulation is a law as sure, as 
 incapable of being escaped from or evaded, as the law of 
 gravitation. You are never to get out of the wood, here. 
 That is, completely. You get through the thicket that tore 
 the bleeding feet, and you enter on a little green glade 
 where the grass is smooth and the thorny underwood 
 is absent. It is pleasant : and you are thankful. You are 
 hopeful. You think nothing quite so bad can come again. 
 You do not look that your days be evenly joyous : you 
 are not so silly as to dream of being liappy ever after : but 
 surely you have reached Izaak Walton's ever-longed-for 
 blessing, the quiet lot, and the quiet heart : surely after 
 equinoctial blasts and buffets here is St. Luke's peaceful 
 summer ; and surely it will abide with )-ou. Ah, we sing 
 the deathless hymn : we thank the gentle St. Luke for 
 saving to us the beautiful text that inspired it : but we 
 
WHEN WE GET OUT OF THE WOOD 291 
 
 forget that He did not abide, though so constrained : soon 
 as the Face was recognised which is fairer than the sons of 
 men, He vanished. Only for a little zuhile, is the law of 
 all that is good in this world, which (it is not doctrine 
 but fact) is somehow amiss, and cannot content the 
 immortal in us. Nor need you fancy that it is your own 
 fault : and that if you were good, you would be quietly 
 happy. There was One here who was Good, who was 
 Best : and He was a Man of sorrows. 
 
 Do not say you are not so foolish as to admit this 
 fancy which I have been trying to catch and describe, 
 looking at it from this point and that. I know our 
 spiritual experiences are evasive, and vanish in the de- 
 scribing of them. But this is a reality : if I might fix it 
 upon my page. 
 
 One told the story of Hoiu They Went Away: and 
 because it was the simple truth, it reached some hearts. 
 Things came back : the step on the stair in the dark 
 morning, the last remembrances, the words quietly said : 
 it seemed as though one were relating a bewildering ex- 
 perience which was over. Ah, it was to come again, and 
 it came again, till the house was empty ; and the aging 
 parents left alone as they had been at the first. And 
 these things come quickly. Surely I come quickly, is not 
 in the least degree paradoxical to many hearts now. One 
 always knew the truth of these things, in a sort of dazed 
 fashion ; but indeed did not take it in. Do not talk of 
 getting out of the wood : Do not think you have got out 
 of the wood, though you be now crossing a little open 
 
292 THINGS LEFT 
 
 glade : you never will get out of it, here. Do not think 
 the blast has blown over : it never will, here. This is but 
 a lull, for a little while. Be thankful for the quiet blink, 
 but remember what is coming. Su7-c to come, are the true 
 words. 
 
 Did we not talk together, as yesterday, that dear young 
 friend and I, going over every little circumstance in his 
 Father's last da}'s : as though it had of a truth been very 
 terrible, but the worst had come, the worst was over, there 
 never could be anything like it any more } The waves 
 were breaking at our feet, that Sabbath-day : the surgy 
 murmur was in our ears : the stricken young face bright- 
 ened some little, as we recalled simple and lovable traits 
 that came back vividly. For though he who had gone 
 was a great man in knowledge and wisdom, had seen 
 many cities and men, and had instructed and moved 
 multitudes of his fellows, something of a child-like sim- 
 plicity abode with him to the last in the intimacy of inter- 
 course with those who loved him. It had been a very 
 dark time to go through, but light was breaking and the 
 darkness was past. Ay, for a little while. Even a heavier 
 blow was to fall soon. That awful stroke that fell on j-ou 
 and beat you to the earth, — you recall it as something 
 quite exceptional, and never to be repeated. But the 
 like, God knows from what quarter, will come again in its 
 da)'. 
 
 It is a happy thing that by the necessity of our make 
 and nature we live on under this illusion that we arc to 
 get out of the wood : that we have indeed already got out 
 
WHEN WE GET OUT OF THE WOOD 293 
 
 of it finally. Struggling through the brake, we speak of 
 what we are to do when we get free of it : clear of the 
 brake for a little space, we fancy we have got out of it for 
 evermore. In any case, it is never to be so bad again. We 
 have made sad mistakes in the past : we have had losses : 
 we have come through what nearly broke our heart : we 
 have had experience of unendurable bodily suffering : but 
 in a healthy mood we make sure these are never to come 
 back. Goldsmith was a cheerful writer, and anything but 
 morbid : though one remembers In all my griefs,-. — and 
 God has given my sJiare, yet one remembers too how soon 
 he brightens up again. But there is a passage, not to be 
 forgotten, in which the sunshiny writer bursts out with the 
 declaration that the outlook would be hideous [that is the 
 word) if we thought the future was to be as trying as the 
 past. He who had lived with the beggars in Axe Lane 
 had indeed got out of the wood when he was the friend of 
 Burke and Johnson. But he had not got out of it finally ; 
 his sun was to go down in gloom. And before he passed 
 away, saying his last recorded words in answer to the 
 question Is your mind at ease ? — No it is not — he had 
 known anxiety as racking as at any time in his strange 
 career. 
 
 To get out of the tuood means deliverance from trouble. 
 And that is a grand thing too. There is no more touch- 
 ing music in English prose than a famous sentence, 
 written ages ago, in which a supreme poet described it : 
 There the ivicked cease from troubling : and there the zveary 
 be at rest. The revisers would have liked to put raging for 
 
294 THINGS LEFT 
 
 troubling. Lynching would properly have followed. But 
 when pinched man or woman tells you what is to be done 
 zvJien 7iiy ship comes home, the thing meant is boundless 
 gain. It may indeed be a very little ship which is looked 
 for ; and the blessing to follow its coming in may be that 
 the children' shall have warmer stockings and be better 
 fed : that the anxious father may be able to buy a book 
 now and then. I spend the mo.-?t of my life among people 
 who look for no more. Their modest hopes are to me 
 infinitely touching. Whenever I find a four-leaved sham- 
 rock, a blink of comfort and prosperity will shine upon 
 certain modest dwellings, and cheer certain tried hearts. 
 Meanwhile, my reader, remember that a kind word counts 
 for something in present circumstances. But though our 
 lot forbids, sternly, the coming into port of a great galleon 
 laden with the wealth of the Orient, all for ourselves, I 
 think we look with profound interest, and with no faintest 
 shade of envy, when the ship comes home to one near us. 
 The nearest glimpse of great success which we shall ever 
 have, is when it is sent to a dear friend. It has ever been, 
 to me, profoundly interesting to watch it closely, all the 
 circumstances ; and specially to mark how it is taken : 
 great worldly elevation. It is a singular experience in 
 one's own little histor\-, when one long known, and 
 watched, and for many years set high as none of us here 
 can be, is of a sudden placed all but highest in a great 
 vocation. Of course, unless a man is a fool (which in the 
 circumstances is impossible) he must be pleased by un- 
 mistakable proof that his long life-work has been approved. 
 
WHEN WE GET OUT OF THE WOOD 295 
 
 And unless he be an impostor he will say so. But his 
 head will not be turned. And he will be to his friends 
 precisely what he was before. I should not like to subject 
 some good folk I know to such a trial. I have known 
 heads manifestly whirl round when their possessors were 
 placed as on the top of a mole-hill. But a wise Provi- 
 dence made sure they should never get any higher. And, 
 doubtless, great place is ballasted (in some cases) by a 
 responsibility which to a conscientious man must needs be 
 awful. 
 
 But our talk must cease. More hereafter. Though it 
 be vain to think that in this world you or I, my friend, are 
 ever to get finally out of the wood : though it be vain to 
 hope that our ship will come home, bearing durable and 
 satisfying riches : though we must just fight away, as 
 well as we can, while strength remains, in the old weary 
 fashion, struggling through ever-fresh worries, and many 
 times very anxious for others and for ourselves : there are 
 better things elsewhere. I do not .see how we could live, 
 if it were not so. And I do not believe that one reader in 
 fifty could name the poem in which the line stands, which 
 quotation has worn a great deal worse than threadbare : 
 All the same, it is a grand line. 
 
 THERE IS ANOTHER AND A BETTER WORLD 
 
296 THINGS LEFT 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 JUST A NOVEMBER MORNING 
 
 It is a country road, in no way remarkable to the unin- 
 formed stranger. It is a misty November morning. The 
 large yellow leaves are lying thick on the footpath. Step- 
 ping Southward. I have not been on this spot for thirty 
 years. Days have been in which one thought, when any- 
 body talked of having done anything thirty years ago, 
 that he ought to be dead. Now, it does not appear to 
 be so. 
 
 In the latter days, busy, anxious, failing somewhat, one 
 comes to think that all places are much alike : save for their 
 natural features, which doubtless differ greatly. But the 
 notion that one field is vitally different from another ap- 
 pears to us as it did to Samuel Johnson : appears fanciful. 
 It does not in fact occur. 
 
 But I have suddenly found, this morning : found it out 
 as though it were a quite fresh discover}- ; that there may 
 be a place in this world which is quite different from all 
 other places, to some souls. I have no doubt I knew this 
 before : and possibly have said and written it. But, going 
 round the circle, I have arrived at it afresh : and it is some- 
 thing startling and new. It is Sunday morning : and a 
 
JUST A NOVEMBER MORNING 297 
 
 great bell has suddenly rung out, not heard for well-nigh 
 the life of a human generation : inviting Christian folk to 
 prayer. It fell very familiar on the ear, and very startling 
 too. I heard it continually when a child. I have listened 
 to the incomparable bells of Antwerp Cathedral : I have 
 climbed the Belfry of Ghent, and stood inside the bell 
 Roland. But this bell has what far grander bells have not. 
 And looking in a dazed fashion round these fields, these 
 low trees, these unforgotten hills, one is aware that they 
 take hold of one this misty morning as far grander scenery 
 never did and never will. For I was a boy here. 
 
 The sea is near : and twenty miles over it there is a 
 grand range of serrated peaks. But through this misty 
 air one sees them not. The prospect is narrow. But it is 
 enough, and more. And the weary individual who looks 
 on it looks on it not without a tear. Yet though things 
 are so changed, there is no doubt whatever of one's identity. 
 I am the schoolboy of that remote time. 
 
 Here, on the right, by the wayside, is a little cottage. 
 It, too, has greatly changed since the day which made it 
 famous over the world. Continual and needful repairs 
 have made it even as the proverbial gun : whereof no word 
 more. It is the same only as a church (far from this spot 
 as the East from the West), very dear to the writer, is to- 
 day 778 years old. An Ayrshire man whose career was 
 brief, was sorrowful, drew the first breath here, far in the 
 Auld Lang Syne. This morning its door is locked: but 
 one may at least uncover the head, passing the birthplace 
 of Robert Burns. Going on, here is a little ruined 
 
298 THINGS LEFT 
 
 church. And how familiar it looks ! Great is the dif- 
 ference between recalHng, and recognising. Who can 
 reckon the vast store of h'ttle details which are latent in 
 his memory? If I had not come back to this place, I 
 should never have known that deep in one's mind there was 
 the picture of that western window : likewise of that awful 
 Winnock-bunker in the east once beheld of a hero who need 
 not be named. Nor am I going to write of that sorrowful 
 genius concerning whom I can very nearly say that zve 
 were nursed upon the selfsame hill. It is very long since 
 I vowed I never should write of him : that is, in the sense 
 of expressing an estimate. For if I did, I should give 
 offence on either side ; and please nobody. And, I know 
 not why, the embers are hot among which one would step. 
 How dear Principal Shairp caught it ! All the same, Sun- 
 day morning though it be, I repeat the lines written by a 
 pilgrim from beyond the great Atlantic ; no one being 
 
 within ear-shot : 
 
 All ask the Cottage of his birth ; 
 Gaze on the scenes he loved and sung : 
 And gather feelings, not of earth, 
 His fields and streams among. 
 They linger by the Doon's low trees, 
 And pastoral Nith, and wooded Ayr ; 
 And round thy sepulchres, Dumfries : 
 The Poet's tomb is there ! 
 
 For that is the Doon. There are the low trees, 
 many in number. And that is the Bridge, known where 
 the language is known. See what genius can do : genius 
 seconded (in this .sen.se) by favourable circumstances. But 
 go and read the Poem : and you will say that not Shakspere 
 
JUST A NOVEMBER MORNING 299 
 
 was a truer genius than Burns. Bigger, doubtless. Yet 
 the little stone which casts out marvellous flashes and 
 gleams in sunshine or candle-light is a diamond, just as 
 much as the luckless Koh-i-noor. Nor will I admit that 
 Robert is small in size, any more than doubtful in reality 
 of inspiration. He was a very great man : and he was 
 thirty-seven when he died. 
 
 He was extremely well educated : let nothing be said 
 on that head. And possibly he did as good work as was 
 in him to do. But oh the anxious heart he bore : and the 
 weight of sordid care ! A pension of a hundred a year (he 
 had fift}' to live on, and ' keep a horse '), and he might 
 have lived, mellowed and purified, to fourscore. I know 
 no more pitiful story. And these were the days of ' sine- 
 cures, and unmerited pensions.' But he was the Poet of 
 the Poor : Tennyson of the cultured and well-to-do. No 
 honour nor reward is too great for the Laureate : None ! 
 I say it earnestly : but think of Burns, and drop a tear. 
 
 Now and then, one gets a glimpse of the singular feel- 
 ing that is between rich and poor. And wc arc to remem- 
 ber that in this way of speaking, very care-worn folk, hard- 
 driven to make the ends meet, are to be reckoned among 
 the rich. In truth, none can be poorer : none can plod 
 about with heavier heart. Yet these are the people who 
 continually give subscriptions to good causes when the 
 wealthy refuse. Two days since, fifty yards from where I 
 write, I walked for a little space behind two decent-looking 
 old women. I was thinking of something else, and never 
 designed to catch their talk : but a sentence, uttered sadly 
 
300 THINGS LEFT 
 
 yet decidedly, came to my ear. If ever zve get to a Good 
 Place, we II not see via?iy of the Upper Ten there. Very 
 lowly, very anxious, very unambitious (well I know) are 
 almost all of those who may be thus indicated in the little 
 place : but plainly they are not beloved by some ; not 
 held in favourable estimation. What liave they ever done 
 to bring matters to this pass .-' I know not. So far as is 
 apparent to me, the kind word is always ready : and the 
 hand to yield modest help. But oh for a better under- 
 standing of one another ! Or, as Mr. Justice Talfourd said 
 with his last breath, What tve zvajit is syvipatJiy. 
 
 Between classes : the Judge and Poet meant. And 
 surely it is wanted. So should poor human souls under- 
 stand each other. Wherefore should a good old woman 
 (I see the kindly, sensible, careworn face) conclude that 
 people just a little better off could not get to Heaven ? 
 For, as said, her words indicated not the mighty of the 
 earth in huge and luxurious cities, but modest folk seen 
 daily close at hand. There is a grievous misunderstanding 
 current of a famous sentence, which makes mention of one 
 who in his lifetime received his good things. Nor was it 
 wholly needless, when, thirty years since, I heard a benig- 
 nant old preacher of fourscore, with silvery hair and a 
 fatherly smile on his beautiful face, say to a rustic congre- 
 gation in a little country church,' Now, you arc not to fancy 
 that all poor people are good and all rich people are bad.' 
 Then he paused for a space, amid a breathless hush (he 
 had been a great preacher in his day) : and added, with 
 great solemnity, and immense variety of intonation, these 
 
JUST A NOVEMBER MORNING 301 
 
 memorable words : ' No, no, no ! No, no, no ! ' His text 
 was / know thy poverty, but thou art rich. 
 
 Straight opposite the little roofless church stands an 
 extremely pretty one, completed but a little while ago. A 
 stream of worshippers was setting into it : and among them 
 the writer entered in. And this is a Scotch parish church ! 
 Trul}' the times are changed The developed Chancel, 
 raised on high : two rows of stalls on either side of it, and 
 a beautiful organ in its chamber on one side : the pulpit 
 set on the ' gospel side,' forward from the chancel-arch : 
 the storied windows, grand in colour and in tracery, sug- 
 gesting Westminster rather than Kyle : what would have 
 been said to all this when one was a boy ? All this change 
 the writer regards as unspeakable improvement. There 
 are those, not placed in confinement, who hold it all as a 
 step in the Down Grade. For the fundamental idea in the 
 ecclesiological beliefs of certain souls in this country is, that 
 the barer, uglier, and more disagreeable anything is, the 
 likelier it is to be the right thing. Beyond all question, 
 we have moved. But one, once a Kyle schoolboy, may 
 look back lovingly on. the dear old ways of his youth. 
 And just where one is to-day, it is not unmeet to confess 
 that no glory nor beauty of these common days can have 
 the pathos and the glamour of the Auld Lang Syne. 
 Not, indeed, that Burns is the author of the inspired 
 phrase which takes hold of the heart-strings : it was ever 
 so long before him. 
 
 The music was hearty and uplifting at that service. I 
 regretted that they had not the Psalms for the day, as 
 
302 THINGS LEFT 
 
 John Knox always had. It is oftentimes expedient to 
 quote him to such as hold his infallibity and impeccability. 
 It is an end of controversy. But the psalm was the 
 hundrcd-and-third, sung to Gregorian tones ; and the in- 
 spired Te Dcuni was fine. There was a full congregation, 
 and dead silence through the sermon. Few could have 
 listened more attentively than did the writer to the sermon 
 of that day : and not one with stronger conviction of the 
 truth of its teaching. And indeed it came home to one 
 going back; old, to where one was a boy. For it was de- 
 signed to show that in God's wise order (if wc range our- 
 selves on the right side), things grow (on the whole) better 
 as we go on through our life and the best comes at the end 
 of all. To some this may seem paradoxical. But indeed 
 it is not so : though it needs arguing out, and some frank 
 admissions of something on the other side. The preacher, 
 unquestionably, felt what he said on that November 
 morning. He, a little weary, and well-entered on the 
 Psalmist's seventh decade, had known the place as a child, 
 and had last seen it in early middle age. My belief is that 
 he was ministering in that church for the first and last 
 time. For I know him to be one of those who feel that to 
 preach in some places is impossible. To see, for once, old 
 familiar faces, long unseen, is infinitel}' touching. But for 
 some, it is bewildering ; and too much to go through. 
 
303 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 NOT TOGETHER 
 
 No, not unless this world is to come to a stop. It must 
 be one by one. 
 
 A huge strong cable is made of many slender filaments 
 of hemp. Each little filament may break : each in time 
 does break. But the others hold on : and so the great 
 cable is equal to its work : and one has seen it do a tre- 
 mendous work, and bear an incalculable strain. If all the 
 slight threads broke together, the cable would fail. 
 
 So we human beings start and end separately. Each 
 moment a life begins : each moment a life ends. But the 
 long line of the Race is kept on unbroken. 
 
 With us, one here and there loses heart, strength breaks 
 down : the weary wish comes for rest, and it seems as 
 though the poor soul can no longer face the daily round. 
 The interest goes from your work, and you set yourself to 
 it as a heavy task. Hoiv do you like that ? I once said to 
 one set in high and awfully-responsible place, as concern- 
 ing something he must do every da\- if things were to be 
 kept right : and the answer came Q^\cV\y, I cannot bear it I 
 It came sharply upon me that the life of dignified labour 
 was rounding to its close. And so indeed it proved. You 
 
304 
 
 THINGS LEFT 
 
 grow old and weary. A good many such have quietly 
 said to mc, in a fashion which gave assurance of sincerity, 
 / cannot go on ivith this much longer. For I am placed 
 where a good many of the fellow-pilgrims tell me what 
 they think and feel. But though you or I may be failing, 
 and breaking down, others are not. Others beyond num- 
 ber, still full of life and buoyancy, go on with elate step 
 and hopeful heart ; and keep up the continuance of man- 
 kind. That is, of the little population of the little place 
 where we live : and its work and care. The woven fila- 
 ments that make the long cable of humanity each break : 
 but they do not break together. The vast majority hold 
 on, at any moment. But they, in turn, severally break and 
 end, till after years the human race is entirely new. But, 
 thus going one by one, those who go are far less missed 
 than they could have believed. The work of the world 
 goes on cheerily. It is rarely that any individual is with- 
 drawn whose removal makes very many stop in their task, 
 sit down beaten for some hours, and say We cannot do 
 without him. And in that rare case, this mind does not 
 continue long. The survivors get over things. And the 
 identity and continuance of Humanity are secured. The 
 vacant office is filled : some say better. The heart that 
 was broken is (as said Sir Walter) handsomely pieced 
 together again. As Napoleon said. No ma)i is necessary. 
 Let us not speak, nor think, cynically. Ikit if the husband 
 who was mourned with unfeigned sobs and tears : if the 
 young wife whose going made the home a desolate ruin 
 and the world a mocking blank : could come quietly in 
 
NOT TOGETHER 305 
 
 through the familiar door, over the beaten threshold, on 
 that day two years ! 
 
 We do not wish to think ill of our race. But we have 
 seen things. And we cannot forget them. 
 
 Nor do we blame anybody. If anywhere, here is our 
 Maker's manifest intention. But one has remarked the 
 marvellous power some have to put away the past, and the 
 lost. Out of sight appears absolutely out of mind. One 
 has looked at the picture which looks down from the wall 
 upon things so changed : and wondered. Sitting by the 
 warm fireside, looking on the kind and pleasant face, one 
 has shivered a little : thinking that if one's self were blotted 
 out, these would be just the same. 
 
 Some call this resignation. Some call it heartlessness. 
 I am obliged to confess that I have known pleasant lively 
 individuals who appeared not to care at all what became 
 of any mortal, the very nearest : provided all were well 
 with that which some call Number One. 
 
 But I put this away : I like it not. And it is some- 
 what of a deviation. Let it rather be said to any reader 
 who might be disposed to e.Kclaim, The race zuould not do 
 if every one ivere as tired and beaten as I am to-night ; that 
 although many may be even so, incomparably more are 
 not : are so far from being so that they could not under- 
 stand or sympathise with you : would write }'ou down 
 morbid, discontented, thankless, insufferable : would put 
 you aside as not worth thinking about. I do not mean to 
 say that they are right. But it is better that things be so. 
 It is quite a different world (though in fact the .same) 
 
 X 
 
3o6 THINGS LEFT 
 
 which offers itself on each morning to different men's 
 view. 
 
 It is the self-same sun which on this bright Shrove 
 Tuesday is shining on each man and woman of the race in 
 this hemisphere. But to some men and women it seems 
 going down in solemn shadows : the day's work is done. 
 To others it is rising, hopeful and smiling, through a crisp 
 air that speaks of energetic and sanguine work, of which 
 God only knows how great good may come. And these 
 last, God be thanked, are the vast majority. For this 
 world has to grow better : and to end at its Best. And 
 hopeless workers will not make it so. Yet the most reso- 
 lute, and the bravest, tend to be thus in the failing days of 
 this life. Whatever John Knox was or was not, he was 
 brave and resolute. Yet you remember his sorrowful 
 words near the end : that he was going away home to die : 
 for as this world was weary of him, so he was weary of it. 
 Not such was the mind in him in the days when he did his 
 work ! But the look of this world, and all things in it, is 
 to each of us what our own nature and circumstances make 
 it, Paley's famous // is a happy world after all, appears to 
 some an incredibly heartless and benighted saying. But 
 there have been effervescent days in the history of most, 
 when it seemed an axiom ; or at least a fact beyond ques- 
 tion by any healthy mind. 
 
 As with the big world outside, so with the little world 
 of the Family and the Home. The old go, and the young 
 come into the vacant place. The old are fading : the 
 young are blossoming into the hopeful prime of strength 
 
NOT TOGETHER 307 
 
 and beauty. And the hopefulness of the young, and their 
 fresh interest in life and all that concerns it, are of un- 
 speakable help to the old, and the aging. If some fibres 
 in the little cord of the family's continuity are losing elas- 
 ticity and tenacity, others are so fresh and strong that they 
 redress the balance, and make the odds equal. We all 
 move onwards together, with advancing time. But though 
 the identical day be passing over, some in the little com- 
 pany are advancing into beautiful Spring and bright Sum- 
 mer : some into sere Autumn and bleak Winter. It would 
 never do, that all the household should be of exactly the 
 same age : that all the strands of the daisy-chain should 
 grow weak and break together. 
 
 It is pleasant, the smooth fat face with the sunshiny 
 curly hair, laying a soft cheek against that of the care-worn 
 father : the golden and the gray so near. It is pleasant, 
 too, the strong man who has come Half-Way, lovingly 
 tending the feeble steps of the failing grandsire. 
 
 If there were a town where all were the same age ; 
 literally growing old together : how strange it would be ! 
 Or even if the population were sharply divided into the 
 two camps of Old and Young. But every day is some- 
 body's birthday. We started each by himself: and in 
 another sense than Pascal's, we shall each die alone. 
 
 I know several who have written the History of This 
 World from a very special point of view, since they were 
 children. In other words, they have daily written their 
 Diary. It makes a work of profound interest for them- 
 selves. It links youth and age in marvellous fashion : and 
 
 .\ 2 
 
3o8 THINGS LEFT 
 
 it makes the old time live with startling vividness. Can it 
 be so long ago ? But I have remarked that such as pre- 
 serve that record are very clear that the latter days, with 
 all their troubles, are the Best. A brilliant writer who is 
 anything but philosophical has declared that everybody 
 would be young again if he could. With very many, 
 assuredly it is not so. I know those who arc thankful to 
 be nearer seventy than sixty. On many days they are 
 glad to think they must needs be getting near the end. 
 This, though their lives have been fairly successful : This, 
 apart (if anything can be apart) from any clear anticipation 
 of what is Beyond. It is merely Nathaniel Hawthorne's 
 growing weariness. Nor is it that the course of this world's 
 progress has lost interest : nor that there are not some 
 who are infinitely dear. It is rather the sense that they 
 have done their best : that they are no longer equal to the 
 strife : that they would give over the burden that should 
 be borne to stronger hands. Strange, to think how eagerly 
 and vehemently others are ready to take their place, and 
 carry on their work. And it is pathetic, that these are not 
 always younger. I have known a task taken up, in hope 
 and heart, by one, years older than he who had gone to 
 rest after grandly doing it for thirty }'ears. The tired 
 worker, in highest place, or humblest, drops, exhausted : 
 and an older man steps nimbly into the vacant space and 
 goes on excellently for long. I ha\c known those who 
 were worn with anxiety as to who should take up their 
 work when they were gone : and others, good Christian 
 men and women as any, in whose case it seemed that all 
 
NOT TOGETHER 309 
 
 things just slipped from the relaxing hand, and ceased to 
 be. Or the utmost that was attained seemed to be this : 
 My heart has failed, but you are bright and stro7ig : Go on 
 and work : I cannot any more. This is humbly leaving all 
 in Christ's hand : it is the wide sphere apart from the 
 despicable selfishness which said It luill last my time. 
 
 And when you go, good friend, in humility quite beyond 
 expression ; and simply seeking to put a weary hand in 
 the strong Hand that can lead you through no darker 
 rooms than He has gone through before : you will not 
 think that all this world of things is breaking with your- 
 self : and you would not wish it so. You will think of 
 Them at Home ; as the good old minister gone to his rest 
 said to me, thirty years ago : and I never have forgot the 
 simple phrase. Though their hearts are sad now, and their 
 eyes wet, yet (God be thanked) there is capacity of re- 
 covery in them : and they will get over this, as they ought, 
 and as Christ intends. They will never quite forget you. 
 They will think of you much oftener than they will speak. 
 But they will brighten up ; and work hard ; and take 
 healthy interest in their work ; and be quite cheerful. You 
 never would wish it otherwise, I know. 
 
 No, we do not break down together ; which is a happy 
 thing. And we do not go away together ; which we have 
 sometimes wished we might. But if Christ lead us (and 
 He will if we are content He should), we shall come, when 
 we have severally wrestled through these present troubles, 
 to the Father's House where we shall all be together ; and 
 abide so for evermore. 
 
3IO THINGS LEFT 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ONLY ONE 
 
 It was a very fine face : worn, thoughtful, keen. A 
 great many people knew it well then, and saw it con- 
 tinually. But it is the use in certain vocations that men 
 are speedily forgotten when their actual presence is 
 removed. And I fancy that to-day it is so with one whom 
 I well remember. 
 
 The words come back, very plainly : Can it be nearly 
 twenty years? One thought at the time that the words 
 were spoken with something present in his mind which 
 was not put in speech between us. I note that some very 
 kindly critics complain of my italics : but nothing else 
 will suffice here. 
 
 If you want to be perfectly dear of all lesser illnesses, 
 just get one good mortal disease. Then you will never be 
 troubled with any other. 
 
 We, who thus interchanged our thoughts and ex- 
 periences, were not experts in medical science. Possibly 
 the expert would tell us that we were quite wrong in 
 what was that day concluded. But that matters not : for 
 it is not the subject of our present thought. The sentence, 
 
ONLY ONE 
 
 311 
 
 sorrowfully spoken, has suggested something which is 
 analogous : and which is most certainly true. 
 
 If in your lot there be one great trouble, which is to 
 you even as the Thorn in the Flesh (I cannot stand Stake, 
 though doubtless it is right) was to somebody else who 
 has long been delivered from it : you will not be vexed 
 with lesser troubles. You will not think of them. You 
 will be unaware of their presence. Perhaps, in mercy they 
 may go away ; may bide away. 
 
 One has known a man continually stung, worried, dis- 
 tracted, with a host of little cares and crosses. They were 
 little, but they were real, were many ; and they lacerated 
 and fevered the poor spirit. But gradually, slowly, darken- 
 ing the sky, weighing-down the heart, a great and never- 
 ceasing sorrow came : and it seemed as though all that 
 worrying host fled away. I suppose if a large tiger were 
 making for you, you would never observe that a little cur 
 was snarling at your heels. No doubt the tiger is bad 
 enough : and the thorn in flesh or spirit may be all you 
 can bear : but there are tried folk (here is simple fact) 
 who in solemn earnest can thank the Saviour that it came. 
 Because it forced them to turn to the one place of refuge, with 
 an awful earnestness. Whereas a crowd of petty stinging 
 influences might never have sent there : rather might have 
 irritated and chafed into impatience, into outbursts hum- 
 bling to remember, into a soured, morose spirit, — all 
 tending to make one indeed a painful thorn to all who 
 could not evade, but must endure. Under the over- 
 whelming trouble you are very meek : very patient with 
 
312 THINGS LEFT 
 
 others : very thankful when the load lightens for a little 
 while. Even trying the question by the standard of a 
 selfish expediency, you are aware that it is good for you 
 that you were afflicted. It is better to be heavily beaten- 
 down by one great affliction, than to be stung by a host 
 of little vexing worries. These things are not, in the 
 presence of great grief They go, with all their humi- 
 liating train of petty temptations. You remember the 
 broken-hearted genius, who had ' only one book ; but it 
 was the best.' Even so has it been said to us. ' I seem to 
 have only one trouble now. But it is enough, God 
 knows.' 
 
 Looking round upon the folk one knows well, and 
 looking back on the history of many who have gone away, 
 one has discerned that there are two different ways in 
 which human beings are tried. Here and there you note 
 a fellow-pilgrim to whom is appointed a great crushing 
 trouble : some terrible form of bodily suffering, some un- 
 endurable stroke falling upon the family-circle, bereave- 
 ment or far worse than bereavement. I have known a 
 home where it would have seemed in the comparison a 
 lesser trial, had the daughter only died. I have known a 
 .sweet and patient sufferer who for years rarely got through 
 a night without an hour's struggle for the breath of life. 
 Then, more frequently, you mark people to whom is 
 appointed a crowd of little vexations, things perpetually 
 going contrary : unlucky souls whose horses are con- 
 tinually falling lame, whose water-pipes burst abnormally 
 often, who.se children get broken bones and illnessc" 
 
ONLY ONE 313 
 
 which are not dangerous but which interrupt school-work, 
 whose servants somehow are always going away. There 
 is a good deal which one would like to say to such 
 sufferers, of which nothing just at present. The only 
 thing now to be remarked is, that such greatly-worried 
 mortals are, commonly, singularly free from great sorrow. 
 Many years pass over, and there is not a death in the 
 house. And the worst of all the troubles of aging men and 
 women is unknown : the Black Sheep is not in that home. 
 Happily, our lot is not in our own hand : and it is decided 
 for us whether we shall be numbered with the people tried 
 by many lesser troubles, or with those stunned and 
 stricken-down by one greater. You cannot say which lot 
 is the preferable. What is within the breast, the way in 
 which things are taken, by one so lightly, by another so 
 heavily, goes far to equalise the actual sufferance of the 
 lots of human souls here. The weight of all the little 
 things equals that of the one great thing : and the little 
 things are not so well taken. TJiat one has remarked. 
 You are fractious under them, not resigned. You kick 
 against the pricks. There is an end of that when it comes 
 to be a knock-down blow ; or when the weary load is laid 
 on the heart under which you think you must die. 
 
 I have heard one say : and it gave me my present 
 subject : 
 
 ' I have had more times of comparative peace since 
 that great trouble came upon me, than for years before. 
 For it sometimes lifts, lifts for a little while : and then I 
 am quite free from trouble : I have nothing to vex me at 
 
314 THINGS LEFT 
 
 all. The iron hand soon comes down again, indeed. But 
 while it is away, there is peace. And I wonder that I 
 ever allowed little things to vex me as I used to do. They 
 seem so inappreciable now, being compared with that 
 great sorrow. Not only, too, is there peace when the 
 trouble lifts for a little space : through all the long seasons 
 of its worst pressure it delivers me from all lesser cares. 
 Such are always more or less fanciful : and this is so real, 
 that being set beside this, they fade out and disappear. 
 Further : one learns to be thankful for a very little time 
 of ease : takes it and is thankful for it without looking 
 farther on : lives in the present blink of peace without 
 thought of the morrow.' 
 
 Yes, when only one thing is wrong, everything seems 
 right when it ceases for a little to make its presence felt. 
 A glimpse of perfect peace is given. And sometimes you 
 think it worth while to bear all you have borne, for this 
 wonderful glimpse of ease and rest. 
 
 Besides this, too. It may not in fact be only one 
 thing that is wrong. There may be fifteen : all capable ot 
 being reckoned up and written down on a piece of paper. 
 Let it here be said, I always advise people who tell me 
 that everything has gone wrong with them, that their 
 worries are innumerable, to take a good large sheet of 
 foolscap and write out a list of the things which have gone 
 wrong. These good folk will be astonished to find how 
 few the things are, when fairly faced and numbered : like- 
 wise how trumpery some of them look when set down in a 
 legible hand-writing. It is the undefined that cows us. 
 
ONLY ONE 315 
 
 Count up, write out : and it is wonderful how troubles 
 shrink : shrink both in size and in number. But even 
 should you be able to write out a catalogue of fifteen 
 troubles (you will in fact not be able to exceed five, or at 
 most seven), troubles not in themselves quite insignificant 
 will look like nothing when set side by side with a real 
 great sorrow. Like Aaron's rod, it swallows up all the 
 rest. Or, as the poor Scottish widow, on whom successive 
 bereavements fell, said to Dr. Black (minister of the 
 Barony ages since), ' when he died ' (she thus indicated her 
 husband), ' it made such a hole in my heart, that everything 
 else passes lightly through.' The imagery was homely : 
 but it was real and true. Dr. Black was not as Dr. Guthrie, 
 a pathetic genius : yet his voice failed as he said the words 
 to a little party who listened in silence. I fancy that such 
 as survive have quite forgot the occasion. But one of them, 
 who was a young student of divinity, records it after forty 
 years. And he hears, just in this moment, plainly as 
 though present, the voice which has been hushed for more 
 than a generation of men. 
 
 It may be some public concern which has so taken 
 hold of the heart that no room is left for other cares. Let 
 me humbly confess, for most of the human beings I know 
 well, that the heavy weight (where it exists) is of a lowlier 
 and more intimate nature. I am not writing cynically : 
 I have no pretence to do so. Nor am I suggesting mere 
 despicable selfishness : as of Goldsmith's hero who ' did not 
 mind about disappointing other people, but could not bear 
 to disappoint himself.' With good folk well-known to me 
 
3i6 THINGS LEFT 
 
 (and most folk who are well-known to me are good), the 
 great trouble has never been a selfish one : not even when 
 it took the shape of acute bodily pain. ' Don't let the 
 poor creatures see me in one of these bad turns : it breaks 
 their heart.' You have heard a great sufferer say some- 
 thing even as that. But whenever the cross was something 
 other than direct physical agony (and here spare a thought 
 for Robert Hall rolling in silent anguish on the floor, and 
 only saying when the paroxysm was over, ' I don't com- 
 plain, sir : I won't complain : Have I complained ? '), it 
 has always concerned the welfare, in body or soul, of some 
 other, very dear : probably of more than one or two. Who 
 is to care for the children, in an event which the failing 
 heart sometimes suggests as approaching, is much more to 
 some Christian folk than the matter (say) of the restoration 
 of Israel to the Holy Land. But it is certain fact that there 
 have been those who have so given their heart to what 
 they deemed Christ's cause in this world, that everything 
 seemed to have gone wrong when that machinery failed. 
 It is well for us that there have been, and are, souls heroic 
 beyond the common line of humanity. Such, in my ob- 
 servation, have either been lonely men and women, with 
 no domestic ties, with none depending upon them for 
 everything in this life and against the next : or they have 
 been so placed in God's Providence that such as depended on 
 them were fully provided for, I say not without their thought, 
 but certainly without their daily toil. I never in m\' life saw, 
 in actual fact, a case approaching within a thousand miles of 
 the great humourist's picture of the wife and mother so en- 
 
ONLY ONE 
 
 317 
 
 grossed in far-away savages and their welfare, that she abso- 
 lutely forgot the unkempt children and the poor overdriven 
 anxious father in the frowsy house at home. Everything 
 the charming writer could say in condemnation of such a 
 woman (if she ever existed, and perhaps she did some- 
 where) I accept and repeat from the heart. No words of 
 reprobation can be strong enough. But the person depicted 
 (you see) was a fool, a self-conceited fool, not without a 
 dash of the impostor. And she is shown to us as having 
 been encouraged in her heartless and wicked idiotcy by a 
 number of persons as bad as herself There is no public 
 concern whatsoever : not the minister's concern for his 
 parish and congregation, not the statesman's care for the 
 things of the state ; which can justify the neglect of the 
 primary duties of the family and the home. And when 
 these primary duties have been in fact neglected (as they 
 have been), it was not pure zeal for Christ that led to 
 this. It was a fussy, meddling, domineering, self-advertising 
 spirit The misery and mischief came of the presence of 
 an extremely hard heart, coinciding with a total absence 
 of common sense. I could easily name more than one or 
 two leaders of men (energetic and influential leaders too) 
 who, when it came to themselves, and their own public 
 appearances, were absolutely without common sense. This 
 did not come of zeal for the good cause, but of a selfishness 
 so extreme that it was unconscious, and of a preposterously- 
 inflated estimate of that which is called Number One. 
 The notion that people could grow sick of listening to 
 them never once entered their heads. 
 
3i8 THINGS LEFT 
 
 But I turn away from a matter which some day, some- 
 where, shall have a chapter to itself. Forasmuch as it 
 needs one, sorely. And I should write it with feeling. For 
 I have for many years had to be a member of what are 
 called Church-Courts. And words fail to express the 
 moral loathing I have felt for certain continual spouters in 
 them. 
 
 Nor am I now to mention names, though I might. 
 Yet I repeat, one has known men and women, not many, 
 who, righteously, and neglecting no other call, have given 
 themselves to Christ's cause in this world with that devo- 
 tion, that everything was right with them if that cause 
 prospered, and everything was wrong with them if that 
 cause languished. Of course it cannot fail. But, in fact, 
 it may languish, this day or that, here or there. 
 
 It is often a vain illusion that you have discovered 
 your Thorn : the one thing between you and peace, be- 
 tween you and spiritual betterment : and that if it were 
 away, all would be well with you. Indeed it would not 
 be so. A rush of other troubles would fill the vacant space. 
 Troubles which do not now make themselves manifest 
 to your consciousness, would do so then. Perhaps other 
 people see, though you do not, that what you fanc}' )-our 
 Thorn is not your Thorn at all. A man says. If I were 
 placed somewhere else in life : if I had taken another 
 turn on that testing day. No ! In yourself is your great 
 trouble : and you will not get away from yourself here. 
 
319 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THAT PERIODICITY OF SENSATIONS 
 
 Yes : that is the lake which a recent visitor to the Holy 
 Land has declared to be very like the Dead Sea. He had 
 been contradicting the received belief (rendered in won- 
 derful words in Eotheii) that the Dead Sea is a gloomy 
 and awful-looking sheet of water. And it is to be ad- 
 mitted that the famous name was given by people who 
 had never seen the place : and that many visitors have 
 read into the scene the impression derived from an unfor- 
 gotten and awful history. But this writer of these latter 
 days was resolved to see with his own eyes, and to put on 
 record what they showed him. He expected, he tells us, 
 a scene of unequalled horror. Instead of that, he found 
 (upon that day) a bright cheerful lake, edged with 
 strongly-coloured flowers : a pleasant ripple upon its 
 surface. Finally, summing up, he declares that he thought 
 it ' very like Loch Awe,' 
 
 But, just this morning, the beautiful lake wears an 
 aspect not unlike the traditional picture of the Salt Sea. 
 This window is high in a quaint Tower : outside, a large 
 oak-tree is battling with the wind : and beyond, below, 
 spreads the water. A thick mist veils it, and hides the 
 
320 THINGS LEFT 
 
 hills which bound it : the outlook is black, though it be a 
 summer morning. On the right, intensely green, thick 
 wood which no human hand planted up to a great height, 
 and beyond the trees the bare rocky hillside, you may see 
 the first slope of Ben Cruachan. But the wind is moaning 
 in a wintry way. A black squall comes at intervals, with 
 sickly sunshine between : and looking towards the loch, 
 three hundred feet below, all is gloom. An expedition of 
 a modest character which had been planned must be given 
 up. And so there are time and place for these lines. 
 They were suggested by certain words uttered in this 
 chamber by a friend, which though uttered in my presence 
 were not addressed to mc. I need not tell any reader 
 whence I derived my title. The passage is classical. All 
 the same, when I quoted a line from George Eliot the 
 other day, somebody told me that it was painful to hear 
 any of her words repeated. I cannot in any way bring 
 myself to like the woman. But of her genius, specially at 
 the outset of her short career, it seems as though there can 
 be no question. 
 
 He was looking out, the friend in question, on a July 
 morning from the same window, upon a scene of lake and 
 mountain which cannot be easily surpassed in this world. 
 It was blazing summer : the world looked quite fit to be 
 Paradise, were but evil away. He had finished writing 
 his letters ; which in these days it is to some a vcr>' 
 burdensome task to do : and he had enquired when the 
 next Post came in. He was told, Not till next morning. 
 Whereupon I heard him say, looking down upon the lake, 
 
THAT PERIODICITY OF SENSATIONS 321 
 
 and speaking to himself, ' Then nothing can come for a 
 good many hours.' It was plain he meant, nothing 
 worrying : nothing trying : nothing painful. One thought, 
 recognising a familiar experience. That is the way in 
 which many folk now think of post-time. George Eliot's 
 words come into memory : ' that periodicity of sensations 
 called post-time.' It is the time at which, from the 
 outer world, trouble and sorrow may enter into the quiet 
 home. The door is no longer shut in the face of the 
 wolf: it is of necessity opened for a little space. And 
 indeed the letter-box, always ready to receive, may give 
 admittance to God knows what shock. We hear, only 
 too quickly, how it is faring, all round this world, with 
 all we care for : with the scattered members of the little 
 household that grew up side by side. But no news is 
 good news. Oftentimes it is a great comfort when there is 
 ' nothing by post.' Not so very often can that comfort be. 
 People * write their letters ' now, as they did not long 
 ago. It is a serious matter, at the beginning of each day 
 in the holiday-time : and at a later period on a day of the 
 usual work. For, notably, those whose business it is to 
 write, know better than to exhaust their fresh energy 
 upon their letters. The task which awaits one may be far 
 t^hort of Sir Walter's : but it may lie as heavily on the 
 iiiodest faculty which is also far short of the greatest 
 Scotsman's : and it has to be done first. Chalmers, 
 to the last, would have no day without a line. It may 
 come of long habit : but there are those to whom the 
 day seems to have been lost if it have not left some 
 
 Y 
 
322 
 
 THINGS LEFT 
 
 abiding trace on the written page. One has known hard 
 students who began very early, began before twenty, 
 to note on the homely record of their own history as 
 something very exceptional the occasion on which, as 
 Wordsworth put it, * this one day, We give to idleness.' 
 But, whensoever it be, it is an appreciable part of the day 
 of most educated men and women, the writing of the 
 many communications which keep up the tie to those who 
 are absent, those who have gone away. Some, I know, 
 specially like a friend who never writes to them when he 
 can help it. Doubtless there are those whose letters are 
 always pleasant and cheering to get : but these are few. 
 Evil news must be conveyed : if trouble comes, it is need- 
 ful that we should hear of it. But some folk appear to 
 have the unhappy luck of perpetually conveying painful 
 tidings. And there are coarse-grained souls who will quite 
 gratuitously convey such though there be no call whatso- 
 ever upon them so to do. They seem to think it makes 
 them of consequence. And in a sense it does. A person 
 whose ways you dislike, and in a measure dread, you do 
 not in any case forget. Of course, you and I, my reader, 
 would not desire to be remembered in that fashion. When 
 the great heap of letters and papers which the chief post 
 of the day brings is carried into your room by a careful 
 hand, you have but to recognise the handwriting on one or 
 two to resolve that these shall be opened last. It is not 
 commonly malice or evil intention of which these things 
 come : it is thickness of skin, it is lack of sympathy, it is 
 a tincture of brutality. 
 
THAT PERIODICITY OF SENSATIONS 
 
 323 
 
 Thus it is that to some, not business folk, a London 
 Sunday is restful. No letters can come. Thus it is that 
 some, learning that an additional delivery in the day has 
 been added by a well-meaning post-office, merely think 
 that here is another door whereby trouble may enter in. 
 Sydney Smith liked to have ' letters dropping in all day,' 
 Others would rather have it once in the twenty-four hours. 
 One can, in these latter days, understand a friend's days 
 of blessed peace, going to America in an ocean racer, 
 quivering the whole time from stem to stern, as it tears 
 through the Atlantic at twenty-seven miles an hour. But 
 the fact of no letters being possible for six days makes 
 up for all. He would give up the pleasant ones, to be 
 sure of escaping the painful. 
 
 There was a year in the present writer's life in 
 which it took on an average three hours daily to answer 
 his letters. This was done in the very fewest words : and 
 with never an apology for brevity. TJiat would merely 
 have been another sentence for the weary hand to write. 
 Once, having been away from Friday morning till Mon- 
 day evening, it took just seven hours on Tuesday, straight 
 on end, as hard as pen could be driven, to work through 
 the dismal task. Think of the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 having the like on most da}-s of his life : and never envy 
 him his elevation. No doubt, he has help which ordinary 
 folk have not. And you have sad views of the terrible 
 inconsideration of many people. Scores will write to you, 
 asking a question the answer to which may easily be 
 found in a Directory, or Gazetteer, or Biographical Die- 
 
324 THINGS LEFT 
 
 tionary, or Ycar-Book. Scores will propose questions 
 which it would take four close pages to reply to. ' Tell me 
 all about ' some Institution, or complicated and debated 
 question : is a quite common request. Absolute declina- 
 ture is the only thing. There are people on whom exces- 
 sive courtesy is quite thrown away. ' I send you the 
 manuscript of a book : Please arrange for its publication 
 by an eminent House: I like Longmans, or Blackwoods : 
 and send me the payment for it.' Along with this (from 
 a total stranger) a great mass of written paper from 
 Australia, the postage mainly unpaid. This may occur 
 ten times in five years. One has a certain s>-mpathy with 
 anybody who has covered hundreds of pages with closely- 
 written lines. But one's own eyes and hours must be con- 
 sidered. Do not open the packet. Send it straight back, 
 having fully paid the postage : and send a brief letter, 
 regretting that the thing is quite out of your power. 
 
 Now let me beg my friendly reader to suffer some 
 words of counsel. They found upon much experience. 
 
 Always write a pleasant letter when you can : just as 
 you would always say a kind word when you can. ' Man 
 does not live by bread alone ' : the kind word, spoken or 
 written, may greatly cheer, may give new heart. I am 
 not going to get into controversy : or I might tell you 
 the last explanation of critical science of the famous text 
 whose first words 1 have quoted. When I was a }'oung 
 minister, toiling hard and living a lonel}- life, I remember 
 well how an old clergyman, a humourist, wrote asking a 
 sermon : and ended his brief letter by saying, ' I know 
 
THAT PERIODICITY OF SENSATIONS 325 
 
 you are having a busy time of it, and I thought a Httlc 
 light amusing reading would be a great refreshment.' It 
 was not much : but it was felt as kind. I see the lines 
 yet, over eight-and-thirty years. 
 
 When you hear anything to a friend's advantage, write 
 and tell him of it. Do not be afraid that he may get too 
 much encouragement of that kind. A great many of his 
 acquaintances would keep dead silence upon such a matter, 
 'for fear it might make him conceited.' Considerate souls! 
 
 Children, away from home, see you write home at least 
 on each Sunday. There is no better fashion of spending 
 some portion of the holy day. I am thankful, when I 
 think how some things have changed for the better within 
 my own little career. Dr. Arnold, you may remember, 
 advised the Rugby boys to write to their mothers each 
 Sunday. It comes back on me vividly how a really good 
 woman, of a grim type of piety happily passed away, said 
 to me (a youth) in a threatening tone which I quite under- 
 stood, ' Most awful ! Telling boys to break the Sabbath.' 
 The minacious words prevented my speaking. They did 
 not prevent my thinking : thinking exactly as I think to- 
 day. 
 
 Let each reader of this page try to make post-time, on 
 each day that dawns, as pleasant to some one friend as it 
 may be in this anxious world. Thus a good deal may be 
 done towards increasing the modest happiness which God 
 thinks good for us in this present life. Suffer the writer 
 to say, thankfully, that the most cheering things which 
 have ever come to him have come by post. Such have 
 
326 THINGS LEFT 
 
 given encouragement when it was much needed : and not 
 a few have come, even in this reticent country, from homely 
 and tried readers of a little parish magazine which is widely 
 read. There is the other way too. For thirty years, a 
 correspondent, declaring himself a clergyman of the Church 
 of England, has sent frequent anonymous letters, all of a 
 singularly uncomplimentary kind. That is bad, but worse 
 remains : each letter cost me twopence. One came yes- 
 terday. Some have been twelve pages in length. I never 
 minded the man's abuse, in any degree. Perhaps it was 
 more tolerable, for that it was rarely personal. It might 
 be called official. For the matter mainly cast, with great 
 virulence, in the present writer's face, was that he is a 
 minister of the Church of Scotland. That statement is 
 absolutely true. May never worse be said of him ! Still, 
 let me earnestly charge any reader who will care for my 
 advice, never on any account to write an abusive letter 
 to one only known by his public work. I take for granted 
 that no reader of this page will ever send an anonymous 
 letter. That is, a malicious anonymous letter. For many 
 letters come which are so kind, so sympathetic, so thankful 
 for some little help rendered, that one would earnestly wish 
 to know who wrote them ; so that one might acknowledge 
 them with a full heart. 
 
 Do my brothers in the sacred office now and then re- 
 ceive a letter asking, ' How do you write your sermons ? 
 Your essays? How did you form your style? How do 
 you prepare the sermons which you preach without writing 
 them ? How, generally, do you get through all your 
 
THAT PERIODICITY OF SENSATIONS it-j 
 
 work ? ' The usual request is for a good long answer, for 
 publication in some pushing periodical. I know not how 
 others may reply to such interrogations. But I know some 
 who would be exceedingly ashamed that such private de- 
 tails concerning them should be made known. The proper 
 answer seems to me, / could not tell you if I ivould. I 
 would not tell you if I could. 
 
328 THINGS LEFT 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 READ AFTER A GENERATION 
 
 It was in the Life of Chalmers that I first saw the title ; 
 and it struck me. I knew nothing earthly about the 
 writer of the book being called by many folk TJie Heavenly. 
 I should not have minded much though I had known the 
 fact. For indeed I did know that very dreary Doctors 
 of the age of the Syllogistic Logic (pre-Baconian) had 
 been commonly styled TJie Aftgelic, The SerapJiic, The 
 Mellifluojis : and I hated them all the same. But I noted 
 that the great preacher, on a weary voyage (I presume 
 that is the word) in a canal-boat, was intently reading : 
 and after a space, in his usual energetic fashion, he turned 
 to some one he knew, and spoke warmly in commendation 
 of the volume on which he had so pored. I wonder what 
 percentage of those who may cast an eye on this page 
 ever heard of it. It was Sibbes' SouVs Conflict. 
 
 So I bought the book ; which, now faded and old (for 
 it is in cloth binding with a paper label on the back), is 
 here on this table. On the fly-leaf there is written a name 
 which is neither here nor there : and the inscription goes 
 on, Newton-on-Ayr : 5 Sept. 1853. I looked into it: 
 but found it extremely dull : though three pretty verses of 
 
READ AFTER A GENERATION 329 
 
 Francis Quarles praise it highly : also eight verses in Latin 
 which I never read. Often, often, through these years 
 which have flown, I looked with a certain remorse at the 
 back of the volume standing on a shelf pretty high. The 
 title, printed as it is in black on white, had ever a weird 
 and eerie look. And whatever has the smallest flavour of 
 duty, being postponed, becomes a terrible thing. Where- 
 fore on Monday, September 5, 1892, after thirty-nine years, 
 I began diligently and earnestly, with purpose not of criti- 
 cism but of edification, to read the famous Soul's Conjlict. 
 The beautiful Chiswick printing makes an attractive page. 
 But the way to get fairly entered on many a valuable work 
 is to set one's self so many pages a day : to be read as a 
 task if need be. Was this the book once esteemed as dull ? 
 One understood it quite differently now. One was caught, 
 and held ; like Chalmers long ago. And I desire to say a 
 word, commending these pages to tried and anxious folk. 
 For they are wonderfully wise and helpful. And the thing 
 we want, and must have, in these latter days, is helpfulness. 
 Never listen to a sermon : never read a religious book : 
 unless you find they help you. Of course you are quite 
 aware that what does not help you may help somebody 
 else : we, diverse creatures, crave diverse things. But }ou, 
 pilgrim a little weary, know what suits yourself Most of 
 us, I fancy, have always a little book of practical devotion 
 in which we read a brief portion each morning. Read 
 your few daily lines as you begin the day : think over 
 them : and make them the subject of a word of prayer. 
 You will discover that for this serious use the author you 
 
330 THINGS LEFT 
 
 want must be a very sincere good man. If he be bright, if 
 he be able, if you feel his strength, insight, and depth : 
 then so much the better. It seems to me that all these 
 pleasant characteristics are to be found in The Heavenly 
 Doctor Richard Sibbes : who dated his preface from Gray's 
 Inn in London on July i, 1635, feeling that he was dying : 
 and who passed to his rest on Sunday, July 5, having lived 
 only fifty-seven years. He had been Preacher at Gray's 
 Inn Chapel, to a little congregation of lawyers, some of 
 them very eminent : also Master of St. Catherine's Hall in 
 the University of Cambridge. He died in his chambers at 
 Gray's Inn : and was buried the next day in the church- 
 yard of St. Andrew's, Holborn ; once seen of the present 
 writer upon every day of his life. He had preached twice 
 the Sunday before he died. His text both times was, ' In 
 My Father's house are many mansions : if it were not so, 
 I would have told you.' Just once I went on a Sunday 
 evening to that church. The preacher was Dr. Vaughan, 
 Master of the Temple : who might have been anything. 
 And a touching thing : he preached from Doctor Sibbes' 
 last text : not thinking, I fancy, who was lying at rest 
 hard by. 
 
 But I am neither going to tell Sibbes' story, nor to 
 review his book. My purpose is to commend to some 
 readers what may by God's blessing do them good. The 
 volume is made up of material originally preached in the 
 form of sermons. The facts are singular. Doctor Sibbes 
 was taken hold of by a certain text of Holy Scripture : 
 and he preached from it (he tells us) more or less for twelve 
 
READ AFTER A GENERATION 331 
 
 years : the last twelve years of his life. Both preachers 
 and hearers are much changed since the days when such a 
 thing could be. One can gather the kind of man he was, 
 from the kind of help he offers to others. I am quite sure 
 he felt he needed what he desired to give. He takes the 
 text from Psalm xlii. ii, ' Why art thou cast down, O my 
 soul .-* and why art thou disquieted within me .'' hope thou 
 in God ; for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of 
 my countenance, and my God.' No reader need be told 
 that the same words, precisely, make the last verse of 
 Psalm xliii. And many people, loving the old ways of the 
 Kirk, would rather have taken them as they stand there. 
 There are not many things better remembered by some of 
 us, than how, before changes came in, the church service 
 used continually to begin with O send Thy light forth and 
 Thy trutJi ; let them be guides to me. I really do not think 
 it could possibly have begun better. And the Englishman, 
 Francis Rous, who never saw Scotland, but whose metrical 
 translation of the Psalter is regarded by many, both North 
 and South of the Tweed, as The Scotch Psalms, never ren- 
 dered any verses more worthily. Perhaps we should except 
 the unrivalled hundred-and-twenty-first Psalm, Long, 
 long ago, when I was a little boy, how vividly I remember 
 an English schoolmaster of great eminence saying to me, 
 as he turned over my Scotch Bible in a London classroom, 
 ' Ah, you have the Scotch Psalms.' Then, rather contemp- 
 tuously, he read the well-known words, ' more plain, 
 smooth, and agreeable to the text, than any heretofore.' 
 And he proceeded : * I once heard the great Doctor Irving 
 
332 THINGS LEFT 
 
 trying to read the Scotch Psalms beautifully : but it would 
 not do. They are very rough and queer.' Such were the 
 incidents which vexed a poor little Scot at an English pub- 
 lic school, long ago. The underlying principle, expressed 
 as an axiom, was this : ' Everything Scotch, in so far as it 
 differs from anything English, is wrong and bad.' Which 
 is a bit of Provincialism. 
 
 Very many readers will understand why such a text 
 was taken to give the tone to all the instruction of twelve 
 anxious years. Many will understand, too, how a young 
 preacher of twenty-seven years in this world utterly failed 
 to duly value what came home in a wonderful manner, 
 after thirty-nine years' longer experience of church and 
 life. Many times, very many, knowing nothing of Sibbes, 
 the humble writer has sought to grapple with the strange 
 facts, outward and inward, suggested in the two famous 
 Psalms. And perhaps Cowper, in one of his Olney Hymns, 
 gives in brief the substance of many pages of the Soi//'s 
 Conflict — 
 
 Trials make the promise sweet, 
 Trials give new life to prayer ; 
 
 Trials Ijring me to His feet. 
 
 Lay me low, and keep me there. 
 
 If ever Christian experience was put in words, you have 
 it in these last three lines. You know that well, my 
 reader. You were getting self-confident : you were vaguely 
 thinking you could stand alone. But the heavy stroke 
 fell : the stroke fell, less heavily, but regularly as the day 
 came. And you found Cowper was right : soberly right. 
 
READ AFTER A GENERATION 333 
 
 You would die, but for prayer, in great trouble. And you 
 go to the throne of grace, without ceasing, and everywhere, 
 under that which is less killing, but which occurs perpetu- 
 ally : which leaves you not at all. 
 
 If one could be critical, humbly as a child reading this 
 book, one might remark some characteristics of the saintly 
 writer. There is very frequent use of what ought not to 
 stand on any page claiming to be literature ; I mean the 
 awkward * &c.' I wonder if the Doctor said it, in preach- 
 ing : ' reputation, riches, &c.' Just once, in my life, did I 
 hear a preacher use the phrase : it was at Dumfries, five- 
 and-thirty years ago. I was a self-sufficient Saturday Re- 
 viewer : and I (inwardly) condemned it bitterly. Then 
 texts of scripture are habitually cut short, after a few 
 words, with the hateful ' &c.' I never knew any other do 
 this, save the wonderfully bright Dr. Robert Lee. Worse 
 still, Sibbes quotes texts, habitually, in a fashion by no 
 means accurate. The slightest verbal error is to some 
 readers most painful. But Sibbes frequently gives a text 
 just a little twist in the direction of his own special view. 
 And rarely, but sometimes of a surety, he puts two texts 
 together, in an unfair way : so as to make them convey a 
 meaning which the Blessed Spirit did not intend. Now 
 this last must be condemned : though it be done by The 
 Heavenly Doctor Richard Sibbes. 
 
 But let us get away from such. Here is a book, not to 
 sit down and read, but to kneel down and use. And oh, 
 the sharp clear bits of intuition into truth : and the discern- 
 ment of your nature and mine. These things are startling. 
 
334 THINGS LEFT 
 
 You will find that the writer of such pages knew you per- 
 haps better than you knew yourself. Ay, Richard Sibbes, 
 who departed from Gray's Inn (how familiar to me) on 
 that Sunday in July 1635, knew, in a somewhat awful 
 fashion, what the present writer was to feel, and to find 
 out, between September 1853 and September 1892. 
 Let us part from him with the lines of Ouarles — 
 
 Let me stand silent then. O may that Spirit, 
 Which led thine hand, direct mine eye, my breast : 
 That I may read, and do : and so inherit 
 (What thou enjoy'st and taught'st) eternal rest. 
 
335 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 NOT FOR US AT ALL 
 
 There are humble writers who like to see before them in 
 their mind's eye the souls they are addressing. A saintly 
 man who as yesterday (though twenty-eight years since) 
 entered into his rest, often told me that he had always the 
 congregation before him when he was writing his sermon. 
 I fancy it is even so with many who are not saintly at all, 
 but queer-tempered and troublesome to live with. 
 
 I take up my pen on this spring morning with the 
 palms of Ayrshire on the table beside me because a dear 
 friend asking me to do so set before me a picture which 
 got straight to my heart. The catkins of the willow were 
 never called anything but palms : a touching survival of 
 an old way, gone. I am thinking of a Sunday towards 
 the end of April or the beginning of May : and quite in 
 the quiet country. We have come home from church : the 
 plain country church I knew as a little boy. I look at 
 Winchester Cathedral with calm admiration : but I see the 
 little kirk of Kyle through a certain mist that hallows it. 
 And I have got up and looked at the picture on the wall 
 of a beautiful church, modest in its size but not easily 
 rivalled for situation : the great trees round it, the grand 
 
336 THINGS LEFT 
 
 purple hill looking down on it, the sweet river murmuring 
 by, crystal-clear : the green grave where the brave heart 
 of Jeanie Deans mouldered into dust. It once was mine : 
 but that is a generation ago. 
 
 Let us trust that the services have been hearty and 
 helpful. And now, resting by the Sunday fireside, let me 
 have my word with my unknown friends. I sec, plainly, 
 the quiet, sagacious, anxious faces I used to know. Surely 
 this Sabbath-rest is pleasant : there is not much of it on 
 working days. Pleasant, too, is the lengthening light : 
 pleasant the April green. I have seen great geans arrayed 
 like angels, clouds of white soft fragrance, on a never- 
 forgotten April Sunday : the day on which I bade that 
 sweet place farewell. 
 
 Do you not find it strangely interesting to look at a 
 human being placed as you and I can never be ? A 
 human being who (by God's election) is set in high place, 
 is gifted with great wealth, is put in some quite excep- 
 tional position ? The man may be a very ordinary man : 
 but the place he holds is extraordinary. We like to look 
 at him. There is not the shade of envy ; we never even 
 ourselves to anything like that. But there is a singular 
 curiosity. We wonder how he takes it. Does he think 
 that he deserves all he has got "} Docs he fanc}- it is all 
 to go to his own enjoyment, his own exaltation amid our 
 race ? Does he feel it an awful trust : the ten talents to 
 be applied for God's glory and man's good ? 
 
 Always hi the enjoy vient of ample means. 
 
 A good friend three times said to me that these words, 
 
NOT FOR US AT ALL 337 
 
 quietly said in a printed memoir, appeared to provoke me. 
 Indeed it was not so. But I was deeply interested. Here 
 indeed is something strange. 
 
 I will not say who wrote these words. A good many 
 readers know at once. A good man, writing a memoir of 
 his wife. It was his wife and he who were so singularly 
 well-off. A Scotsman. The son of an Elder of the Kirk : 
 the brother of two Elders, He rose so high, that he could 
 not rise any higher. Big people went down almost on 
 their knees, when they were introduced to him : I mean 
 duchesses and the like. I have seen them : but I did not 
 myself go down on my knees. The most arrogant of 
 Prime Ministers, the great Lord Chatham, bowed so low 
 to men in that Scotsman's place, that his nose could be 
 seen between his knees : and never looked more arrogant 
 than in so doing. That overdone reverence was meant to 
 say, See how very great I am ! It was exactly as when 
 Popes and Emperors used to wash the feet of pilgrims on 
 a certain day in the year. There was no humility. Never 
 were those dignitaries more stuck-up. When our Blessed 
 Saviour washed the Apostles' feet, it was a real thing : a 
 lowly work. The Pope touches with a damp towel a few 
 feet already as clean as may be. Which is a sham. Which 
 is pride aping humility. And some of us have been told, 
 by a great genius, who it is that likes that. 
 
 I confess, looking back upon that paragraph, that it 
 appears as probably unjust, and certainly uncharitable. I 
 have no acquaintance with Emperors, and know not their 
 ways : in this respect sharply differentiated from my 
 
 z 
 
338 THINGS LEFT 
 
 slight acquaintance Professor Snobbc, who remarked that 
 somebody or other was ' quite the nicest Emperor he had 
 ever known.' But it is known even to humble folk, that 
 the Pope has in later times been a good sincere man, who 
 went through this function in all seriousness. How 
 Stanley would have enjoyed doing it ! And it would 
 have been done in entire simplicity. Some of us, who 
 live in Scotland, have been constrained to set our signa- 
 ture to a statement concerning the Pope, very much to his 
 disadvantage. Yet I cannot but state that a relation of 
 my own, brought up in a region where enough evil could 
 not be said of His Holiness, declared, after a private inter- 
 view, that the ' Man of Sin ' and ' Son of Perdition ' was 
 quite the most delightful old gentleman she had ever con- 
 versed with. 
 
 But now to look at the worldly condition indicated 
 when the unnamed Scotsman states, in an indifferent 
 manner, as though naming something that came of course, 
 that he and his wife were always in the enjoyment of 
 ample means. Surely here is something exceptional. 
 Here is a very strange experience. I know that most of 
 us, my unknown friends, when v/e look at that sentence, 
 say to ourselves something to the effect, Ho%v unlike vie I 
 
 In that case, worldly wealth was balanced by heavy 
 sorrows ; and by a continual weight of care. I knew the 
 man : knew him a little. Not often have I seen a sadder 
 face. It was sad in thoughtful repose : sad when he 
 smiled, though with a sweet smile. His elevation pleased 
 him in a way. But it did not make him happ}\ And I 
 
NOT FOR US AT ALL 339 
 
 am perfectly sure that it brought no Hghtcning of licart 
 when the big folk made as though they were to go down 
 on their knees. 
 
 I put the dignity aside : I think only of that anii)le 
 income so quietly named. It will never be so with any of 
 us. Rather let it be said, It has never been so with us. 
 For with many of us, we have begun to speak of ourselves 
 as past. In any case, far more of the pilgrimage lies 
 behind than can by any possibility lie before. A}% even 
 though the average duration of human life is lengthening. 
 A very great man said to me, last week, / am Half- IVajy : 
 1 am Forty-Five. But, looking at the good face, where 
 was not a trace of self-conceit where many heads would 
 have been turned, one could but answer, AJi, Thirty-Five 
 is Half- Way. That is, if a memorable statement of Moses 
 be true. That statement docs not make mention of Four- 
 score years and ten. 
 
 Akvays in the environment of narroiv means. Always 
 anxious about making the ends meet. Many wise sayings 
 have I heard from the sweet-natured Professor Baynes of 
 St. Andrews : none better remembered than when he said, 
 with a patient face. That is the tragedy of modern life. 
 And surely the common lot of men and women. I never 
 knew more touching stories than some I know, concerning 
 the heavy anxiety of good hearts about very little amounts 
 of money. Just go and read John Brown's pathetic chapter 
 called Her Last HalfCroivn. A man who lived to grow 
 rich said to me, more than once or twice, ' For man)- a 
 year I had to look at both sides of a shilling before I spent 
 
340 THINGS LEFT 
 
 it.' I see a worn old face that looks at me intently : I 
 hear the true story of how little there was to buy the 
 precious necessaries of life. I hear a voice making a 
 speech at a little gathering : one of the cleverest speeches 
 I ever heard, and the most touching. He was ' a working 
 man/ — like the Divine Master of us all. It is nearly thirty 
 years since : but a hush fell when that clever man said, 
 ' I was one of eight children who were — I'll not say fed 
 and clothed, but I'll say reared, on fifteen shillings a week.' 
 It is in my cars now. Principal Tulloch sat beside me as 
 it was said. He turned his large eyes on me and said, 
 ' That's tragic' Ay, that was real tragedy. And one 
 thought of the care-worn mother, God bless her, toiling to 
 send out her little boys and girls neat to school : of her 
 nimble fingers and the weight on her heart : and thought, 
 ' How, if sickness comes ? How, if accident ? ' Let one 
 who lives among such, habitually, say, I never knew braver 
 heroines than the brave wife of many a working man : 
 never knew lives lived at a higher level of true devotion. 
 Tenderly, continually, with sympathy beyond words, will 
 the Saviour I believe in look down on such a woman. 
 She may not be the regulation saint : as she runs about 
 her endless and countless little tasks of dut}-. But she 
 lives and dies for others : as He did Himself! 
 
 I am not going to talk in grandiloquent phrase, about 
 narrow means circumscribing ambitions and achievements, 
 and abating fires. That is unreal for such-like mortals as 
 I know. But I say : Fancy, a person who when he wishes 
 anything in reason, never has to think, Can I afford it or 
 
NOT FOR US AT ALL 341 
 
 no? Never has to look wistfully at a book; or a little 
 bit of carved oak : nor to think of a brief holiday hundreds 
 of miles off, whence one could come back and take up the 
 task with fresh life : and then to shake a meditative head, 
 and say It can't be. Even this is too grand. Can I forget 
 how when I was a boy an old St. Andrews student who 
 had got on in this world said to me, ' When I had walked 
 all the way from far in Perthshire to within a iow miles of 
 St. Andrews, and was terribly weary, how eagerly I looked 
 at the Dundee coach as it overtook me, and wished I could 
 afford a place in it ! ' Sometimes a kind coachman would 
 give a footsore lad a lift for nothing. A man in the high- 
 est place in a great community once said to me, ' When I 
 first went to that city, I could afford to have dinner only 
 three days a week.' It was in a stately apartment he said 
 the words, seated at a sumptuous table. It touches, when 
 little Richard Bethell tells how he drove back home with 
 his poor overworked father, after a blow had fallen which 
 quite crushed ; and heard his father say to himself, ' Wc 
 are ruined: destitute': and tried to point out the blossom- 
 ing hedges to divert the attention of the bruised man. 
 Then the poor father died : and after not many years 
 Richard was earning twenty-five thousand a year at the 
 Bar. If ever so little of that could have been given, on 
 that miserable day ! 
 
 Did you ever know, good friend, what it is to spend 
 money quite freely, and with no anxious thought at all ; 
 like that husband and wife now resting side by side under 
 the green turf with a granite cross above them ; who in 
 
342 THINGS LEFT 
 
 this life were ' always in the enjoyment of ample means ' ? 
 I trow not. We never have known that. And we never 
 can. The calculation was always present, more or less 
 anxious. Commonly more. Few things fill me with such 
 wrath as when I have heard people badgered to gi\-e 
 money to causes how excellent soever : money which I 
 knew they had not to give. That is, unless by practising 
 a bitter self-denial (for themselves and their children) 
 which the smug and podgy beings who badgered them 
 never practised. I am not going to say here what I think 
 of some falsetto appeals I have recently read. But I will 
 say elsewhere, just as incisively as I can, what I think both 
 of the appeals and of the souls that make them. Nor can 
 I fully understand why these souls inhabit such unwhole- 
 some-looking bodies. Nor why men, eager to ' deepen the 
 spiritual life,' are sometimes so forgetful of the primary 
 Decalogue as to put about spiteful lies, when they think 
 they are not to be found out. 
 
 And how patiently, and unmurmuringly, as a rule, do 
 pinched and anxious folk look at those whom it has pleased 
 God to greatly favour in the respect of earthly comfort and 
 luxury! It always strikes me as touching: as wonderful. 
 We look at our fellow-mortals who live in superabundant 
 comfort, who live in extravagant luxury: and merely think. 
 That is not for us at all. We never even ourselves to 
 such a lot. No more than when one was a little boy, and 
 the great man of the neighbourhood drove by with four 
 i\orses and two outriders, one ever dreamt of being con- 
 veyed in that majestic conveyance. And indeed, for adl 
 
NOT FOR US AT ALL 343 
 
 our great poet wrote, he was not ' a haughty lordling ' ; he 
 was a modest and conscientious man, faithfully desiring to 
 do his duty. No doubt, too, to ' maintain his position.' 
 To that end were those six steeds turned out, when he 
 took his journeys abroad. Things are simpler now : and 
 they are better. Ostentation is rightly condemned. And 
 it is eminently unwise to violently mark the difference 
 between rich and poor. The poor are not to cease. The 
 rich are not to obtrude the fact how rich they are. They 
 are to show it only by doing so much good : good beyond 
 the reach of ordinary folk. And, God be thanked, this is 
 exactly what very many of them do. Yet we may take 
 example, in this matter, from the United States. Compare 
 the ancient Universities of Scotland with the magnifi- 
 cently-equipped Colleges which are so many beyond the 
 Atlantic. 
 
 We have not murmured at the awful difference set 
 between human beings by God's permission : and we will 
 not murmur. We have not envied those more favoured : 
 and we will not do so. Great wealth is an awful tempta- 
 tion. There are instances in everybody's mind : instances 
 of utter moral wreck and ruin. Less familiar is the certain 
 fact of experience, that when every real and fanciful want 
 is supplied, cravings take possession of the soul which, 
 when they are not vile and unnatural, are sometimes insane 
 and idiotic. He was a duke, of unlimited wealth, and with 
 all this world could yield him, who, looking from his win- 
 dows on one of the most beautiful reaches of the beautiful 
 Thames, could but wish it would run dry. ' What a lovely 
 
344 THINGS LEFT 
 
 spot this is,' somebody one day said to him. He was a 
 bad man, as well as an unwise one : and his only answer, 
 given with an awful look of misery, was, ' Oh that weari- 
 some river ! always running, running, and never will run 
 away ! ' Wc lowly folk are absolutely free from the risk 
 of anything like that. We may pray, thinking of children 
 and of selves, as that man never did, ' Give us this day our 
 daily bread ' : but when we have earned it, we are fairly 
 content. There is a sure promise which says, ' They shall 
 hunger no more, neither thirst any more ' : of which the 
 man by the Thames at Richmond did not even understand 
 the meaning. Healthier for soul and body : better by far 
 in divers ways : is the lot of such as live by the sweat of 
 the brow or the wear of the brain. And a petition has 
 been dictated to us which runs, ' Lead us not into tempta- 
 tion.' 
 
 The enjoyment, too, of the snug little fireside, so scru- 
 pulously tidy, is great. I was a lad at College when I 
 heard the words amid the pastoral hills of Dumfriesshire 
 one Autumn afternoon : they were said by a shepherd who 
 with his little household led a lonely life, five miles from 
 any neighbour. ' When I come in from the hill at even- 
 ing, and have my supper, and sit down by the fire with 
 Chambers's Jourtial to read, I don't envy the Duke at 
 Drumlanrig.' Wise, indeed. But God's grace, besides, 
 had helped that good Christian man. 
 
 On the other hand, it is not many days since one whom 
 many would reckon among the most favoured of the race 
 said to mc, in the simplest manner, ' I am everlastingly on 
 
NOT FOR US AT ALL 345 
 
 the tramp.' He had so many fine houses that he had no 
 home at all. ' We never can stay anywhere so much as 
 six weeks, but my wife says to me, Oh, must we be pulled 
 up by the roots again ? ' And the word fireside is not 
 quite applicable to those stately halls. ' Sit thee by the 
 ingle,' as Keats sang : we who have our one fireside ; and 
 how old and dear memories have gathered round it : sad 
 and joyful : but all touching us to the heart as we look 
 back ! And never in this world were blossoming trees so 
 sweet and fragrant as in a little manse garden 1 knew. 
 Weary, weary, is the grand place with its interminable 
 ribbon borders, with its acres of glass, with its thirty miles 
 of walks. Give us the homelike cottage garden, where you 
 know familiarly all the roses, all the honeysuckle : where 
 you sit under what in this western world is in the place of 
 your own fig-tree : having just the one, and knowing the 
 very wrinkles of its bark. 
 
 Yes, we are content : though grand things are not for 
 us at all. We do not want them. They would fluster us. 
 We know Who put us here : His will be done. And here 
 we can ' abide with God.' We know who listened most 
 willingly to the Saviour, when He was here. We know 
 what lot He chose for his own. As the good Kate Han- 
 key says, in a verse not so well known as many others she 
 has written : ' His path in life was lowly : He was a 
 " Working Man " : Who knows the poor man's trials, So 
 well as Jesus can ? ' And I will not believe that any 
 privilege which can fall only to the lot of a very few, can 
 be really needful or even helpful to any. As Mr. Conder 
 
346 THLXGS LEFT 
 
 wrote, long ago, ' As much have I of worldly good, As e'er 
 my IMaster had.' And it vexes me not, though one here 
 and there is far better off than was Christ We look for 
 nothing other than what we have known. One has heard 
 idiotic sayings to the effect, ' We can't always go on in this 
 way.' Which were ominous of something worse. Rather 
 one thinks with reverence of the cheerful pilgrim of three- 
 score and ten who told Sir Walter, contentedly, that she 
 was ' an old struggler ' : and would be such to the end. I 
 think of the true genius beyond the Atlantic who wrote, 
 * Not much for a man to be leavin' :— but his all, as I've 
 heard the folks say.' So it was a good deal for him. 
 
 The words make one glance off in another direction. 
 Some one I know one day entered a kindly little dwelling: 
 looking rather weary. A good face looked at him : and a 
 soft voice said, ' You must not take it quite so hard.' 
 There was a pause : and then the voice went on : ' You 
 would be a much-missed man.' 
 
 The contingency was not expressed. But it was un- 
 derstood, perfectly. 
 
347 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THAT SUNDAY MORNING 
 
 It is a day of special haste and worry. I have been 
 driven hard with many things all the morning : and now 
 it is noon. One is getting flustered : and one's hand 
 shakes. It comes to one, vividly, how Archbishop Tait, 
 on an anxious morning, wrote, ' I will take an hour of 
 prayer.' What the occasion was, you may read in his 
 Life. Further : though he had come to an awful turning- 
 point, his mind was made up. He was not to pray to be 
 guided. Only to be calmed. Now, for just an hour, I 
 purpose to seek some soothing in writing these lines for 
 many unknown friends. The Psalmist said, long ago, 
 ' Return unto thy rest, O my soul.' People have divers 
 ways of resting. 
 
 I close my eyes for just a minute : the time it takes 
 to say the Lord's Prayer. And I see, vividly as reality, a 
 scene left but a few days behind me. 
 
 I see a great square tower, of white stone, rising above 
 the terrace wall. I see it against the green country-side 
 beyond the valley. A little red town lies amid green 
 trees in the valley : but though one could throw a stone 
 to its first houses, it is unseen now. From that tower of 
 
348 THINGS LEFT 
 
 its parish church eight fine bells are pealing for evening 
 service : they ring for half an hour, and in many divers 
 ways. The surroundings are strange to me who abide on 
 the Northern side of the Tweed, It is Sunday evening : 
 the evening of Waterloo day : and it is blazing summer. 
 Some will long remember the miraculous gleam and glow. 
 Two great Lebanon cedars are in front of these two 
 garden-chairs on one of which I sit. Behind, rise, as they 
 have risen for centuries, the ivied walls of a grand yet 
 home-like dwelling. The slender figure that has risen 
 from the chair beside me, and is moving about on the 
 turf, with an anxious face, is the Bishop of one of the 
 greatest Sees in this world. He has a little book in his 
 hand, wherein he is at intervals writing down notes for a 
 speech to be made to-morrow. The hop gardens are all 
 about : strange to a Scottish eye. And Charles Kingsley 
 wrote that these gardens are the finest in England. We 
 are going, in a little, to evening service in the chapel of 
 this house : a service which must needs be of extreme 
 interest to me, though I am to be no more than a wor- 
 shipper. 
 
 But let me look back on the service of this morning : 
 which was very singular and touching to me. I joined in 
 it with a full heart : and yet, as it went on, I thought of 
 friends at a distance, and felt I must tell them about it all. 
 The writer is one of those human beings who cannot 
 willingly keep any remarkable experience to themselves. 
 We long for sympathy, which we do not always get. 
 
 The service was in a large but very plain hall. In it 
 
THAT SUNDAY MORNING 349 
 
 were gathered, according to wont, the inmates of the Poor- 
 House of this district. Workhouse they call it here. 
 Perhaps 200 or more. I see the worn old faces : the bent 
 figures : the shaky hands. Almost all seemed very old : 
 this life had been too much for them : they had to find 
 bread to eat and raiment to put on of public charity : and 
 all that remained now was to wait for the end. The old 
 men, in white jackets, were on one's left : the old women, 
 in neat uniform dresses, on the right : and just in front, 
 two and two, were a good many old couples, who had 
 climbed the hill together, who had tottered far down it : 
 but who were not divided even here, and who in a very 
 little would sleep together at the foot. I do not think 
 I ever saw a congregation which touched one more to 
 see. I confess the sight of it brought the tears to one's 
 eyes. Yet they looked quietly cheer>% the poor old souls. 
 Many of them had learned, by overwhelming experience, 
 how serious is the petition, ' Give us this day our daily 
 bread.' And they were sure of that, here. 
 
 The worship was different from that which we know 
 so well in Scotland. In a little, through the gleam of 
 sunshine outside, came the chaplain in his white robe, and 
 after him the Bishop of Winchester. Wolsey, Andrewes, 
 Wilberforce, have sat in that chair. As the ministrants 
 entered, the congregation rose up to welcome them : ever 
 to me a heart-warming sight : though I never saw it in 
 Scotland save in the University Chapel at Glasgow and 
 the College Chapel at St. Andrews. And I was informed 
 that in the latter edifice it was done by mistake on that 
 
350 THINGS LEFT 
 
 particular day. I must not forget the parish church of 
 Govan on the day of its consecration ; nor the vast St. 
 Cuthbert's in Edinburgh. Then, with immense fervour, 
 came Rock of Ages : the tune was that familiar here. 
 And the service went on, given in a loud but solemn 
 voice : for many of those good folk were dull of hearing 
 through their many years. I never heard responses ren- 
 dered more heartily. The next hymn which came in its 
 proper place, we should not have called a hymn : for its 
 first line was, ' All people that on earth do dwell.' And 
 there it was : to the famous old tune we sang in Kyle when 
 I was a little child : the grand tune which all Christian 
 people know. Finally, just before the sermon, ' Jesus, 
 Lover of my soul.' Hymns must be very real for a con- 
 gregation like that. Anything falsetto : anything too 
 sweet and pretty : anything above the experience of 
 simple folk : is excluded here. And indeed reality is 
 everything, lifting up heart and voice to God Almighty. 
 The other day I received a written request to state what 
 I held as the six best hymns in the language. The 
 answer was that it would have been far easier to name 
 the fifty best. But I wrote my list of six. And those 
 two hymns stood on it. A very great man had given his 
 list : and on both Rock of Ages stood first. But next to 
 it he placed what I should not have numbered in the best 
 fifty : Sir Walter's attempt to translate some verses of 
 the untranslatable Dies Irae. Very exceptional are the 
 judgments of very exceptional men. 
 
 Then to the little desk, homely as that from which 
 
THAT SUNDAY MORNING 351 
 
 I preached my very earliest sermon in a shabby school- 
 room in a black Glasgow Wynd, the preacher quietly and 
 modestly came. You may ' consecrate ' a man : you may 
 'enthrone' a man : yet the genuine man abides the simple 
 homely human being. Certain flowers in pots were indeed 
 piled up in front of the little deal desk : the like of which 
 were not in my father's parish long ago. And the farthest 
 reach of my vesting for that great occasion in my little 
 life was a white neckcloth : while here were the beautiful 
 robes of a prince of the Church, and round th6 neck the 
 blue ribbon of the Garter, with the order. The good 
 worshippers spent not a thought on these : but they knew 
 perfectly what the Prelate of that famous company wears 
 everywhere else : and they would have been mortified had 
 less been made to serve here. The next day I stood 
 beside the stately throne in the magnificent Winchester 
 Cathedral : but I thought its Bishop never looked better 
 or happier than in this homely place. I had gone with 
 him with special interest that Sunday morning : that I 
 might listen to his message to a congregation so special. 
 I have heard him preach times beyond my numbering, 
 but never more heartily than here. Sense of what is 
 fitting rarely fails men so placed. And one felt how fit 
 it was that the sermon should be a plain, full, winning 
 statement of Christ's comforting and saving gospel : clear 
 and simple so that all could understand it : and just the 
 message we all need so much to hear. Ay, as the good 
 Kate Hankey says so wisely, ' Tell me the Story often : 
 For I forget so soon ! ' But not by one syllable the 
 
352 
 
 THINGS LEFT 
 
 preacher said would you have guessed whether he was 
 preaching to rich or poor. The worn faces all round 
 looked intently : there was the audible hush which is the 
 preacher's first-coming reward : the voice was loud, that 
 the dull might hear : and the Story was told slowly, that 
 all might take it in. The fixed attention did not waver, 
 though the discourse was just the half-hour. And a great 
 Prime Minister had listened just as earnestly to the like 
 words but a little before. Each soul who hearkens as it 
 ought to that old, old Story, remembering, for itself, that 
 ' I'm the sinner. Whom jESUS came to save.' And with 
 what tender respect the Bishop spoke to the weary old 
 men and women ! Not the faintest or farthest suspicion 
 of condescending to them : either intellectually or in any 
 other way. Not the farthest suspicion of that overdone 
 humility which so rasps and irritates many. I said to 
 myself, coming away, Now that was done just as ivcll as 
 it could be done. I never felt more deeply than on that 
 day how on the grand level of sinfulness and salvation all 
 men arc equal. Equal as all are in the grave : as all are 
 entering on the solemn life beyond it. 
 
 The text was, 'This man receiveth sinners.' The 
 sermon being over, in a deep hush, a little pra}'cr for a 
 blessing on it was offered ; and then the benediction was 
 solemnly said. Many there present bowed low to receive 
 it as thinking it of greater worth than an ordinary 
 preacher's blessing. One felt that the training of all their 
 life had gone to make them reverence dignities as wc in 
 Scotland in fact do not. For three centuries and more we 
 
THAT SUNDAY MORNING 353 
 
 have been diligently trained away from that kind of thing. 
 And though a man among us be even called Veiy Reve- 
 rend, that does not mean that any mortal reveres him at 
 all. Doubtless there is something to be said for and 
 against the training of either country. 
 
 The evening light blazes brightly as ever, as we arise 
 from our places and look over the low wall, rich with 
 Ayrshire roses and honeysuckle, which bounds the lofty 
 terrace. The red-brick houses of the little town below 
 are wonderfully lighted up : the innumerable trees stand 
 in living green. We pass under a lofty tower, of red-brick 
 also, which has been here for four-hundred-and-fifty years. 
 Queen Elizabeth has walked up this long flight of steps : 
 so has Queen Mary of England. Oliver Cromwell dated 
 a letter from this house. Above, on the wall, two great 
 dials (when the sun shines) mark the flight of time. One 
 bears the single word, Praetereunt. The second bears 
 the single word. Imputantur. We cannot render sense so 
 tersely in our tongue. The first word means. They pass 
 away. The second means. They are reckoned up against us. 
 It is thus said of the hours of our life. People look at 
 these words silently. 
 
 Now into this solemn chapel, which is arranged like 
 the choir of a Cathedral. It could hold a great many, if 
 it were filled with pews like a Scottish parish church. 
 Many memorable services have been held here. Here the 
 saintly old Bishop Wordsworth of St. Andrews was 
 ordained : a remembrance which comes home to me. 
 High up the old walls climbs the black oak, carved by 
 
 A A 
 
354 THINGS LEFT 
 
 Gibbons. Divers things, here a matter of course, would 
 seem strange, north of the Tweed. Which undoubted fact 
 the writer laments, sorrowfully. A great window of stained 
 glass fills the upper part of the eastern wall. Men, great 
 in their generation, have preached from that quaint old 
 pulpit But to-night, from the same text as in the morn- 
 ing, a youth discourses from it quietly and modestly, as 
 befits time and place. And the writer listens with ex- 
 treme attention. It was a good and earnest sermon. The 
 preacher evinced no more than the respect which befitted, 
 counselling his father ; and the good Bishop who ordained 
 him. 
 
355 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 WOULD YOU CHANGE? 
 
 One likes to sit and think of things, by the Sunday fire- 
 side. Sometimes, indeed, by the fireside on the evening 
 of another day. Most, upon Sunday evening. The fire 
 is with us from morning till night : certainly so through 
 great part of the year. But we do not draw to the fireside 
 for that little time of quiet thought till it has turned 
 towards the evening, and the day's vocations are mainly 
 past. Then, the mind may ramble. And to some folk 
 it is pleasant to preserve some record of its wanderings. 
 For we forget. 
 
 We do not listen to sermons at the Sunday fireside : 
 these are for another place. Neither do we commonly 
 read them unless they be very fresh and interesting indeed. 
 Sometimes they are all that : and they get to our heart 
 straight. Occasionally, on Sunday evening, we even yet 
 speak of the sermons heard that day, or on another day. 
 I earnestly trust that the ancient fashion has died out of 
 requiring children to ' give an account of the sermon.' It 
 was a horrible infliction. My warm sympathy has ever 
 been with the good maid-servant in Ayrshire long ago, 
 
356 THINGS LEFT 
 
 who, being asked to state what was the plan of the sermon 
 she had heard, replied, firmly, ' He had no plan,' 
 
 Passing quite away from any thought of the dismal 
 discourses which, both north and south of the Tweed, 
 made one feel in church an awful sense of tedium never 
 known elsewhere (these were in childish days) : thoughts 
 come to one to-night about what may rightly be called 
 preaching : I mean the discourse which grips the congre- 
 gation tight, and is followed with the audible hush one 
 knows. 
 
 There is one way of being impressed : deeply impressed. 
 I have heard it put in words. A man said to me, ' It was 
 most splendid. I never heard human speech like it. It 
 was more than the finest tragic acting. It thrilled through 
 one's nervous system.' That preacher was a truly good 
 man ; and he has gone to his account. But when he made 
 a most brilliant appearance in a great cathedral, addressing 
 a dense crowd, the published judgment on the sermon of 
 one who rose high, was, ' There is not gospel in it to save 
 the soul of a tomtit.' 
 
 Then, there is another way. A youth came, when the 
 service was over, to one who was not an orator at all, but 
 a simple sincere preacher of truth which he uttered because 
 he had found it out for himself And the youth said 
 words, awful to hear : yet words for which to thank God 
 too. ' I was to have made away with myself to-night : I 
 had the black river before me. But I saw the church 
 lighted, and by chance I turned in : and I was stopped. 
 I had gone to the bad. I broke my parents' hearts : thank 
 
WOULD YOU CHANGE? 357 
 
 God, they are dead. I swear I will begin and keep straight 
 from this hour.' And he did. Do you think that preacher 
 dreamt it was he who had arrested that lad ? Nay verily. 
 Somebody else had intervened. But he cast himself down 
 that night, and, with many tears, thanked God for all. 
 
 Thirty years ago, a saintly man, very near the end of 
 a fruitful ministry, said to me words which I ha\'e never 
 forgotten. 
 
 ' I went one Sunday evening to preach in your father's 
 church. I felt utterly flat and miserable. I never got on 
 with so little heart. When I came away, I said to myself. 
 Can any mortal be the better for listening to that ? I 
 went home, thinking I could never preach again. Many 
 years after, I met an eminent American preacher. He 
 asked me if I remembered that evening in the Tron 
 Church of Glasgow. He said, Your sermon was the turn- 
 ing-point of my life. A lonely lad in the great city, he 
 had turned out of the crowded street by chance : and the 
 poor weak sermon was carried home to him.' 
 
 If you had known the man who said that to me, you 
 would know how impossible it was to imagine him as 
 sounding his own trumpet. ' Not by might, nor by power, 
 but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.' Not but what 
 the best preacher is likeliest to do good. As a rule, God 
 works by adequate means. As the first Napoleon said, 
 ' Providence is on the side of the strongest battalions.' 
 There must have been something about that disheartened 
 sermon of which the preacher was not aware. Incompe- 
 tence will not generally avail. 
 
358 THINGS LEFT 
 
 And here, meandering about, as one does by the even- 
 ing fireside, let it be said that some men (the writer is one) 
 take great delight in preaching to children. The preacher 
 gets his lesson on such an occasion, as well as the hearers. 
 It is a good thing, that children show so frankly and 
 promptly if they are not being interested by what is said. 
 I do not call a man a preacher at all if he is content to go 
 on without carrying the steadfast attention of the whole 
 congregation with him. But children keep you up tight. 
 One dull sentence is enough to make you lose hold of 
 them. Of course, though you have thought most carefully 
 ot what you are to say, it will not do to read it. No, not 
 the ' fell readin' ' of Chalmers would avail. You must 
 speak straight to the little people. There must be instant 
 adaptation to time and place. And I know no greater 
 reward to any speaker than to see the bright faces looking 
 eagerly, and to be aware of the audible hush. It is a far 
 greater thing than to hold the attention of (say) the 
 General Assembly. That is easy. They are all big folk : 
 and then they are all so kind, that they will try to look 
 interested when in fact they are not. 
 
 All this is introductory. Too big a porch for so little 
 a dwelling. But it would come in. And this is a wilful 
 meditation. 
 
 I desire to put a question to you, friendly reader (I sec 
 your face, clearly), which I have recently put to many. 
 Every one of them answered it in the same way. And I 
 think the result was to do them some little good. It 
 tended to make them more content. 
 
WOULD YOU CHANGE 359 
 
 I said, You have been telling me of your troubles. 
 They are not so few : and some of them are heavy. 
 Would you change places with any human being you 
 know .-^ — I trow not. 
 
 The names shall not be given here. They were given 
 quite frankly, in actual speech. They were names very 
 familiar in the locality where we talked : though not of 
 much concern to the great world : some of them. 
 
 Your life is a struggle to make the ends meet. I know 
 it. Even such is the life of nearly every mortal I know 
 well. Would you take such a man's great wealth along 
 with that thing (specified) which you know he has to bear 
 daily ? The instant answer was No : I zvould not. Better 
 as I am. 
 
 You tell me (one or two have in fact told me) that you 
 are a disappointed man. You think it was in you, possibly, 
 long ago, to do far more conspicuous work than in God's 
 Providence you have ever had the chance of trying to do. 
 And doubtless it is true that one of the greatest of men 
 had to spend the best years of his life keeping sheep in 
 the wilderness. The man's name was Moses. For forty 
 years he did the work of a cattleman. Well, would you 
 take such a man's popularity along with that disability, 
 that thorn, of which you know? On the instant came the 
 resolute Nay verily. 
 
 To another it was said (how well I remember it !), 
 Circumstances have enabled you to see and know, near at 
 hand, a human being who is set very high indeed : just as 
 high as mortal can be : and who is, besides, a good Chris- 
 
36o THINGS LEFT 
 
 tian. You have often been crushed down (you tell me) 
 by sore anxieties, and the outlook was black. Did you 
 ever wish you could change places with your fellow- 
 creature who is placed so high ? — Never once I Never, at 
 the very worst ! 
 
 In the days when John and Charles Wesley were 
 awaking warmth and life where the chill had been deathly, 
 an eminent lady wrote a letter to a friend concerning these 
 good men. The lady was indeed a Duchess : and at that 
 time such rank carried a glamour which has now ceased to 
 be. And she was a very great Duchess, of illustrious line. 
 ' I thank your ladyship,' were the words, ' for the informa- 
 tion concerning the Methodist preachers. Their doctrines 
 are most repulsive, and strongly tinctured with imperti- 
 nence and disrespect towards their superiors, in perpetually 
 endeavouring to level all ranks, and do away with all dis- 
 tinctions. It is monstrous to be told that you have a heart 
 as sinful as the common wretches that crawl the earth. 
 This is highly offensive and insulting, and I cannot but 
 wonder that your ladyship should relish any sentiments so 
 much at variance with high rank and good breeding.' It 
 is not recorded whether the poor woman went through this 
 life, and went out of it, still in that mind. Let us hope 
 better for her. But would the hardest-driven Christian 
 woman who ever wore her poor strength out in seeing to 
 the food and raiment of her little children and sending 
 them decent out to school, take that unhappj' princess's 
 rank and wealth, along with her peculiar theory of the way 
 in which God Almighty will treat the souls He made ? I 
 
WOULD YOU CHANGE? 361 
 
 know not whether any reader has smiled at her words. I 
 will confess that they make me shudder. There is a 
 famous text which says, ' God resisteth the proud.' And 
 it is not merely that pride is so shockingly wrong, but that 
 it is so unutterably idiotic. God help us, what on earth 
 has any mortal to be proud of? Much to be thankful for. 
 Much to be humbled, remembering. But to be proud of, 
 nothing at all. 
 
 I am taking for granted that you cannot select a bit of 
 another man's condition, leaving the rest. You must take 
 it all as it stands, for better for worse. 
 
 When I say that not one reader of this page (I take for 
 granted that all are decent well-behaved folk) would change 
 places with any other mortal, how great or fortunate 
 soever such a one seem, it is not but there are things both 
 in your nature and your circumstances you continually wish 
 other than they are : ay, very far other. It is not but 
 there are things in which other mortals are far better than 
 you, both as concerns the soul that is within and the 
 surroundings that are without. You would be thankful to 
 have such a friend's sweet and equable temper : to have such 
 another's beautiful church : to have such another's blossom- 
 ing trees. But then there is the other page to turn. There 
 is the other side of the account. And when you think of 
 facts you know, which suggest ever so much more which 
 you do not know : you durst not risk taking the evil with 
 the good. You do not know what iron hand might be laid 
 upon you. 
 
 More than this. You would not really desire to change 
 
362 THINGS LEFT 
 
 the stage you have reached in this life. You have grown 
 old : strength and heart sometimes fail you : you must take 
 in sail : you cannot get through your work as you did, long 
 ago. But you are humbly thankful that you have got on 
 so far, decently. You are humbly thankful (there is no 
 affectation earthly) that the end is drawing near. You 
 would not put back the clock, if you could. You do not 
 wish to be younger : to be young again : you do not wish 
 to begin it all over. No, you do not. Not, though you 
 would be allowed to change the course you have come, 
 profiting by dearly-bought experience : though the errors 
 have been many and sorrowful. Far less, if you had to 
 tread just the same path over again. 
 
 Ah, when one comes to know what some come to know, 
 how things are balanced in God's Providence ! As for 
 your own lot, you are aware of the best and worst of it. 
 You remember the homely Scot, in the days of Marts, who 
 uttered the strange words, not understandable by the pre- 
 sent generation, that 'he hadna made up his mind whether 
 to kill himsel', or to tak' a side o' his feyther.' Morally, 
 we should be pleased to take a side, or at least a slice, of 
 divers other men. You wish you were rid of that morbid 
 temperament which sometimes makes the world black and 
 yourself a burden to those who must bear with )'OU. You 
 know a good friend, whose cheery nature you would take 
 thankfully. No doubt, plodding along the dusty road for 
 various miles, you have just a little envied Mr. Smith the 
 fine horses which swept him by you, cool and restful. 
 Though, for that matter, the sourest and most discontented 
 
WOULD YOU CHANGE? 363 
 
 faces I have ever seen, were looking out of the windows of 
 extremely handsome carriages. And I, instructed in 
 Gothic art, who have been appointed to minister in certain 
 of the ugliest churches in Christendom, have looked with 
 a certain longing at the beautiful edifices which have been 
 given to certain friends. Never mind : the great thing 
 about any church on earth is the living congregation ! 
 And you would not risk taking the pleasantest things you 
 ever knew, along with what might come with them. You 
 would not again take that turn you took in life. Trouble 
 came of it. But worse trouble might have come had you 
 turned the other way. It is not that you think you have 
 come to much ; or that you have not your heavy troubles. 
 But far better Christians have fared far worse. And you 
 have grown accustomed to things. You are in a way re- 
 signed : reconciled : to being what and where you are. 
 You could not bear to be anybody else. 
 
 My experience leads me to think that the overwhelming 
 majority of decent Christian folk have quite learned a 
 lesson which St. Paul seemed to imply took him a while 
 to learn. ' I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, there- 
 with to be content' And resting peacefully by the Sunday 
 fireside, on the Sunday evening, thinking how graciously 
 God has led them (not to say borne with them) ; many a 
 modest heart is lifted up in lowly thankfulness. 
 
364 THINGS LEFT 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 OF SAYING GOODBYE 
 
 My subject is not what you think. I am not, here, to treat 
 the awful subject of parting. Dickens, writing a last letter 
 to his boy going away to Australia (where, God be thanked, 
 he has worked and prospered bravely) said that life is half 
 made up of partings : and indeed we have found it so. 
 Further, the pathos of the subject is so much beyond words, 
 that it affects me (for one) with deep indignation when I 
 find a coarse-grained soul .seeking to touch aging people 
 by saying what is very likely to move them : move them 
 in a fashion for which that soul is entitled to not the 
 smallest credit. The many pleasant faces, the man)' sweet 
 country scenes, the many quiet little rooms, to which wc 
 have each said goodbye ! I would not wittingly, for any 
 inducement you could offer, stir that fountain of sorrowful 
 tears. 
 
 But I desire to think of an enviable faculty which I 
 note in certain valued friends. How easily and completely 
 they part from a place or a person : the place where thc}' 
 lived for years : the person with whom they conversed 
 familiarly for years ! Doubtless it is better : there is no 
 good in dragging a lengthening chain. But there are those 
 
OF SAYING GOODBYE 365 
 
 who cannot attain to this. The beautiful fields and trees, 
 left behind, come perpetually into the memory : ay, after 
 years : and the eye turns moist in a way which serves no 
 practical end. The plain little chamber where much hard 
 headwork was wrestled through : the pattern of the grate, 
 often vacantly studied through lonely evenings long de- 
 parted : all these things and more innumerable are part of 
 the life of the present day, though they are never spoken 
 of There are some who could not point carelessly to a 
 house in a row, when driving rapidly by it, and say, ' I lived 
 there, five-and-thirty years ago.' The voice would fail if 
 they tried to do so. The whole life of that time would 
 come back too vividly : and a face gone away. It is good 
 for us, it is helpful in doing the present task with undivided 
 attention, to be able to definitively turn the leaf, and shut 
 it down, and begin upon a fresh page. St. Paul, besides 
 what else he was, was a man of shrewd worldly wisdom, 
 when he wrote certain words not likely to be forgotten, 
 which run * Forgetting those things which are behind, and 
 reaching forth unto those things which are before.' 
 
 It is by an effort, a conscious effort, not always suc- 
 cessful, that one shuts out the intruding pictures of the 
 places where one has lived, has sojourned. But there are 
 good men to whom that task comes easy. They are able 
 to live in the present, and to give a full mind to the present 
 duty. Stranger still, how easily those who have an immense 
 number of friends, and are pressed continually by great 
 concerns and interests, can drop any apparent remembrance 
 of a friend, a true and much-prized friend, daily seen, daily 
 
366 THINGS LEFT 
 
 talked with through years. I am not forgetting that men 
 may be thinking of many things of which they make no 
 mention even in the most intimate talk : but one can read, 
 pretty accurately, the mind and heart of one who is speci- 
 ally dear ; and you know perfectly, my reader, that there 
 is nothing weighing very heavily upon him of which he 
 says not a word to you. For long, for an appreciable part 
 of a shortening life, there was a bright face on the other 
 side of the evening fireside : there was one to whom you 
 could talk of everything ; there was profound sympathy 
 with you in all that troubled and perplexed. But that 
 familiar friend was taken : you saw the turf smoothed over 
 him : then you turned away and took to the old task-work 
 very much as you used to do when you could speak to him 
 of it. Of another kind of friend you say, * I venerated that 
 man : I loved him : it was a blow when he was taken : I 
 miss him continually. Come and let us see to that awful 
 basketful of letters : they must be answered, and that forth- 
 with.' Then they are attacked. There is a hearty laugh 
 at this one and that : they are all worked through. The 
 mind has been quite engrossed by them : and the lost 
 friend has never been thought of at all. All this is healthy : 
 is good. Only some men could not do it : could not do it 
 (to say the least) for a very long time after. And I have 
 noted that men who by nature or training have attained to 
 this, desire" no other for themselves. I cannot forget (for I 
 have that sorrowfully-long memory) how once I was pre- 
 sent where a man set in great place was led to say just a 
 brief word of the day when his great place would be left 
 
OF SAYING GOODBYE 367 
 
 vacant. Only four were present : all these very special 
 friends. Something had been said, very unaffectedly, and 
 because circumstances led up to it, as to how much he 
 would be missed. But the dear and great man, the most 
 lovable of the race, spoke with some measure of heat and 
 impatience : spoke in that fashion for the solitary time in 
 thirty years. ' Nothing of that kind,' he said : * no brooding 
 on the past : lay me in the earth : sing Nozv the labotwei-'s 
 task is o'er : then go away back to your work and take to it 
 as hard as you can ! ' One thought of Tennyson's Then you 
 may lay me low V the mould and think no more of me. The 
 shade of feeling was different, of course : the theory was 
 that of Cardinal Newman : 
 
 Weep not for me : 
 Be blithe as wont, nor tinge with gloom 
 The stream of love which circles home, 
 
 Light hearts and free ! 
 Joy in the gifts Heaven's bounty sends ; 
 Nor miss my face, dear friends ! 
 
 Only approval can be expressed of such words : here is 
 unselfishness ; here are things placed in healthful perspec- 
 tive. Here is the manifest intention of our Creator. Yet 
 we should like to be remembered, though with a painless 
 remembrance. We could not quite make up our minds to 
 be forgot. No more than One, in whom we see all that is 
 sinlessly natural to frail humanity, and who expressly de- 
 sired to be remembered : This do in remembrance of Me. 
 I look with deliberate approval, not untouched with wonder 
 how they did it, on good men and women who have quite 
 
368 THINGS LEFT 
 
 got over things. They are the wisest, and often the best 
 of the race. I watch them at their work, at their play : I 
 see them bright and cheery : I hear the ringing laugh, the 
 mild jest. They look wonderfully young for their years. 
 All the while, I am thinking of what they have come through. 
 Not merely work and worry ; the trace of these fades out 
 when great success comes, and perhaps outstanding honour. 
 One's thoughts are much more of those gone away ; of 
 dark days when it seemed impossible that the house should 
 ever be bright again, or the interrupted task resumed. But 
 the wiser reflection which comes second is, that (wise in the 
 wisdom of a better world) those gone away will never think 
 they are forgotten, though the house be cheery and sun- 
 shiny once more. You have seen the good face turn very 
 grave as the eyes fell upon a picture on the wall : as a 
 sudden likeness strikes both friends on a beaming young 
 countenance. It saddens one to whom it comes as some- 
 thing new. It does not appreciably sadden one by whom 
 it is seen daily ; and one does not forget words, very kindly 
 said, by one to whom a duty of extreme responsibility was 
 appointed, yet who seemed quite gay in the prospect of it. 
 ' I feel all that, but I don't speak of it.' While we abide 
 in this world it is needful that in many very serious ex- 
 periences we be quite alone. 
 
 I know I am not succeeding in making my meaning as 
 clear as I could wish. I do not mean that there is any- 
 thing admirable, or enviable, about people to whom parting 
 is easy because they are selfish and heartless, and so do 
 not mind. I am thinking of those who feel deeply ; as deeply 
 
OF SAYING GOODBYE 369 
 
 as any ; yet who by their make can acquiesce in the inevi- 
 table, can cease to mourn for the lost, can let by-goncs be 
 by-gones. I have known a man who, if he had been Job, 
 would never have felt that the new sons and daughters, 
 given in like number, in any way made up for the awful 
 loss of the first : and who hailed with delight the sugges- 
 tion of the latest scholarship that these were the same 
 children brought back safe and well. It was Satan who 
 sent the terrible news ; and the terrible news was false. 
 But I have known another who rose by the regular steps 
 to the highest place in a great profession : who held, in 
 magnificent sufficiency, the post of the Chief Judge of his 
 time, and who was a cheerful though somewhat reserved 
 companion in social life : who never made one feel, even 
 conversing with him daily, that he was remembering the 
 young wife who had to go after a very little time together, 
 who had to go without seeing him take even the first step 
 of many that led so high. Doubtless, that great man was 
 not a gusher : he did not wear his heart upon his sleeve : 
 the empty place was never filled ; and when the letter 
 came, time after time, asking him to step up, one can but 
 guess how he thought within himself that there was no one 
 to throw it across to. His was the grand manner, in all 
 things : he kept a certain distance. It was otherwise with 
 a good man gone, who being raised to a very modest ele- 
 vation, said to the writer, ' Ah, if this had come before she 
 died !' It was otherwise with Arthur Stanley, as lovable 
 as he was great, who frankly showed how he never got 
 over his great loss. Walking round the chapels in Wcst- 
 
 B B 
 
370 THINGS LEFT 
 
 minster Abbey with only two or three, he came to one 
 where he silently waved his friends to enter, and then turned 
 away and remained outside. And speaking of his latest 
 visit to St. Andrews, where he was overwhelmed with love 
 and honour, he said, ' It would have been perfect happiness 
 if only she had been there.' 
 
 I have noted that such as take, or seem to take, their 
 partings heroically, or at least silently, say goodbye very 
 quickly and informally. You have had a pleasant time 
 together, days or even weeks. Then, without a word of 
 scenes which to you have taken the wistful last look, }'ou 
 drive away together to the railway, and you start on the 
 little run of twelve miles. Your friend's eye is never lifted 
 from his newspaper. And when you both descend from 
 the carriage it is just a word, and he has disappeared. Of 
 course this is the better way. When a lad of not quite 
 twenty went away to India it was striking how for the last 
 two days he kept out of the sight of his father and mother, 
 and was always very busy and hurried ; no time to talk. 
 Well they knew why. It is a mistake, when you are de- 
 parting from a beautiful place long familiar, and now to be 
 seen no more, to solemnly go out quite alone, and pene- 
 trate into each nook trying to recall its associations and to 
 bid it farewell. All that is -gratuitous pain. And it is not 
 even that hasty glance which will abide in )our memor)'. 
 One would not wish to know when the last look is being 
 taken of a place which has long been very dear. And the 
 look will not merely be painful ; it will be disappointing. 
 It will not be the place you used to know. I am glad I 
 
OF SAYING GOODBYE 371 
 
 cannot remember the last time I spoke to one who for 
 twenty years was my great friend here. There is an 
 ancient church which has been the centre of all my serious 
 work for more than a quarter of a century. I trust that I 
 may not know when I come out of it for the last time. 
 
 Now let us look at a characteristic but cheering picture 
 of the last goodbye. It is of Archbishop Tait, of Canter- 
 bury, 
 
 ' Early next morning we were all summoned, as his 
 strength seemed to be ebbing fast. He bid a separate 
 farewell to each, and then asked for the Commendatory 
 Prayer. He gave the Benediction in a steady voice, and 
 then added, quite in his usual manner — And noiv it is all 
 over. It isn't so very dreadful after all.' 
 
 6 B 2 
 
372 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 Very obvious things are often not distinctly thought of 
 by those to whom they are continually present. Two da\-s 
 gone, I was startled, some little, when someone said, look- 
 ing round this room in which I work, * What a number of 
 dead people you have got looking down upon )ou from 
 these walls ! ' And so indeed it is : one's most valued 
 friends have gone before one. Helps looks down, fixedly : 
 which he never did in this life. Stanley, a beautiful and 
 characteristic etching, showing him in middle age. Kings- 
 ley, grave and stern, as his aspect was in repose. Bishop 
 Wordsworth, the pleasant portrait bought with money 
 illegally won from himself Lord Chancellor Campbell, 
 the most successful of recent St. Andrews students : and 
 specially kind and gracious to this writer while a young 
 Edinburgh minister, long ago. My two immediate pre- 
 decessors in this charge : and my Father's kindly presence, 
 with thick gray hair to the last. And now Froude and 
 the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table arc gone too. Dr. 
 Holmes sent me his pleasant picture, many years since. 
 And Froude's beautiful and pathetic face has looked down 
 on my daily task here, since he was Lord Rector of this 
 University. Was it not yesterday we passed from under 
 
CON'CLUSION 373 
 
 my roof, to the near dwelling of Dr. Adamson : and there 
 that chief of amateur photographers, after many failures, 
 took the pleasantest and most characteristic picture of the 
 historian which I have ever seen ? Can it be many months 
 more than a quarter of a century since then ? 
 
 Many other kindly faces look down, the faces of those 
 very dear but not known to fame. John Parker, the 
 younger : long away, but often remembered : one of the 
 best of our race. But not one of those shown upon these 
 walls is gone more completely than the youth represented 
 by a crayon picture by our great President, Sir Daniel 
 Macnee. The unlined face, with abundant brown hair : 
 the robes carefully represented, and the ' bands,' which in 
 Scotland indicate full orders, and are worn by a youth not 
 without a modest pride : the youth who at twent\--five was 
 incumbent of a parish of five thousand souls, and thought 
 himself quite old enough. Many have asked the writer who 
 was that cheerful young parson : never dreaming that they 
 stood beside him who was such, fort}--two years ago. But 
 indeed, pictures, even of things which do not change as we 
 do, sometimes fail of recognition. A year or more back, a 
 very pretty photograph of this room was published in a 
 periodical of vast circulation. Several individuals, not 
 conspicuously stupid, have gazed upon it here in my 
 study ; and asked what room was that. 
 
 St. Luke's summer is here with us : this wonderful 
 October sunshine. The grass before these windows blazes. 
 And though many leaves have fallen, the two tall oak-trees 
 on which I look up are thick and green. But Froude is 
 
374 CONCLUSION 
 
 gone : the friend of five and thirty years. A flood of 
 memories of him, of how he looked, and of what he said 
 and did, has come over one : this day on which he is 
 quietly laid to rest in his native Devon. But it is not 
 now, in these days of mourning, that they can be set 
 down : not one of them but would make for the honour 
 of him who was as lovable as great. They must wait, 
 for their record, till the day comes (if it is to come) when 
 one can speak again of the charming writer and dear friend 
 with a smile. Which is not possible now. 
 
 It is pleasant, to those who loved him, to witness the 
 unbroken chorus of praise which has attended his passing 
 from us. All that one has read of him has been sub- 
 stantially just. For with that fascination of style, he did 
 tend to be inaccurate in details : and he quite knew it. 
 He knew it so well that more than once he has accepted 
 correction when in fact he was right. And I have known 
 him viciously accused of levity for doing so : this, by the 
 person who had without reason corrected him. The spots 
 on the sun were incredibly small. Yet one smiled, ages ago, 
 when Mr. Hosack chivalrously undertook the defence of 
 poor Queen Mary : and Froude wrote and asked me what 
 I thought of Hosier's (szc) attack upon him. But Froude 
 had no more valued friend than Dr. John Skelton : and 
 the world knows how eloquently and ingeniously Skelton 
 stood up for the luckless Queen who never had a chance. 
 
 Once upon a time a critic, in a very considerable paper, 
 rebuked the writer for venturing to say Froude in speaking 
 of so great a man. My only apology was that I had been 
 
CONCLUSION 375 
 
 wont, in speech and in writing, so to address him for far 
 more than thirty years. Yet I can sympathise with the 
 clever writer who found fault with me. It was in Sep- 
 tember 1856, on his first visit to Irongray, that John Parker 
 sat down at this table where I write ; and indited a letter 
 which he handed to me to read, and which began My dear 
 Tennyson. It seemed profanation. I knew no authors 
 then. And I had since boyhood looked up to the great 
 poet with reverence not to be put in words. Even yet, 
 docs not a true poet who abides with us speak of Arthur 
 Hallam's grave as having ' been wept above, with more 
 than mortal tears ' ? Could this be } Yet Parker did it, 
 quite coolly. We live to learn. But a few days since, did 
 not certain ears, normal in their length, hear a most 
 eminent statesman addressed as Bally ? And he re- 
 sponded, meekly. 
 
 A high-bred gentleman, if ever such was. For many 
 a year, fully understood and prized under this roof: not 
 least by the children whose houses of bricks he piled up to 
 an incredible height, with amazing ingenuity : never more 
 than by the boy (now a man, far away, who has known a 
 man's sorrows) whom he carried on his shoulder through 
 the streets of Edinburgh on that night when the beautiful 
 city was illuminated marvellously for the wedding of one 
 born to be King some day. The quiet lovable man : silent 
 sometimes in general society : but so frankly outspoken to 
 those who were indeed his friends. While I live, I will 
 hold it as something to be proud of that for many a day 
 his letters ended Yours very affectionately. Which would 
 
376 CONCLUSIOxX 
 
 not have been said unless it had been meant. Froude was 
 a sincere true man. It is but a few days since a letter 
 (to be treasured) said ' My Father is not able to read his 
 letters. But we tell him about any that come which we 
 think would interest him. The kind affection of yours 
 pleased him very much ; and he wished me to write and 
 thank you for it.' There was beautiful and heroic 
 patience through the long weary illness ; and no wish to 
 be spared here to be useless. Very simple and solemn 
 were the words in which, as once we parted for the 
 night (he was staying with us), he spoke of what may be 
 beyond all work and trouble here. Thinking of these 
 days and nights of endurance, one grudged our terrible 
 tenacity of life : one thought how Lord Campbell, the 
 evening he died, thinking of an old friend near him, said 
 he would fain change the petition in the Litany for de- 
 liverance from sudden death, to one for deliverance from 
 lingering illness. 
 
 Things repeat themselves, strangely. Sir Walter and 
 his father, similarly tried at the last : Froude and Carlyle. 
 I recall, vividly, the last interview between these tried 
 friends ; when Carlyle was wearying to be allowed to slip 
 away. * What pleasure can These People have in keeping 
 me so long in this pain .-• ' The answer, solemnly said : 
 ' Perhaps These People have reasons which we do not 
 know.' Then came the quiet last words. ' I'll not say 
 but what they have.' So Froude and Carlyle parted. 
 
 I think, spite of the voice here and there, Froude in 
 the latter years was valued as he deserved. There must be 
 
CONCLUSION 377 
 
 exceptional judgments. A very clever man told me he 
 did not think Froude wrote good English. And Froude 
 himself told me how a man of high eminence, who for 
 years had laid himself on Froude's track to show up his 
 little blunders, being asked why he so persevered in an 
 invidious task, replied, 'Because I hate the fellow.' It 
 was because he knew him not. Of course, Froude could 
 sometimes be in a playful mood provoking. But none 
 ever knew him well without loving him. I do remember 
 one individual, quite extraordinarily ordinary, whom I 
 foolishly (at his own request) brought into my dwelling in 
 Great King Street when Froude was with us in his first 
 visit to Edinburgh, and indeed to Scotland. I see him 
 yet sitting by the drawing-room fire that afternoon, criti- 
 cally estimating the historian ; and indeed putting him to 
 the proof by some remarks as to the standards of the Kirk. 
 Froude was found wanting, and the worthy soul went. As 
 he passed through the front door, his judgment was ex- 
 pressed : ' I don't think much of your friend.' I hear the 
 words to-day. I made no reply : not a syllable : for the 
 man was much my senior in my vocation : for fear of say- 
 ing out too keenly what I thought and felt in that hour. 
 But I unbosomed my feeling to the dear Skelton : who I 
 know has forgot all about it : and I was relieved when 
 Skelton calmly said ' Who cares a straw what lie says ? ' 
 
 P'roude used to speak seriously, as the rule : and often 
 on the very gravest matters. Yet there was the relief of 
 humour. Many remember his laugh. Though he had his 
 days like that on which he wrote to me that ' when the 
 
37& CONCLUSION 
 
 weather was bad, the old wounds ached ' : I do not think 
 he would have approved terrible words in Mr. Hatch's first 
 Bampton lecture : ' the weight of that awful sadness of 
 which, then as now, to the mass of men, life was the 
 synonym and the sum.' I cannot remember, in literature, 
 any more desponding estimate. It transcends George 
 Eliot's friend : ' Life is a bad business : but we must make 
 the best of it.' And though he was made the Oxford 
 Professor too late, and found that the work was harder 
 than he had expected, yet that recognition which so de- 
 lighted his friends was not without its charm to him. He 
 was, indeed, terribly overworked. ' All last winter and 
 spring he was feeling his work a terrible strain, and look- 
 ing very ill and over-tired : but he kept up till he had 
 finished the Erasmus book, and the other lectures he had 
 set himself to do.' And he had ends in view at Oxford, 
 of warm concern to himself, which will never be attained, 
 now. 
 
 But I dare not go on. I did not sec him in death : it 
 makes a great difference. All my remembrances, very 
 many and very vivid, are so life-like, that even as the sun 
 is fading out on this evening of the day he was laid to 
 rest, things come back which tempt to a smile. And one 
 has no heart for that. But I recall words of solemn moral 
 reprobation : which I confess it struck a chill to hear. He 
 had not to learn it from Carlyle : it was his own : Any- 
 thing like successful insincerity he could not abide. And 
 he was a good hater of what he morally disapproved. 
 He was speaking to mc of an eminent ecclesiastic, an 
 
CONCLUSION 379 
 
 Archbishop of the Ancient Church : whose biography he 
 had just been reading. 'That man was a humbug,' he 
 said. I ventured to urge, ' Surely not a humbug : though 
 there was a sad deal of humbug about him.' Froude went 
 on : 'As far as I can make out, he believed nothing.' I 
 replied that from all I read, and heard, I gathered that the 
 articles of his creed tended to become fewer as he went on : 
 and that in the latter days his faith was summed up 
 greatly in devotion to the personal Saviour. The beautiful 
 eyes looked at me intently, and shone with an alarming 
 light, as Froude dismissed the subject in words I never 
 have forgot : which I can quote, letter perfect. ' Ah, he 
 thought highly of Christ, did he ? I venture to doubt 
 whether that favourable opinion was reciprocal.' The 
 voice was low : the last word was given with extreme 
 deliberation. He was on his feet. I see the large apart- 
 ment in which we were together. One thought of his 
 often-repeated saying, 'The Granite, the thing you can 
 build upon, is : That there is an awful difference between 
 Right and Wrong : and that you ought to do Right and 
 not do Wrong.' Well, is not that taken for granted, all 
 through the Sermon on the Mount ? It is the Granite of 
 the moral universe. 
 
 That Edinburgh visit comes back : it lasted ten days. 
 His enthusiasm for the place was delightful to see. The 
 first afternoon, my brother took us round the Queen's 
 Drive in a lofty drag. ' Think of being able to come here 
 after your work ! In London, you go and take a walk in 
 the Park : what is that to this ? ' Holyrood : Queen Mary's 
 
38o CONCLUSION 
 
 rooms : the Calton Hill : the Castle and Mons Mee. 
 Strange, Edinburgh reminded him of Toledo. Then St. 
 Andrews. The Beach : the Links : Magus Muir : his 
 Rectorial addresses : his talk, late into the night. All these 
 things again : elsewhere : when time has gone over. Curi- 
 ously, he liked not the Hierarchy. 'When a friend is 
 made a Bishop, you lose your friend.' Long after : one of 
 innumerable letters. ' I know you are quite happy, stay- 
 ing with your Bishop, and having him for a great friend. 
 Now I could not stand it. The position of a Bishop is so 
 extraordinary. It is something midway between an angel 
 and a spirit-rapper ! ' 
 
 I must not go that way. The reader sees how I am 
 tempted. Only one word more, to-day : and that in seri- 
 ousness. It comes back, with inexpressible distinctness, 
 the last time I parted from Froude. I never was able to 
 get to him at Oxford, though often kindly asked : it was 
 to have been, without fail, next summer. We had spent 
 some hours together, in constant talk, and very cheerfully. 
 First, a long time in his library : then walking about the 
 green space before its windows : then, in London streets. 
 But, going along crowded Piccadilly, the time came to 
 part : most likely for a long time. I call a year a long 
 time. Froude talked more and more rapidly : and glanced 
 from subject to subject : till we reached a certain corner. 
 Then he suddenly held out his hand, with a verj' wistful 
 face : exactly like two of the best which are published this 
 week. He stood silent for a minute. Then, ' I don't like 
 to say good-bye, old friend ' : and the next moment he 
 
CONCLUSION 38r 
 
 was lost in the crowd. That was our last parting. But 
 the letters were life-like. He thought to see St. Andrews 
 again : and Edinburgh. He expected that Skelton and I 
 should be with him at Oxford : he brightly described what 
 was to be there. We had not lost him, till now. 
 
 I never saw Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes but once. 
 He had written to me for thirty-four years. And con- 
 sidering how busy a man he was, it is wonderful what 
 long letters he wrote. I have remarked that many men 
 who write for the press are plainly indisposed to write any- 
 thing which is not to be printed. It was not so with the 
 Autocrat. One thought, reading the great pages, written 
 with beautiful clearness, of a dear young friend who writes 
 me long and ever-welcome letters, receiving but brief 
 replies ; but who tells me that the mechanical work of 
 writing is a real enjoyment to him. I was not quite Half- 
 Way, when Dr. Holmes first wrote to me : and it was 
 received as the most delightful of possible compliments 
 when he said, in the old Fraser days, that reading certain 
 passages in the present writer's essays, he felt that he must 
 have written them himself. The assurance was all the 
 more welcome because (though I would not have dared to 
 say so) when I first read The Autocrat of tJie Breakfast- 
 Table, I came upon various pages which I quite recognised 
 as my own, though I could not remember when I had 
 written them. I state the fact : as well aware that only a 
 special measure of that for which the Weaver of Kilwin- 
 ning prayed could have led me to so vain an illusion. 
 
382 CONCLUSION 
 
 From the day on which the grand edition of The Autocrat 
 came (it came October i, 1861) 'with the kindest regards 
 of OHver Wendell Holmes,' Dr. Holmes sent me nearly 
 every volume he published, both in prose and verse. They 
 make a long line. And they are set hard by the shelf 
 which bears everything that ever came from the pen of 
 Sir Arthur Helps. In a little he sent his portrait : very 
 pleasing and life-like. I have told elsewhere ' how I met 
 him : and found him exactly what the author of his books 
 should be. It was pleasant, reading a bright account of 
 an interview with the cheerful patriarch who was beloved 
 wherever our language is read, an interview within the last 
 year of his life, to find it recorded that among eight or ten 
 volumes placed close by his writing-table, within reach of 
 his hand, were these two. He had told me that, latterly, 
 he would not read any article bearing to be wholly about 
 himself But if he found kindly reference to himself in a 
 chapter treating another subject, he liked it. What mortal 
 could write otherwise than kindly of the lovable and 
 helpful Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes ? He did not care to 
 be called a Unitarian in the English sense. ' An American 
 Unitarian was rather like an Anglican Broad Church man.' 
 Yet I remember when a worthy and orthodox preacher 
 from the United States would not enter into St. Bernard's 
 Church because Dr. Holmes had done me the great honour 
 of saying that I was his friend. ' I was a Socinian.' But 
 indeed it is true that a devout and learned Parsee from 
 Bombay came to service in the parish church of St. 
 ' Twenty-Five Years of St, Andrews: Vol. II. pp. 231 sq. 
 
CONCLUSION 383 
 
 Andrews : and declared that he heard no word in which 
 he could not agree. I had not looked for this. But I had 
 seen him before worship began, and I remember well how 
 touching a thing it seemed to me, to mark in the midst of 
 a great multitude of professed Christian people, the dark 
 worshipper of another land and faith. Perhaps there was 
 a thought for him, that day. I do not mean in the sup- 
 pression of doctrine : nobody but a very stupid or very 
 unscrupulous mortal will call me * a Socinian.' And a 
 man who has published fourteen volumes of sermons might 
 surely have been found out. But I think the sun- 
 worshipper heard, in the first lesson, the magnificent 'The 
 sun shall be no more thy light by day' : * Thy sun shall 
 no more go down.' And he stood up amid a congregation 
 singing well-known verses which begin ' Sun of my soul.' 
 I am perfectly certain that in the better place where One 
 is the Light concerning Whom neither believed as I do, 
 there will be kindest welcome for the devout Parsee, and 
 for the beloved Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 This is Monday morning. It is sunshiny and blue, 
 though it is the twenty-ninth of October, and all the earth 
 is saturated with yesterday's drenching rain. The green 
 grass on which I look smiles cheerfully, and the two young 
 oaks are verdurous and thick. Last night, in dismal black- 
 ness and downpour, I went through deserted streets to 
 minister in the great parish church : making sure that the 
 congregation must needs be a small one. But it was 
 specially cheering to find a great mass of bright attentive 
 faces, wherever one looked through vistas between the 
 
384 CONCLUSION 
 
 great pillars : heart-warming to hear the audible hush 
 with which they listened to the exhortation : most uplifting 
 to join in praise for which Liddon would have thanked 
 God : the inspired Magnificat, the Psalms for the evening 
 antiphonally chanted, a touching anthem which did not 
 overtask the voices which brightly rendered it, and divers 
 plain hymns, loud as from numbers not very easily 
 numbered : then the lessons in the fresh loud voice of a 
 youth from famous Thrums. When I think how many 
 who started with me are gone, or are laid aside from duty, 
 I am deeply thankful that I am still fairly equal to that 
 appointed to me. If I am permitted to complete thirty 
 years in this charge, — which I shall do if I see September 
 in next year, — I may yet be able to tell the story, a simple 
 but pathetic story, of the years since the Twenty-Five. 
 
 PRINTED BV 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE ANU CO., NKW-STRKHT SQUARE 
 
 LONDON 
 
 /U 
 
 l'^' 
 h 
 
H Classifieb Cataloouc 
 
 OF WORKS IN 
 
 GENERAL LITERATURE 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW. LONDON. E.G. 
 AND 15 EAST i6th street, NEW YORK. 
 
 1894. 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Page 
 
 • Abbott (Evelyn) - - 2, 13 
 
 ■ (T. K.) - - - 10 
 
 ' (E. A.) - - - 10 
 
 Acland (A. H. D.) - 2 
 
 Acton (Eliza) - - 21 
 
 iEschylus - - - 13 
 
 Allingham (W.) - - 14, 22 
 
 Anstey (F.) - - - 15 
 
 Aristophanes - - '3 
 
 Aristotle - - - 10 
 
 ^Armstrong (E.) - - 2 
 
 I' (G. F. Savage) - 14 
 
 i (E.J.)- - 5-14,22 
 
 Arnold (Sir Edwin) 6, 14, 20 
 
 (Dr. T.) - - 2 
 
 Ashley (W. J.) - - 12 
 
 Aster (J. J.) - - - 15 
 Atelier du Lys (Author of) 20 
 
 Bacon - - - - 5, lo 
 
 Bagehot (Walter) 5, 12, 22 
 
 Bau^vell (R.) - - 2 
 
 Bain (Alexander)- - 10 
 
 Baker (James) - - 15 
 
 (Sir S. W.) - - 6, 8 
 
 Ball (J. T.) - - - 2 
 
 Baring-Gould (S.) - 22 
 
 Barnett (S. A. and Mrs.) 12 
 
 Battye (Aubyn Trevor) 22 
 
 Baynes (T. S.) - - 22 
 
 Beaconslield(Earl of)- 15 
 
 Beaufort (Duke of) - 8 
 
 Becker (Prof.) - - 13 
 
 Bell (Mrs. Hugh)- - 14 
 
 Bent (J. Theodore) - 6 
 
 Besant (Walter) - - 2 
 
 Bjornsen (B.) - - 14 
 
 Boase (C. W.) - - 3 
 
 Boedder (B.) - - 11 
 
 Boothby (Guy) - - 6 
 
 Boyd (A. K. H.) - 5,22,24 
 
 Brassey (Lady) - - 6 
 
 (Lord) - - 2, 8, 12 
 
 Brav (C. and Mrs.) - 10 
 
 Bright (J. F.) - - 2 
 
 Brvden (H. A.) - - 7 
 
 Buckle (H. T.) - - 2 
 
 Bull (T.) - - - 21 
 
 Burrows (Montagu) - 3 
 
 Bury (V'iscount - - 8 
 
 Butler (E. A.) - - 17 
 
 — (Samuel) - - 22 
 
 Campbell-Walker (A.)- 9 
 Cholmondeley-Pennell(H.) 8 
 
 Cicero - - - - 13 
 
 Clarke (K. F.) - - 11 
 
 Clcgg (j. T.) - - 15 
 
 Clodd (Edward) - - 13, 18 
 
 Clutterbuck (W. J.) - 7 
 
 Comyn (L. N.) - - 20 
 
 Cochrane (A.) - - 14 
 
 Conington (John) - 13 
 Conybearc(W.J.)How- 
 
 son(J.T.) - - 20 
 
 Co.\ (Harding) - - 8 
 
 Crake (A. D.) - - 19 
 
 Creighton (Bishop) - 2, 3 
 
 Croi!ier {]. B.) - - 10 
 
 Curzon (Hon. G. N.) - 2 
 
 Cutis (E. L.) - - 3 
 
 Dante - - - - 14 
 
 Davidson (W. L.) - 10, 12 
 
 De la Saussaye (C.) - 24 
 
 Deland (Mrs.) - - 15, 20 
 
 OF 
 
 Page 
 
 AUTHORS. 
 
 Dent (C. T.) 
 
 De Salis (Mrs.) - - 21 
 
 De Tocqueville (A.) - 2 
 
 Devas (C. S.) - - 12 
 
 Dougall(L.)- - - 15 
 
 Dowell (S.) - - - 12 
 
 Doyle (A. Conan) - 16 
 
 Ewald (H.) - - - 2 
 
 Falkener (E.) - - 9 
 
 Farnell (G. S.) - - 13 
 
 Farrar (Archdeacon) - 12, 16 
 
 Fitzpatrick (W. J.) - 3 
 
 I'it/wvgram Sir F. - 7 
 
 Ford (H.) - - - 9 
 
 Forster (F.) - - - 16 
 
 Fowler (J. K.) - - 9 
 
 Francis (Francis) - 9 
 
 Francis (H. R.) - - 22 
 
 Freeman (Edward A.) - 3 
 
 Froude (James A.) 3, 5, 16 
 
 Furneau.x (W.) - - 17 
 
 Gardiner (Samuel R.) - 3 
 
 Gilkes (A. H.) - - 16 
 
 Gleig (G. R.) - - 6 
 
 Goethe - - - - 14 
 
 Graham (G. F.) - - 12 
 
 Granville (H., Countess) 5 
 
 Graves (R. P.) - - 5 
 
 Green (T. Hill) - - 10 
 
 Greville (C. C. F.) - 3 
 
 Grey (Mrs. W.) - - 20 
 
 Haggard (H. Rider) - 16, 20 
 
 Halliwell-Phillipps (J.) 5 
 
 Harrison (Jane E.) - 13 
 
 Hart (A. B.)- - - 3 
 
 Harte (Bret) - - 16, 
 
 Hartwig (G.) - - 17, 18 
 
 Hassall (A.) . - - 5 
 
 Hawker (Col. Peter) - 9 
 
 Hearn (W. E.) - - 3. 10 [ 
 
 Heathcote(J.M.&C.G.) 8 
 
 Helmholtz (Hermann von) 18 
 
 Hodgson (Shad. H.) -10,22 
 
 Hooper (G.) - - - 
 Hornung (E. W.) 
 Howard (B. D.) - 
 Howitt (William) 
 Hullah(Iohn) - 
 Hume (David) - 
 Hunt (W.) - 
 Hutchinson (Horace G.) 
 Huth(A. H.) 
 Ingelow (Jean) 
 
 James (C. A.) 
 efferies (Richard) 
 Johnson (J. & J. H.) 
 
 Johnstone (L.) - - 10 
 
 Jones (E. E. C.) - - 10 
 
 Jordan (W. L.) - - 12 
 
 Joyce (P. W.) - - 3 
 
 Justinian - - - 10 
 
 Kalisch (M. M.) - - 24 
 
 Kant (L) - - - 10 
 
 Kendall (May) - - 14 
 
 Killick (A. H.) - - 10 
 
 Kitchin (G. W.) - - 3 
 
 Knight (E. F.) - - 7, 21 
 
 Ladd (G. T.) - - 11 
 Lang (Andrew) 
 
 3, 8, 13, 14, 16, 19. 23 
 
 Lascelles (Hon. G.) - 8, 9 
 
 Lear (H. L. Sidney) - 22 
 
 Lecky (W. E. H.) - 3. M 
 
 Lees (J. A.) - 
 I Leonard (A. G.) - 
 Leslie (T. E. C.) - 
 Lewes (G. H.) 
 Levton (F.) - 
 Lodge (H, C.) 
 Loftie (W. J.) - 
 Longman (C. J.) - 
 Longman (F. W.) 
 Lubbock (Sir John) 
 Lyall (Edna) 
 Lytton (Earl of) - 
 Macaulay (Lord) - 4 
 Macdonald (George) - 
 Macfarren (Sir G. A.) - 
 Mackail (f. W.) - 
 Macleod (H. D.) - 
 Macpherson (H. A.) 
 Maher (M.) - 
 Marbot (Baron de) 
 Marshman (J. C.) 
 Martin (A. P.) 
 Martineau (James) 
 Maskelyne (J.N.) 
 Maunder (S.) 
 Max Miiller (F.) - 
 
 8,9 
 
 5 
 
 16 
 
 7 
 
 7 
 
 23 
 
 10 
 
 3 
 
 8 
 
 13 
 
 14, 19, 20 
 
 23 
 
 21, 23 
 
 23 
 
 May (Sir T. Erskine) 
 Meade (L. T.) 
 Melville (G. J. Whyte) 
 Mendelssohn (Felix) - 
 Merivale (Dean) - 
 Mill (James) 
 
 (John Stuart) 
 
 Milner (G.) - 
 Molcsworth (Mrs.) 
 Monck (W. H. S.) 
 Montague (C.) 
 Montagu (F. C.) - 
 Murdoch (W. G. Burn) 
 Nansen (F.) - 
 Nesbit (E.) - 
 O'Brien (W.) 
 Oliphant (Mrs.) - 
 Osbourne (L) 
 Parr (Mrs.) - 
 Payn (James) 
 Pavne-Gallwev (Sir R.) 
 Peary (J. and R.)- 
 Perring (Sir P.) - 
 Phillipps-Wolley (C.) - 
 Piatt (S. & J. J.) - 
 Plato - - - - 
 Pole (W.) - 
 Pollock (W. H.) - 
 Poole (W.H. and Mrs.) 
 
 Page 
 
 7, 21 , Saintsbury (G.) - 
 23 Scott-Montagu (J.) 
 
 12 Seebohm (F.) ■: 
 II Sewell (Eliz. M.) - 
 14 Shakespeare 
 
 3 Shand (A.J. L) - 
 Sharpe (R. R.) - 
 Shearman (M.) 
 Sheppard (Edgar) 
 Shirres (L. P.) - 
 Sidgwick (Alfred) 
 Sinclair (A. )- 
 Smith (R. Bosworth) - 
 (W. P. Haskett) - 
 
 23 Sophocles . . - 
 
 13 Southey (R.) 
 
 - 12, 21 ' Stanlev (Bishop) - 
 9 . Steel (A. G.) 
 
 - II -(J. H.) - - - 
 
 5 Stephen (Sir James) - 
 
 5 Stephens (H. Morse) - 
 
 6 Stevenson (R. L.) 15, 
 
 24 j Stock (St. George) 
 9 I ' Stonehenge ' 
 
 19 Stuart-Wortley (A. J.) 
 II, 12, 24 Slubbs (J. W.) - 
 
 3 
 23 
 9 
 
 13 
 16 
 15 
 
 15, 21 
 
 24! 
 
 Page 
 9 
 9 
 
 4,5 
 
 17 
 
 5, 15 
 
 9 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 17, 20 
 
 4 Sturgis (J.) - 
 
 19 Suffolk and Berkshire 
 16 i (Earl of) 
 
 23 , Sullivan (Sir E.) - 
 4 ' Sully (James) 
 II I Sutherland (A. and G.) 
 11, 12 Sutlner (B. von) - 
 23 Swinburne (A. J.) 
 
 20 Symes (J. E.) 
 II i Theocritus - 
 
 7 ! Thomson (Archbishop) 
 
 4 ! Todd (A.) - 
 
 7 i Toynbee(A.) 
 
 7 Trevelyan (Sir G. O.) - 
 
 15 Trollope (Anthony) 
 4 T>Trell (R. Y.) - 
 
 16 I Verney (Francis P.) 
 
 17 , Virgil - - . . 
 16 , Von Hohnel (L.) - 
 
 16; Wakeman (H. O.) 
 
 8, 9 Walford (Mrs.) - 
 
 7 I Wallaschek (R.) - 
 
 23 j Walker (Jane H.) 
 
 8, 16 Walpole (Spencer) 
 
 Prendergast (J. P.) 
 t (R.T.) 
 
 Pritchet 
 Proctor (R. A.) 
 Raine (James) 
 Ransome (C>Til) - 
 Rhoades (j.) 
 Rich (A.) 
 Richardson (Sir B.W.) 
 Rickaby (John) - 
 — (Joseph) 
 Riley (J. W.) 
 Rockhill (W. W.) 
 Roget (Peter M.)- 
 Romanes (G. J.) - 
 Roberts (C. G. D.) 
 Ronalds (A.) 
 Roosevelt (T.Ji - 
 Rossetti (M. F.) 
 
 15 Walsingham (Lord) 
 13 Walter (J.) - 
 9 Watson (A. E. T.) 
 8 Wcbb(S. and B.) 
 22 Webb (T. E.) 
 4 I Weir (R.) - - - 
 8 West (B. B.) 
 
 9, 18,23 (C.) 
 
 3 Weyman (Stanley) 
 Whately (Archbishop)- 
 (E.J.) - 
 
 5 
 
 17 
 13 
 
 6 
 13 
 
 7 
 
 5 
 
 6, 17 
 
 23 
 
 22 
 
 6 
 8.9 
 
 13- IS- 
 
 IS 
 7 
 
 - 12. 19 
 13 
 IS 
 
 9 
 3 
 
 - 21, 23 
 
 Whishaw(F. I.) - 
 Wilcocks (J. C.) - 
 Wilkins (G.)- 
 Willich (C. M.) - 
 Wilson (A. J.) 
 Wishart (G.) 
 Wolff (H.W.) - 
 Woodgate (W. B.) 
 Wood (J. G.) 
 Wylie (J. H.) 
 Vouatt (W.) - 
 Zeller (E.) • 
 
 8 
 17.23 
 
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