THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY T3 l i f e tk mm o? m J UL 1 4 i 93) OF THE U ^ERSir Y 0F . Ur IL ^i'0i$ Rev. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. COMPILED MOSTLY FROM HIS OWN LIPS. HiDclftlt Wtoitsanb. GLASGOW: JOHN S. MARK & SONS, LONDON: simpkin, marshall and CO. Melbourne; geoiigij rorertson, * - -B G9g 10 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. its ancient battlefields and Danish camp, its flowing stream and wooded heights, and its illustrious roll of men renowned in literary and ecclesiastical story, furnished much well fitted to excite intellectual activity, feed the youthful imagination, develop the latent love of natural beauty, fill the soul with noble resolve for highest service in the cause of humanity and God, and so be the becoming birthplace of Thomas Guthrie. The father of Thomas Guthrie was a banker, and one of the leading merchants in Brechin. For a number of years he occupied the prominent position of chief magistrate, and in that capacity acquired an amount of respect and popu¬ larity that stood his family in good stead. But in a town containing little more than 5000 inhabitants there was not much scope for mercantile enterprise, nor much hope of amassing wealth. To maintain appearances, and provide for the requirements of his numerous family, the elder Guthrie, like many others in rural districts, added to the other ramifications of his business that of a grocer. Probably at one period of his career Thomas was twitted about this fact. At all events, it was a circumstance to which he not unfrequently referred, and always, be it said, with manly and proper feeling. Speaking at an early closing meeting in Edinburgh, he said: “ Shopkeepers are one of the most important classes of the community. With few exceptions, the houses in Edinburgh stand upon shops; and if the foundation go to pieces, where will the superstructures be 'l Did not Napoleon Bonaparte call us a nation of shopkeepers, and did not this nation of shopkeepers lick Napoleon Bonaparte and all Europe to boot? I say, then, up with the shopkeepers! Close your shops in good time, and let us have a right race of shopkeepers, morally, physi¬ cally, intellectually, and religiously. Although the brains BIRTH, BIRTHPLACE, AND PARENTAGE. 11 of our shopkeepers are not yet what they should be, and what they will be, I will say for them that they make the best, very best, the most virtuous, honest, and religious part of the community. They are not what you may call a learned people, but they are very clever, very sharp; and I will say for Edinburgh, that one or two of our most sagacious men are shopkeepers, whose intelligence I’ll stake any day you like against ‘ the tottle of the whole ’ of the advocates and all other men in the city. I say, let no man despise shopkeepers. They are the backbone of our country, and if the backbone is not right, depend upon it, the whole body is wrong. With regard to the grocers, I have a special interest in them. My father was a grocer, a merchant engaged in various branches of business. He had a shop all his days; and do you think I am ashamed of that ] I thank God I had such a father, a man who maintained a high character in the community, and, I repeat, God forbid that I should be ashamed of such a man! More than that, I have two sons in the trade. I might have sent these sons to India, or used any influence I had to get them into Government offices. Some of my genteel friends held up their hands in astonishment that I should have made my sons grocers. But I’ll tell you why I made them grocers, and did not send them to India. I wanted my sons to stand upon their own feet independently of any man’s patronage; and if any man wants a good advice from me as to how he would dispose of his sons, I recommend him to do the same. I felt that if I asked favours for my own family, I should soon be required to ask favours for other people; and if I once began, I saw I would soon become a perfect Solicitor-General. I felt that by doing so I w T ould soon lose any influence I possessed with great men, whose acquaintance I never sought, though they sought mine; and 12 LIFE OF REV, THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. that, in so far as I could make a good use of that influence, I was bound to use it for the religious, educational, and benevolent interests of the people. I have reserved my influence for those; and so far as asking favours for myself or others of my family, these hands are clean. ,, Thomas Guthrie’s mother was in all respects a most superior woman. Both by natural endowments and by education, she was far a-head of the average lady of her time. She was a “ managing ” woman, and inculcated economy; she was a prudent woman, and kept her own counsel; and, above all, she was a good Christian and an inflexible Seceder. Her influence with her family accom¬ panied and flowed from this one fact more than any other. Her strong love for Secession was the result of still stronger religious convictions. She was no stern bigot either; but practised and enforced toleration where it was not incom¬ patible with orthodoxy and religious freedom. At that time of day the Seceders were a comparatively humble and obscure body. The Church of Scotland was dominant and all powerful. But the acorn planted by the Erskines was slowly yet surely assuming the proportions of the deep- rooted and wide-spreading oak. Mrs Guthrie was a woman who thought for herself, and taught her family to do likewise. She was a staunch and unflinching friend of non¬ intrusion and anti-patronage. She held strong views as to the necessity of reforming the Established Church, which she regarded as an Augean stable requiring the services of some ecclesiastical Hercules. The example of a strong- minded mother is all potent in a family, especially when that sometimes equivocal attribute is accompanied, as it was in this case, with perfect Christian consistency. Guthrie was early taught to cherish a warm feeling towards the Seceders, and this continued to be a distinguishing trait of his BIRTH, BIRTHPLACE, AND PARENTAGE. 13 character all through life. Speaking on behalf of the proposed union of the churches, he says:— “My regard for the Seceders, if I may be allowed to allude to personal matters, is not a causeless prejudice. It is founded on a better knowledge of the Seceders than perhaps many in this house have. One of my parents—a sainted mother, and how she would have rejoiced to see this day! — was a Seceder, and other two members of my family felt themselves constrained, by the thrusting in of an unpopular minister into the collegiate charge of Brechin, to leave the parish church; and in consequence of the accommodation in the parish church being deficient when we were young, we were all Seceders. We were sent to the Secession Church. Until I came to the college, I was in the regular habit of sitting in the Burgher Church; and, until I became a preacher, I generally worshipped, on the Sabbath evening, in the Burgher Church of Brechin. I do not think I lost anything by that. With my mother’s milk I drank in an abhorrence of patronage; and it was at her knees, sir, that I first learned to pray, that I learned to form a reverence for the Bible as the inspired word of God, that I learned to hold the sanctity of the Sabbath, that I learned the peculiarities of the Scottish religion, that I learned my regard for the principles of civil and religious liberty which have made me hate oppression, and, whether it be a pope, or a prelate, or a patron, or an ecclesiastical demagogue, resist the oppressor. I have seen them outside in, and inside out; know more of that body than a very large number of those here, and the sound of Seceder, sir, sounds like music in my ear, and is dear to my heart. I did not say they were perfect. I do not know anybody perfect except our friend, indicating Dr Gibson, who has to confess nothing at all. With their anti-Burghers and Burghers distinction, their 14 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. Lifters and anti-Lifters, and with their aversion in the olden time—though they have changed wonderfully of late, and let no man ever say that he will not change—with their aversion to paraphrases and hymns, to gowns and bands, to crosses on the outside of the church, or any ornament whatever within, there is no denying it, my friends were a little narrow. There are worse things, however, in the world than being narrow. The way of life is narrow. It is said that my friends, the Seceders, were narrow¬ minded and gnarled. They were gnarled. They were a gnarled oak, sound to the core, solid in the grain, and the very timber, before all others, out of which men like to build ships in which to fight battles, or ride out the storm. “ I knew the old Seceders well. Perhaps we may find that there is not so much difference between them and us as there used to be. This may be, not because the old Seceders have come down to us, but because we have risen up to them. They have now no exclusive right to the honour of having their name made a reproach because of their piety. I re¬ member the day when it was so—the time when the man who would not sware or debauch himself, who maintained family worship, would talk to another about his soul, and rebuke his fault, was sneered at as a Seceder. Dr Burns of Kilsyth used to tell how, when travelling in a stage coach north of Aberdeen, he encountered a farmer, who, it turned out, was on the way to see his minister about baptism. Dr Burns seized the opportunity of putting a good word into the man’s ear; speaking to him about the importance of the ordinance. Whereupon the other looked at him astonished, and said, ‘ Ye’ll be a Sinceder manf and when Dr Burns repudiated the connexion, telling him that he was mistaken, and that so far from being a Seceder, he was a minister of the Established Church, the man, more astonished still, BIRTH, BIRTHPLACE, AND PARENTAGE. 15 exclaimed, ‘If ye’r no a Seceder, then ye'll be frae the south,’ adding, ‘We dinna trouble oursels much about these things here; the fact is, if the lairds are guid to us, we dinna fash oursels about the ministers.’ I will give an example from my own experience. I was returning from the General Assembly to my own parish of Arbirlot, when, between Dun¬ dee and that place, a man mounted the coach who was pretty drunk He had no sooner seated himself than he began swearing at a shocking rate; and while I was thinking how I could close the blasphemer’s mouth, and whether such an attempt might not be like casting pearls before swine, his neighbour on the other side turned round, and solemnly and affectionately rebuked him; whereupon, with eyes rolling in his head, and speech thick in his mouth, and a fiendish sneer lurking in his cheeks, he looked round, and said, ‘Ye’ll doubtless be a Seceder.’ In this case the drunken man uttered a truth—the gentleman was a Secession minis¬ ter. I tell you, my friends, who are sitting with us in this house, that the day has gone by for such remarks, and that Seceders, as I am happy to think, have no longer the exclusive right to be reproached for godliness. This should make a union all the more hearty and practicable. The Seceders have not sunk, but we have risen. The descendants of those good old Seceders, so far as I know, have not for¬ feited their title to be considered worthy of their ancestry.” But there were other directions in which the superior mind and intelligence of Mrs Guthrie made themselves manifest. She was an ardent politician. At the time of which we write, Brechin joined with Aberdeen, Arbroath, Montrose, and Bervie, in sending a member to Parliament, and we have heard from one who knows the circumstances well, that Mrs Guthrie’s influence had a great deal to do in controlling the election. Mr Joseph Hume was 16 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. her favourite candidate; she approved and admired his economics; she sounded his praises far and wide, and at the election, which was marked by an unprecedented excitement, she fought his battle so well, that, as far as Brechin was concerned, his opponent (a Mr Mitchell) was nowhere. The mutual sympathies of Lord Panmure and Mrs Guthrie in favour of the great political economist led to a somewhat close intimacy between the two families, and this friendship was helpful in various ways to the subject of our Memoir. We have given these extracts and dwelt thus long and minutely upon the religious tendencies and political sympa¬ thies of Mrs Guthrie, because it was doubtless largely due to her teaching and example that Dr Guthrie exhibited in after life, as the most distinguishing feature of his character, a “ charity as boundless as the sea,” and a love for humanity as deep. CHAPTER II. EDUCATION AND CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. From wliat has been already said, it will be inferred that Mrs Guthrie early took the education of her children in hand. She did not, indeed, seek to teach them “little Latin and less Greek/' nor did she attempt to assist them over the Pons Asinorum , but she carefully laid the founda¬ tions for the superstructure that was to follow. Thomas, in common with his brothers, was sent to the local academy, which, it is not very complimentary to say, was the prin¬ cipal seminary in the town. The “local habitation” of this educational institution had long been “ To hastening ills a prey,” and the tuition imparted was not of the highest standard. Merit must be paid for, and the master of Brechin academy was not well paid. Appointed by the magistrates, he had a salary of £8 17s. 9d. a year, and a free house. Besides this, however, he had an allowance from Government in the rents of certain houses attached to the “Maison Dieu.” Since Guthrie was a scholar, the position of the schoolmaster has been greatly changed for the better, and Brechin is no exception to the rule. School-houses have also been built according to a much higher standard of taste and comfort. An elegant Gothic building, erected by Lord Panmure in 1838, for the accommodation of the Burgh schools, now occupies the site of the wretched-looking edifice in which Guthrie began his acquaintanceship with “schools and schoolmasters.” 18 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. What progress the boy Guthrie made in his studies whilst attending the Grammar School does not specially appear. His great natural powers, and his fair literary attainments in subsequent years, would lead to the conclusion that his position in the class was at least more than respectable. His estimate of teachers in general, and of one in particular, will appear from the following extracts :— “As to the laudation about schoolmasters, it is really worth reading. Dr Muir Hooked on these gentlemen as scholars, and as most exemplary individuals, and as ani¬ mated by the feelings of honourable men and gentlemen/ Now, I say that is quite true of many of them. I have the greatest respect for country schoolmasters ; but it is a notorious fact, that, in consequence of the Established Church having no power of putting out unfit and inefficient schoolmasters, many of them are inefficient. I have known the most daidling bodies in the world in these schools. I once knew a daft creature in a parish school wearing a beard as long as that [measuring nearly a yard], and I knew a case of one who was a parish schoolmaster for thirty years, the very greatest drunkard in his own parish, or in half-a-dozen round about him, and he died a parish school¬ master. “To show the estimate the people had of the school¬ masters of the olden time, I will tell you of a remarkable man in my own native parish, Mr Linton, teacher of the Grammar School. An honest man came to him one day with a ‘ halfiin,’ a long empty chap, who had taken it into his head that he would have some little learning. The father said, ‘Oh, Mr Linton, you see my laddie’s fond o’ lear. I’m thinkin’ o’ making a scholar o’ him/ ‘ Oh/ said Mr Linton, looking at him, and not seeing any sign that there was much in him, ‘what are you to make of him'?’ EDUCATION AND CHOICE OF A PROFESSION 19 ‘You see, Mr Linton/ rejoined the father—and it showed how sound the old Scotchman was—‘if he gets grace, we’ll inak’ a minister o’ him.’ ‘Oh, but/ says Mr Linton, ‘if he does not get grace, what will you make of him then!’ ‘Weel, in that case,’ said the parent, ‘if he disna get grace, we’ll just mak’ a dominie o’ him.’ ” When he had reached his twelfth year, Guthrie was sent to study at the University of Edinburgh. It was the practice of the time to send boys at this early age to commence their university education—a practice which, in after years, he frequently characterised as extremely foolish. At such a tender age it could scarcely be expected that he would take any very high position in the various classes, nor does it appear that he ever greatly distinguished himself as a student. Having attended the required preparatory classes, he entered the Divinity Hall, then in a very inefficient state. We are not fully aware of the motives which actuated him in making choice of the ministry as his profession. His mother’s influence, his early and abiding love for evangelical doctrine, and a laudable ambition to be and do something in the world, may have been the more powerful incentives to the course adopted. His parents, too, might cherish the hope that, through Lord Panmure’s influence, their son would rise to a high place in the church; and that this, taken in conjunction with the oratorical tendencies that he had early displayed, would secure for him a high measure of usefulness and popularity. That he chose the ministry of the Church of Scotland in preference to that of the Secession need not be matter of surprise, even keeping in view the strong Secession tendencies of his mother. His family on his father’s side had been identified for generations with the Established Church, and still continued adherence to its principles. Its whole creed he could readily and conscicn- 20 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. tiously subscribe, and if there was grievous and wide-spread defection both in doctrine and in practice, there was so much the more need that faithful ministers might be raised up to vindicate the power of a holy life, and contend for the “faith once delivered to the saints.” In his university studies Guthrie was assisted by Dr Ritchie, Professor of Divinity; Dr Brunton, Professor of Hebrew; and Dr Meiklejohn, Professor of Church History. In one of these at least he was privileged to see an example of kindliness, toleration, and sympathy with progress,—for Dr Ritchie, formerly minister of St Andrew’s Church, Glasgow, was the first minister in the Church of Scotland who recommended the use of organs. Dr Guthrie had for his fellow-students some of the great men with whom he was subsequently associated in the “Ten Years’ Conflict,” and in the formation and building up of the Free Church; but it does not appear that as a student of divinity he gave much indication of the great powers afterwards made so manifest both on the platform and in the pulpit. After going through the usual curriculum, he returned home, and was licensed to preach the gospel by the Presbytery of Brechin. CHAPTER III. PROBATIONERSHIP, MEDICAL STUDIES, AND BANKING. Newly licensed preachers do not always find it easy to obtain a speedy and acceptable settlement. Some of the most distinguished ministers in the church have had to wait for years ere their talents were recognised by patrons and congregations, and a suitable sphere of labour and usefulness assigned them. It was so in the case of Dr Guthrie. Indeed, if the truth must be told, at this period of his career he was far from being popular as a preacher. He had not acquired the knack of making friends, either in or out of the pulpit. Some of the local critics who heard his trial discourses, gave judgment upon them in terms far from complimentary. One kind friend called him a “bullerin blockhead,” and whatever the phrase might mean, neither the preacher nor his friends had any difficulty in understanding that it did not imply, on the part of the critic, an excess of admiration. From the outset of his pulpit career he gave full play to his lungs and voice, and his aim was always directed to speaking the truth without fear, favour, or affectation. His sermons were not really dull, nor could they be objected to on orthodox grounds, but still there was something about them which prevented them from catching the popular ear. Failing to procure an immediate settlement, but having the not far distant prospect of being presented to a parish by Lord Panmure, Guthrie determined to proceed to France with the view of increasing his knowledge of medicine, in the study of which he took a deep interest. Accordingly, 22 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. he spent the winter of 1826-7 in Paris attending medical classes, and getting such insight into medical matters as the hospitals of that city could so well furnish. His medical studies would seem to have been of a somewhat desultory and amateur character, and did not indicate any intention of changing his profession, but only of qualifying himself more fully for the performance of its duties. In this respect, his attention to medicine was eminently useful, and subse¬ quently gave him great power for good when labouring among the poor in the parish of St. John's, Edinburgh. When he went to Paris he took with him an introduction to Baron Guil. Dupuytren, then considered the first surgeon in Europe. Proving himself an apt and enthusiastic pupil, the Baron took a special interest in his studies, and treated him with much friendly familiarity. The Baron was of short stature, and his Scottish student was over six feet in height. On one occasion, when going his rounds in one of the hospitals, the Baron stopped at the couch of a patient, whose leg had been recently amputated, and turning to Guthrie, said, “Take care of your legs; there's a man who would never have had his limb amputated but for its inordinate length; it was always in his way." Both master and pupil enjoyed the joke; Guthrie, probably, all the more that he was considered a “ strapping" fellow, and, despite his stature, by no means unhandsome. Several countrymen, who afterwards rose to the highest distinction in the medical profession, sat at this time, like Guthrie, at the feet of this Gamaliel in medicine; and with some of these he formed friendships that were as permanent as they were intimate and valuable. That his medical studies should occasionally give a tinge to his word pictures was only to be expected; and one or two of the exquisite touches in the following extract are MEDICAL STUDIES AND BANKING. 23 probably due to this source. Speaking of the street Arabs, he says :—“ And they are clever fellows, some of these boys. They are, as we say, real clever. There are some excellent specimens among them. For example, I remember walking along the street we call Hanover Street, when an old lady was going toddling along on her old limbs, with a huge umbrella in her hand. A little urchin came up who had no cap on his head, but plenty of brains within; no shoes on his feet, but a great deal of understanding for all that. Very well, I saw him fix upon that venerable old lady to be operated upon, and my friend beside me, Dr Bell, never, I will venture to say, performed an operation with half the dexterity with which that boy skinned that old lady. He went up and appealed to her for charity. She gave him a grunt. He went up again. She gave him a poke. He saw there was no chance of getting at her through her philan¬ thropy, and he thought to get at her purse through her selfishness, so he pulled up his sleeve to his elbow—his yellow, skinny elbow—and running up, he cried out to her, displaying the limb, and exhibiting his rags and woeful face, “ Jist oot o’ the Infirmary wi’ the typhus fever, mam.' I never saw such an electrical effect. The old lady put her hand to the very bottom of her pocket, and taking out a shilling, thrust it into his hand and ran away.” In 1828 Dr Guthrie returned to Brechin. Not obtaining a settled charge, he entered the bank of which his father was a manager, and whilst on the Sabbath he occasionally exercised his gifts as a probationer, during the week he applied himself with great assiduity to the business of banking. In this way he acquired a knowledge of human nature and of monetary transactions, to which he owed much of that practical sagacity in the ordinary affairs of life by which he was afterwards eminently characterised. Address- 24 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. ing a meeting in Dundee, lie alludes, in his own way, to this period of his history :— “I do not intend to give you any learned disquisition on commerce. The truth is, that is rather out of my line, and I wont meddle with it in that way; not that I am altogether ignorant of commerce either. I don’t want any of you to understand that. I was a banker for two years ; and Mr David Milne, formerly of the Union Bank, said when I left that profession (for if nobody will praise me, I must praise myself), that if I preached as well as I banked, I would get on remarkably well; so you see I am not so ignorant of these things as one of my brethren with whom I was sitting one day. He took up a newspaper and began reading, when he came upon ‘Sound’ intelligence, which you Dundee people all know means the ships that pass through the ‘ Sound.’ ‘ Why,’ says he, ‘ what do they mean by “ Sound Y 9 Is it intelligence that may be relied on V “Neither am I so ignorant of agricultural affairs. At' least I have been in the habit of testing the agricultural knowledge of my brethren in the church by asking them how many teeth a cow has in her front upper jaw; and they don’t know a bit about it; they don’t know that a cow has no teeth in her front upper jaw at all. Some of them guessed half-a-dozen, and some of them a whole dozen. They were all as ignorant as an old friend of mine in the city of Brechin, who wished to have a first-rate cow. He accordingly gave .£12 or £15 for a handsome one, thinking that she was in the flush of her milk and the beauty of her youth. But a wag went up to him afterwards, and said to him, ‘Dear me, look, Mr Smith, she hasna a tooth in her upper jaw. You have been fairly taken in. Instead of buying a young milk cow ? she is a venerable grandmother ! ’ ” CHAPTER IV. SETTLEMENT AT ARBIRLOT AND MARRIAGE. The ministerial charge of Arbirlot becoming vacant by the sudden death of the incumbent, Mr Watson, the presentation was given to Mr Guthrie by the Crown, through the influence of Lord Panmure, the only heritor in the parish. The settlement took place in 1830, and, on the whole, was as agreeable to the Congregation as to the presentee himself. Once in harness, the Dr did not allow the grass to grow beneath his feet, but began his life’s work in good earnest. Arbirlot is a small parish in the county and on the sea coast of Forfarshire. It was a purely rural parish, and during his ministry had this remarkable peculiarity, that there was only one person, a kind of freethinker, who did not attend the parish church. The population at the time of Dr Guthrie’s settlement was exactly 1000, and altogether agricultural. The whole parish is the property of Lord Panmure. The stipend paid to the parish minister in Dr Guthrie’s time was £184 4s. 5d., with the addition of a manse, a garden, and a glebe of four acres. Some years after his settlement a new parish church was built, having accom¬ modation for 639 worshippers. There was no dissent in the parish, no opposition, no controversy; and with no special requirements of any kind to stimulate the young minister’s efforts, he might have settled down into a quiet, easy¬ going country parson, whose memory would have perished with himself, but for the exciting and eventful times upon which he fell, and his noble determination to consecrate his whole powers to the service of God and humanity. 0 26 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. The turning point of Dr Guthrie's career as a preacher was reached during his ministry at Arbirlot. It happened in this wise. He found that the agricultural class (of which his congregation was almost entirely made up) was not easily awakened or impressed by the ordinary pulpit ministrations. He had thundered in their ears the terrors of Mount Sinai; he had sounded the Gospel trumpet with a blast loud enough to rouse the dead; he had implored, threatened, and almost scolded them: but nothing seemed permanently to arrest their attention—they went to sleep under his most fervent and heart-stirring appeals. One Sabbath, however, he happened to introduce an interesting anecdote; and he observed that its effect was electric—■ even the most somnolent of his congregation woke up and listened with attention while he proceeded to “ point the moral." The service over, he informed his wife that he had discovered the way to keep his congregation awake; and from that time forward he missed no opportunity of illustrating his discourse either with an appropriate story, or an equally effective and apropos effort of the imagination. He had another way of finding out what was most adapted to his audience. It was his habit to go over his sermons with a class of young people; and from their answers he easily gathered what parts of his sermons they understood and felt, and what parts, on the other hand, they had little interest in. By all these lessons he sagaciously profited in his after preparations. His ministry roused the people of Arbirlot out of the profound sleep in which they had been permitted to indulge, and was accompanied by a measure of spiritual blessing. His fame began to spread, and was considerably increased by a public lecture which he delivered at Arbroath in opposition to Voluntaryism. The attention of the metro- SETTLEMENT AT ARBIRLOT AND MARRIAGE. 27 polis was turned upon him; and the late Alexander M. Dunlop went to Arbirlot to hear him preach, and carried back to Edinburgh the report of his great powers in the pulpit. It is worthy of mention that during his ministry at Arbirlot, Dr Guthrie was prostrated by a very serious attack of fever. For many days his life hung in the balance; and night after night his friends watched him with hardly a shadow of hope that he would see the morning. Had he not had a frame of great vigour he could not have survived the attack; but through God’s mercy his life was preserved for the valuable and important services which it was his great privilege to render both to the church and to the world. Besides the faithful discharge of his ordinary parochial duties, Dr Guthrie, while at Arbirlot, gave himself, as occasion offered, to the general work of the church. It was at this time that Dr Chalmers set on foot his great scheme of Church Extension. In that, enterprise Dr Guthrie took a warm interest, and both by sympathy and personal effort did much to promote its success. He looked upon Dr Chalmers’ idea of planting 200 new churches in the most destitute localities of the land as a grand conception, and this, in all probability, was the first application of that powerful magnetism which afterwards drew him so closely to the first moderator of the Free Church. While at Arbirlot, Dr Guthrie had scope and verge enough for cultivating his love of angling, and from the waters of the Elliott, which runs through the parish, and which had long been noted for trouts of a peculiar relish, he landed many a fine basketful. Fault-finders are a numerous class, and Dr Guthrie was not without his detractors. He was charged with cruelty to animals, and the malignant accusation 28 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. was founded on his predilection for the sport which Isaac Walton has made classic. The accusation was scarcely worth heeding, but after a lecture by Mr Gamgee on cruelty to animals, the Dr referred to it in the following terms :— “ In my view, the man or the woman who inflicts cruelty either upon their children, or the brute creatures, sins against the light of reason as well as against the law of God. Hogarth, the great portrait painter, painted some pictures representing the progress of cruelty. He began with a boy torturing cats, and ended by showing him at the gallows for murder. I warn parents against allowing their children to kill flies, or to inflict needless pain on any creature. It is quite consistent with my profession that I should come forward to take a part in such a meeting as this, but some of my friends, who remember a picture in the Exhibition, in which I am represented as fishing in a boat, may be inclined to ask whether I practise what I preach. Now, I believe I have derived health both in body and mind from angling; but if I really thought I was inflicting cruelty on fishes by so doing, I would not have engaged in that amusement. But one day, when I was fishing along with my son, I caught a trout of which I happened to make a post-mortem examination, and in its belly I found a rusty hook and a piece of gut, which must have remained there for weeks or months. It is quite clear that the fish could not have felt any pain from that hook, otherwise it would not have seized so readily on mine. In fact, the trout was evidently in the most comfortable circumstances in the world. People think that when a fish is taken out of the water, and when they see it walloping its tail about, that it is suffering great pain : but the fact is, that after the fish is dead, the tail wallops for a good while.” Very shortly after his settlement at Arbirlot, Dr Guthrie SETTLEMENT AT ARBIRLOT AND MARRIAGE. 29 married Ann Burns, daughter of the Key. James Burns, minister of Brechin For this young lady he had long cherished a sincere, attachment, and only delayed the consummation of their union until he was settled in a regular ministerial charge. Mrs Guthrie belongs to a family that has supplied both the Established and the Free Churches with some of their most eminent ministers. She was a niece of Dr Burns of Corstorphine, who had several brothers no less popular ministers than himself ; and she was also related to the late Professor Islay Burns, of the Glasgow Free Church College. This may perhaps be the most fitting opportunity to put on record the fact that, throughout his whole married life, Dr Guthrie enjoyed an exceptional degree of conjugal felicity. All his plans and efforts were heartily supported by his amiable wife, from whom also he received needed encouragement in times of doubt, difficulty, and danger. “She was—but words are wanting to say what; Say what a Christian should be—she was that.’ CHAPTER V. CALL TO EDINBURGH—OLD GREYFRIARS—ST JOHN’S. After a residence of seven years in Arbirlot, Dr Gutlirie was, in 1837, called to the metropolis. By this time “his fame was in all the churches.” He had established for himself a reputation as an orator second to none in the Church of Scotland, Dr Chalmers alone excepted. He had also been enabled to do the church some service. We have already referred to his co-operation with Dr Chalmers in his Church Extension Scheme. But he came still more prominently before the world in connection with the Non¬ intrusion controversy. Whatever he undertook to do he did with all his might, and this, added to his fervid burning eloquence, made him the cynosure of the church. It was not difficult to foresee that he was destined to become “a pillar in Israel;” and hence he was placed in a sphere where his genius and energy could find the most ample scope. Old Greyfriars was selected as the field of his future opera¬ tions. A vacancy had occurred in this collegiate charge by the death of Dr Anderson, and the Town Council conferred on him the great honour and responsibility of giving him the presentation. Arbirlot and its people had taken a great hold on his heart, and to leave its fresh rural fields to work in the dingy closes and “lands” of the Cowgate, was no easy trial. Impelled, however, by that overruling Providence which so often urges men of power to leave an easy for a more difficult spot, Dr Guthrie accepted the call to the collegiate charge of Old Greyfriars. It was no easy ordeal that he had to undergo in being CALL TO EDINBURGH. 31 thus transferred from a small and isolated country parish, with little more than a thousand souls, to a populous and stirring metropolitan charge. Here, too, he had to fill the place and maintain the unrivalled prestige and reputation left behind them by such men as Eobertson the historian and Dr Erskine—the one the great leader of the moderate, and the other of the evangelical party in their day and generation. Then, what soul-stirring reminiscences belonged to that same old church ! It had been associated with many a manly struggle for spiritual independence. Within its walls, in 1638, the national covenant was partly subscribed, and in the churchyard surrounding it reposed the ashes of many of Scotland’s most illustrious sons. The population of the parish were, on the whole, illiterate and wicked, and neglected the ordinances of God. Little wonder, then, that the change produced a profound and lasting impression on Dr Guthrie’s mind. “ The contrast,” he has declared, “ both morally and physically, between my present and my former sphere, was such as, without God’s help, to appal the stoutest heart. My country parish had no papists; I had come to one that swarmed with them. My country parish had only one public-house: and I had come to one where tippling abounded, and the owners of dramshops grew like toadstools on a public ruin. With one thousand inhabitants, my country parish had but one man who could not read; and I had come to one with hundreds who did not know a letter. My country parish was not disgraced by one drunken woman; and I had come to one where women drank, and scores of mothers starved their infants to feed their vices. My country parish might show a darned, but had not a ragged coat; and I had come to one of loopholed poverty, where men and women were hung with rags, and the naked, cracked, red, ulcered feet of little shivering creatures trod the iron 32 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. streets. In my country parish there was but one person who did not attend the house of God; and I had come to one where only five of the first one hundred and fifty I visited ever entered either church or chapel. My old country parish had not a house at least without a Bible; and I had come to one where many families had no Bible on the shelf nor a bedstead on the floor. Inside and outside, the roll might be written with lamentation, mourning, and woe.” The great heart of Guthrie was stirred to its inmost depths by the crime, wretchedness, and poverty he saw around him. He was musing on the subject one day while overlooking the Cowgate, and thinking how he could best deal with the discordant and seemingly irreclaimable material around him, when some one gently tapped him on the shoulder. On looking round he saw Dr Chalmers standing before him. The latter evidently guessed what was passing in the mind of his friend. Neither of them spoke for a few moments, but stood in silence contemplating the scene. “ All at once,” to quote the words in which Dr Guthrie himself tells the story, “ Chalmers, with his broad Luther-like face glowing with enthusiasm, waved his arm, and exclaimed, 4 A beauti¬ ful field, Sir; a very fine field of operation !’ ” There was much in common between these two men. Both were the sons of country merchants; commenced their ministerial labours in country parishes; and were thence translated to city churches. Chalmers made it the great aim of his life to re-organise the parochial system of Scot¬ land, so that the destitute and outcast might be visited and reclaimed, and the young instructed in the lessons and duties of religion; Guthrie took a different road to reach the same goal. Chalmers, towards the close of his life, set on foot a scheme for reclaiming the inhabitants of the West Port district in Edinburgh—a locality notorious alike for CALL TO EDINBURGH. 33 physical squalor and moral degradation; Guthrie laboured assiduously in the same field. Both were mixed up with almost every phase of the memorable Non-intrusion contest, both before and after the passing of the veto law by the General Assembly, to the Disruption in 1843; and they generally thought, spoke, and voted in the same way. Both were expert financiers; and Guthrie did as much for the Manse Fund as Chalmers achieved on behalf of the Sustenta- tion Scheme of the Free Church. In other respects the two men were “ similar, though not the same.” Both possessed not only the tricks but also the genius of oratorical power, although the perfervid, burning eloquence of the one pre¬ sented a marked contrast to the more stately periods and finished rhetorical embellishments of the other. They were much together; and it will be readily understood that Chalmers exercised, both by precept and example, a power¬ ful influence over his younger colleague; so that to Chalmers’ zeal and sympathy it is no doubt, in great part, due that Guthrie undertook and carried through his manifold and useful labours among the destitute and degraded in Old Greyfriars’ parish. It requires a high motive, and the exercise of no ordinary self-denial, to induce a man to labour as Dr Guthrie did among the wynds and closes in the parish of Old Greyfriars. It is not merely that he remembered the case of the poor: that is saying little. He consecrated his whole energies to the moral, social, and educational amelioration of his parishioners. He spent the silent watches of the night, as well as the broad noon-day, among his flock. And such a flock! Neither Shoreditch nor St George’s-in-the-East could produce more loathsome and degraded specimens of humanity. It was not their poverty alone; although they could have rivalled Falstalfs ragged regiment in that: but 34 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. the coarse brutality, the worse than heathen ignorance, the demoniac instincts of the men and women with whom he came in contact, would have made any one inspired with a less lofty and resolute purpose shrink from the work which he undertook. He exposed himself to perils from violence, from disease, and from foul contagion in his holy mission. But he never forgot that, although “The trail of the serpent was over them all,” these wretched people had claims upon him as a minister, as a Christian, and as a man. To effect the reclamation of the rising generation was his great aim; he could make little of the hoary-headed sinners. His face was as familiar in the dens of iniquity that abounded in and around the Cowgate, as those of the broker’s man and the constable. But while he was often compelled to hear blasphemy, he seldom was the victim of personal abuse. The young, especially, “ found their comfort in his face.” He had always a word of sympathy or encouragement for them. He regu¬ lated his conduct by the sentiment which he has himself expressed in the following striking words:—“ Keeping out of view the depravity of human nature, which is com¬ mon to all, these children are very much what you choose to make them. The soul of the ragged boy or girl is like a mirror. Frown upon it, and it frowns on you; look at it with suspicion, and it eyes you in the same manner. Lift your arm to strike, and there is an arm lifted against you. Turn your back, and it turns its back on you. Turn round and give it a smile, and it smiles again in return. It will give smile for smile, kindness for kindness.” From the first, Dr Guthrie took rank as a preacher of singular vigour and vivacity. In Edinburgh* no less than CALL TO EDINBURGH. 35 in Arbirlot, he was resolved not to let his people sleep. If at first his manner and illustrations had a certain homespun character, he came by-and-bye to see the advantages of adapting himself even to the most cultivated taste, and took much more pains with his style. His labours in the Grey- friars were divided between preaching on Sundays in the parish church and “excavating” on week-days in the parish purlieus. It was not long before the parish church became crowded with hearers, many of them persons of the first position and influence in Edinburgh. Among his regular hearers were Lords Jeffrey and Cockburn. The story is told of Cockburn that, being asked by a friend who met him one Sunday where he was going to church, he answered, “Going to have a greet wi’ Guthrie.” Lord Eutherford was also among his regular hearers, and so was Lord Cunningham, whose views on church controversies were diametrically opposite. Hugh Miller joined his congregation when he came to Edinburgh, and continued through life his warm and admiring friend. At first, however, this influx of ladies and gentlemen from the New Town was rather embarrassing. When he came to Edinburgh the Voluntary controversy was raging, and the reproach was flung out on the one side, and repudiated on the other, that the Established Church was the Church only of the gentry, and that the odious annuity- tax was levied on the poor to support the ministers of the rich. Mr Guthrie at that time believed in the Established Church as the church of all classes, and besides he was diligently working in his parish, and was annoyed at the Town Council laying on seat rents, which really went to exclude the poor, and furnished some reason for the reproach of the dissenters. Under the influence of these views he promoted the uncollegiating of Old Greyfriars' Church, and in 1840 got a new church and parish erected close to the Cowgate, 36 LIFE OF REV, THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. called St John's, in which it was intended to try the experi¬ ment of allocating one portion of the sittings to the people of the parish, and allowing the rest to be let to the public at comparatively high rates. The experiment proved highly successful, but he had not occupied his church long before events occurred that led to a revolution in the ecclesiastical arrangements of St John’s and of the whole of Scotland. CHAPTER VI. THE DISRUPTION. We need not re-write the story of “The Ten Years' Confliot,” nor recount all that Dr Guthrie did during that great crisis in the ecclesiastical affairs of Scotland. It is a somewhat singular, and, as some may think, an inconsistent thing, that although his first settlement in the Church was made under the law of patronage, he had always been a strong and uncompromising opponent of that vicious system. But it did not follow that, because he was subject to the law, he approved of it. From the first he took his place among the leaders of the Non-Intrusion party in the church. He had great regard for the rights of the Christian people, and stood boldly forward in their defence. He had confidence, too, in the ability of a Christian congregation to judge as to the qualities which should be possessed by a preacher of the gospel. Hence he pleaded for the “Veto,” and without reasons. Referring retrospectively to this subject in the Assembly of 1862, he said :— “ Fathers and Brethren,—Whether it was right in us to do as we did, to claim, as the slightest relaxation from that yoke of patronage which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear, that our people should have a veto without reasons,— I speak for a moment as to the rights of the people,—I think may be now left to the judgment of those who have been trying the veto with them. If the people are dissatisfied, and if they have the pluck to fight their own battle, through what a frightful ordeal has the poor presentee to go! And then, how are people tempted to manufacture reasons which 38 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. the church courts must allow, and holster up a good cause with had arguments. We thought, and the longer we tried our way, and saw the other, we had the more confi¬ dence we were right, that a man, a free agent, is not hound to give his reasons, nor a woman either, why he does not like a minister. A man is not bound to give reasons why he refuses a servant. A constituency is not bound to give reasons why it refuses a candidate for a membership of parliament. I am not hound, as a patient, to give reasons why I decline such and such a physician. A client, and even a criminal, is not bound to give his reasons why he declines the services of a particular lawyer; and everybody knows that a lady is not bound to give her reasons why she declines a particular suitor, even though she might have no better reason than that when the gentleman came to pay his addresses, he took out his spectacles, placed them upon his nose, and read a long lumbering speech. That may be a very bad reason; but all the world knows that the liberty which we claimed in the church is claimed by every other person, in every other way in the community; and if people should be left to the freedom of their own will without giving their reasons in secular matters, much more should it be so when the interest of souls, the cause of Christ, and the con¬ cerns of eternity are at stake. And, Fathers and Brethren, how have events proved that it was not without reason that we insisted on a veto without reasons ? The Church Settle¬ ment Act has done nothing but unsettle everything. The arrangement that was to please all parties has displeased all in turn; and the basis on which the Established Church was to stand against all attacks from without and from within is turning out to be a ruin, and now with the stones of it the people are pelting both presentee and patron. I rejoice at this; not so much because it proves that we are right, THE DISRUPTION. 39 although that is a matter of some satisfaction—and I do not rejoice at it at all because it damages the Established Church —I speak for myself, and commit no man to my sentiments; for when I took this chair, I claimed the liberty of speaking out my own sentiments; but I rejoice at it because I think that in God’s good providence it will come permanently to secure for the people of the Established Church the rights which they so frequently ask, and which, to the honour of the patrons be it said, they now so often concede. Now, it may be that it is a hard thing that we should have lost our livings for principles on which those we have left behind us —who have stolen our clothes when we were not bathing— should now be acting. But would they have acted on them if we had not gone cut ] I believe never; and if the effect of these matters is to purify the Established Church, and enfranchise her people, we have won the battle after all— only it happens that other men have gone in and reaped the fruits of our hard fighting.” Whilst approving the “veto,” Dr Guthrie did not regard it as the best possible remedy for the evils frequently attendant upon the settlement of ministers in the Church of Scotland. He was opposed out and out to the law of patronage, and sought its abrogation. He said:— “Unmusical as I am, the words anti-patronage are sweet words to my ear. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished by the friends of the church and true religion; until that is obtained I wish no resting place for the church in her present conflict. I wish the flood to rise and swell, and not subside until the ark of the churches is landed on the .Ararat of anti-patronage. Some talk of the difficulties and danger in which the church is now placed, but I for one rejoice in the storms which are compelling the church to take refuge in the haven of anti-patronage. Government 40 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. is, in fact, doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. When William of Orange sailed for England, he meditated landing on a spot which was the very lion's den for him; but, wonderfully enough, the wind blew strong from that quarter. It rose to a hurricane, and eventually, contrary to his wishes, he was drifted, and compelled to land in the very spot that was best and safest for him. So with the church; she has tried to effect a landing at Veto , and next after this she was in danger of striking on the shoals of Liberum Arbitrium, but the force of wind and tide has at last driven her into the harbour of anti-patronage, where she will be safest and best.” Long before the days of Non-intrusion, the fires of per¬ secution had been put out in Scotland, but the principle if not the spirit of persecution yet remained. The civil power still sought to lord it over the ecclesiastical, and put the Christian conscience in leading strings, if not in fetters. Happily for the church and for the world, the martyr spirit had not forsaken the land consecrated by martyrs’ blood. Of this spirit Dr Guthrie had a full share. When the Strathbogie ministers were suspended, and when they applied for and obtained interdicts from the Court of Session prohibiting the minister appointed by the General Assembly from preaching in their parishes, Dr Guthrie was one of those who set the interdict at defiance, and pro¬ claimed himself prepared to go to prison—which was the threatened penalty—rather than be guilty of rendering to Caesar in this matter the things that were God’s. But we must give the story in his own words :— “ I have had enough of fighting in my day. I thought I was done with it. I look upon it as a serious calamity when the civil and church courts come into collision. We may come to yield to what we think wrong in civil matters, THE DISRUPTION, 41 but we cannot yield to wliat we think wrong in spiritual matters. I have no desire to be placed in the position I was in before, when, in going to preach at Strathbogie, I was met by an interdict from the Court of Session, an interdict to which, as regards civil matters, I gave implicit obedience. The better day the better deed, it is said; and on the Lord’s day, when I was preparing for Divine service, in came a servant of the law and handed me an interdict. I told him he had done his duty, and I would do mine. I was present with Dr Cunningham and Dr Candlish in the Court of Session, and saw the Presbytery of Dunkeld brought to the bar for breach of interdict, and I heard the Lord President of the Court of Session say, that, on the next occasion when the ministers broke an interdict, they would be visited with all the penalties of the law. The penalties of the law were to get lodgings free gratis in the Calton jail. That was my position on that Sabbath morning. That interdict forbade me, under the penalty of the Calton-hill jail, to preach the gospel in the parish church of Strathbogie. I said the parish chjirches are stone and lime, and belong to the State. I will not preach there. It forbade me to preach the gospel in the school-houses. I said the school-houses are stone and lime, and belong to the State. I will not preach there. It forbade me to preach in the church-yard. I said the dust of the dead is the State’s. I will not preach there. But when those Lords of Session forbade me to preach my Master’s blessed gospel, and offer salvation to sinners, anywhere in that district under the arch of heaven, I put the interdict under my foot, and I preached the gospel. I defied them to punish me, and I have not been punished down to this day.” When the Disruption happened in 1843, Dr Guthrie’s course was clear. At the Convocation he had taken up his D 42 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. ground firmly, and had been useful in confirming the minds of some that were then wavering. On the 18th of May, he was among the foremost and heartiest of the leaders of the Free Church movement; and the cheery tones of his voice, ringing through Tanfield Hall, were in singularly close accord with the feelings of the enthusiastic multitude that cheered him to the echo. On that eventful day he thus spoke: “ I am no longer minister of St John's. I understand that this day there has been a great slaughter in the Old Assembly, and among the rest my connection with the Established Church has been cut, or rather, I may say, I have cut it myself. I know they have resolved to declare my church vacant. They may save themselves the trouble.” To say that Dr Guthrie never regretted the Disruption, nor cherished the faintest hankering after the flesh-pots of Egypt, would be to utter only half the truth. He was ever ready to vindicate the principles which led to the Disruption, and he cordially rejoiced in the fruits which it had produced. Nearly twenty years after that great event we find him saying: “ But to cherish sentiments so eminently apostolical, so calculated to foster union, and pour the oil of peace on the stormy waters, does not imply that we must see things otherwise than once we did, even amid the fiery heat and dust of battle; nor does it imply that we now, though sobered by age, and removed by twenty years from the final struggle, regard the principles for which we contended other than we did in the day of contention, or that those principles in our judgment have lost one single inch of their height and depth, of their breadth and length. If they had been points and not principles, distance of time would have had such an effect upon them as distance of place has upon other things—on the mountain, that it reduces to a molehill. But while the higher ranges of the THE DISRUPTION. 43 Alps, to one who has retired far from them, seem but drifted snow-heaps lying on the far horizon, the star that shines above the hoary head of their monarch is not so affected; it shines as bright, and looks as big to the seaman on the distant main as to the peasant in the Vale of Chamouni. “And so, in contradistinction to points, principles, like things that belong to heaven, are unchanged by years or by latitude: like the fixed stars, or Him that made them, they are the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. We have seen, and it is well the world should know it, no cause to think less, but rather more, of Disruption principles. The right of a church to rule her proceedings by the ordinances of her own Divine Head, and the right of the people to choose their own pastors, are clearer to my eye than ever. What has been the history of the last nineteen years'? The Free Church is nearly major now, and should be getting on to sense. What, I ask, has been the history of the church for the last nineteen years 'l Harmonious settlements, un¬ scattered flocks, peace, a good measure of plenty within our borders—mutual regard among the brethren. ‘ Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith/ We left the Establishment for liberty, and liberty is sweet. Our fathers laid down their lives for it, and we laid down our livings for it. We will never repent it, and thank God for our beloved Sovereign, and our free Constitution, we have revelled in the sweetness of it for the last nineteen years. No attempt has been made to rob us of the fruits of our suffer¬ ings and victory except one [the Cardross case]: and those who made that attempt seem to me very much in the condition of Pharaoh and his men of war in the Red Sea. They have got in, and I fancy they would thank any one to show them the way out.” On leaving St John’s Church his congregation obtained 44 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE. D.D. temporary accommodation in the Wesleyan Chapel in Nicolson Square. But in the course of a few years a new church was built for the congregation on the Castle Hill, close to the old one, and Dr Guthrie entered on a new era of his ministry, and was more popular than ever. CHAPTER VII. MANSE SCHEME—REFUSAL OF SITES—CANOBIE. The Disruption, and tlie struggle which led to it, produced great men; it was the outcome and vindication of great principles; it was accomplished at such a sacrifice for conscience sake that history records few, if any, so great; it excited great interest, great surprise, great admiration, great grief, and great joy; and it led to the formation and execution of such schemes of Christian finance as have inspired the church with hope, and made men of the world wonder. During the early years of the Free Church no man was more laborious, earnest, and self-sacrificing than Dr Guthrie in forwarding its interests and advocating its schemes. But there was one scheme with which he specially identified himself, and with which his name will ever be associated in the history of Disruption times and achieve¬ ments. The interests of the country ministers had a very large place in his heart. The Building and Sustentation Funds had done much to equalise the position of town and country ministers, but notwithstanding this it was lamentably ap¬ parent that in one respect, at all events, the country mini¬ sters were in a much worse plight than their city brethren. In many cases the want of suitable dwelling-houses entailed a suffering which could not be thought of without distress. His tender and sympathetic heart was touched by a know¬ ledge of the hardships endured by many of these brethren who, like himself, were suffering for conscience sake. The immediate effect of the Disruption was the ejection from 46 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. their manses of the 474 ministers and professors who had signed the Deed of Demission. Little or no time was given for preparation; and in several instances, in remote Highland parishes, the protesting ministers suffered, it may be fatally, from the hardships and privations they were compelled to undergo. Thinking how he could best and most readily help them, he was led to devise one of those Herculean schemes which only men of large heart and the most unflinching courage are able to entertain. In the first General Assembly of the Free Church he proposed the scheme of a General Manse Fund; eloquently urged the necessity of making immediate provision for meeting the loss of the manses; and pleaded that, as dwelling-house accommodation was the most pressing and paramount consideration, all other arrangements should be sub¬ ordinated to it. He offered to go through the whole of Scotland and plead for the scheme in every town, village, and parish where there was any likelihood of contributions being obtained. The sum proposed to be raised was one hundred thousand pounds. He fulfilled his promise. Be¬ sides visiting frequently from house to house, where large subscriptions on behalf of the manse fund were likely to be got, he travelled all over Scotland and part of England, made such urgent and eloquent appeals, and so stirred the sympathies of the people that, when his work was finished, there was a fund of upwards of £116,000 collected for manse building purposes. Absent for just a year, he travelled the country “from Cape Wrath to the border, and from the German to the Atlantic Ocean.” “ Having,” he says, in the Assembly of 1846, “in consequence of my mission, visited through Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, from house to house, and from family to family, I stand in this great Assembly perhaps the most remarkable HEFUSAL OF SITES. 47 man in it in this respect. I venture to say there is no man in this house who has such a universal acquaintanceship as myself.” At what an amount of personal and domestic sacrifice this was done cannot be estimated; but one little circum¬ stance may be mentioned. In the midst of his engagements for this fund, scarlet fever assailed his large household, and for a time, at each of the hurried visits which he was able to snatch from his work to visit his family, he found an additional couple of his children prostrated by the disease. His family all recovered; but to the noble-hearted advocate of the scheme himself the consequences were very serious. The excessive labour was too much even for his powerful frame; and as happens so commonly in the case of men whose energies are over-taxed, the heart became affected (1848), and the foundation was laid of the ailment which, after an interval of twenty-five years, has now sent him to the grave, to the irreparable loss of his church and his friends. One of the most untoward results of the Disruption was that the heritors connected with the Establishment, viewing the seceders with hostility, refused to allow them sites for the erection of churches. A good deal of personal feeling was aroused on this score; nor was it until a select Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to deal with the subject, that the heritors could be induced to relent. That Committee did not recommend legislation on so painful and delicate a subject, but it expressed an opinion so strongly condemnatory of the pitiful conduct of those who refused sites, that the Duke of Buccleucli and other large land- owners were constrained, by a feeling of shame, to change their conduct, and grant to the Free Churches within their domains a local habitation. Pitiful were the accounts given 48 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. of the sufferings both of congregations and ministers, com¬ pelled to worship all the year round on the public highways, by the sea shore, and under the open canopy of heaven. The sufferers needed sympathy and support, and no one was readier to give both than Dr Guthrie. His tender heart could feel for their sufferings, and his eloquent tongue could, as with trumpet sound, tell their wrongs. Canobie in Dum¬ friesshire was one of the most noted places where a site had been refused, and where the worshippers suffered most. Dr Guthrie visited this scene of petty ducal persecution, preached to the people, and has given the following graphic account of the circumstances and services:— “ Well wrapped up, I drove out to Canobie, the hills white with snow, the roads covered ankle-deep in many parts with slush, wind high and cold, thick rain lashing on, and the Esk by our side all the way roaring in the snow-flood between bank and brae. We passed Johnnie Armstrong’s tower, yet strong, even in its ruins, and after a drive of four miles, a turn of the road brought us in view of a sight which was overwhelming, and would have brought the salt tears into the eye of any man of common humanity. There, under the naked boughs of some spreading oak-trees, at a point where a country road joined the turnpike, stood a tent, around, or rather in front of which, was gathered a large group of muffled men and women, with some little children, a few sitting, most of them standing, and some old venerable widows cowering under the scanty shelter of umbrellas. On all sides each road was adding a stream of plaided men and muffled women to the group, till the congregation increased to between 500 and 600, gathering in the very road, and waiting for my coming from a mean inn where I found shelter till the hour of worship. During the psalm singing and the first prayer, I was in the tent; but finding that I CANOBIE. 49 would be uncomfortably confined, I took up my position on a chair in front, having my hat on my head, my Codrington close buttoned up to my throat, and a pair of bands, which were wet enough with rain ere the service was over. The rain lashed on heavily during the latter part of the sermon, but no one budged, and when my hat was off during the last prayer, some one kindly extended an umbrella over my head. I was so interested, so were the people, that our forenoon service continued for four hours At the close I felt so much for the people—it was such a sad sight to see old men and women, some children, and one or two indi¬ viduals pale and sickly, and apparently near the grave, all wet and benumbed with the keen wind and cold rain—that I proposed to have no afternoon service, but this was met with universal dissent. One and all declared that, if I would hold on, they would stay in the road till midnight; so we met again at three o’clock, and it poured on almost without intermission during the whole sermon; and that over, shaken cordially by many a man and woman’s hand, I got into the gig, and drove on here in time for an evening sermon, followed, through rain in the heavens and the wet snow in the road, by numbers of the people. “ The people spoke respectfully of the Duke of Buccleuch, and were anxious to give no offence. I preached subse¬ quently on tho open hill, down in a sort of hollow, and the people were ranged on the side of the mountain. It was a swampy place in which I preached, and I wished to have some protection between my feet and the wet ground. I saw some fine planks of wood lying close by, and wondered why the people did not take them and use them. In place of that, they went into a house and brought out an old door. After the sermon, I was naturally led to ask why they did not bring the planks that were lying close by, and they said 50 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. these were not theirs, that they belonged to the Duke of Buccleuch, and that they would not touch them in case any offence might be taken at their doing so.” Before the Parliamentary Committee, to which allusion has already been made, Dr Guthrie subsequently tendered evidence on the Canobie affair. He said he felt that the refusal of a site was a grievous and unwarrantable exercise of power; and that when he saw the reputable, honest, and religious inhabitants of Canobie necessitated to worship the God of their fathers on a turnpike road, he was so over¬ whelmed by the sight that “he felt as if he could not preach.” CHAPTER VIII. RAGGED SCHOOLS. On the subject of Dr Guthrie's efforts for ragged schools whole volumes might be written; we can only indicate its more salient features. As to the origin of the movement, we will let the Doctor tell his own story. “It is rather curious," he says, “at least it is interesting to me, that it was by a picture I was first led to take an interest in ragged schools; a picture in an old, obscure, decaying burgh, that stands on the shore of the Firth of Forth. I had gone thither with a companion on a pilgrimage; not that there was any beauty about the place, for it had no beauty. It has little trade. Its deserted harbour, silent streets, and old houses, some of them nodding to their fall, gave indica¬ tions of decay. But one circumstance has redeemed it from obscurity, and will preserve its name to the latest ages. It G as the birthplace of Thomas Chalmers. I went to see this place. It is many years ago. And going into an inn for refreshments, I found the room covered with pictures of shepherdesses with their crooks, and tars in holiday attire not very interesting. But above the chimney-piece there stood a large print, more respectable than its neighbours, which a skipper, the captain of one of the few ships that trade between that town and England, had probably brought there. It represented a cobbler's room. The cobbler was there himself, spectacles on nose, an old shoe between his knees—that massive forehead and firm mouth expressing great determination of character, and below his bushy eyebrows benevolence gleamed out on a number of poor 52 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. ragged boys and girls, who stood at their lessons around the busy cobbler. My curiosity was excited, and on the inscription I read how this man, John Pounds, a cobbler in Portsmouth, taking pity on the poor ragged children left by ministers and magistrates, and ladies and gentlemen, to run in the streets, had, like a good shepherd, gathered in the wretched outcasts; how he had brought them to God and the world; and how, while earning his bread by the sweat of his brow, he had rescued from misery, and saved to society, not less than five hundred of these children. I felt ashamed of myself for the little I had done.” From this time forward, the idea of a ragged school fixed itself in Dr Guthrie’s mind. It “grew by what it fed on.” He watched, with eager interest, the progress of the school established in Aberdeen by Sheriff Watson—the first in Scotland. Shortly afterwards another ragged school, founded at Dundee, “ turned a presumption into a fact,” and proved both to himself and those whom he consulted, that there was “no way of securing the amelioration and salvation of these forlorn, outcast, and destitute children, but by making their maintenance a bridge and stepping stone to their education.” In his “Pleas for Ragged Schools,” the Doctor relates how, strolling one day with a friend among the romantic scenery of the crags and green valleys round Arthur Seat, they sat down on a great black stone beside it to have a talk with the ragged boys who pursue their calling there. With reference to the scheme then shaping itself in his head, and by way of experiment, he said to the boys, “would you go to school, if, besides your learning, you were to get breakfast, dinner, and supper there 1 ?” “It would have done any man’s heart good,” says the Doctor, “to have seen the flash of joy that broke from the eyes of one of them—the flush of pleasure on his cheek, as, hearing of three RAGGED SCHOOLS. 53 sure meals a day, the boy leapt to his feet and exclaimed, “Aye, will I, sir, and bring the haill land (tenement) too;” and then, as if afraid I might withdraw what seemed to him so large and munificent an offer, he exclaimed, “I’ll come for but my dinner, sir.” The publication of the first “ Plea for Ragged Schools,” in which the writer displayed even more than his usual pathos, and adduced many appalling facts on behalf of his project, awakened a powerful interest, not only in Edinburgh, but throughout the whole country. The response made to the appeal was so liberal that a Committee was appointed and other steps were taken for initiating the movement, which was fairly launched in June, 1847, at a meeting held in Edinburgh, and attended by gentlemen of all ranks and denominations. The scheme was modelled after those of Aberdeen and Dundee. At first the Committee did not attempt much. There was great difficulty found in obtaining suitable accommodation for the schools in a central part of the city, but this difficulty was eventually overcome through the kindness of the Rev. Mr Smith and the Kirk-Session of the Tolbooth parish, who provided a large and commodious school-room at Ramsay Garden, Castlehill. By the “ Constitution and Rules of the Association for the Establishment of Ragged Industrial Schools for destitute children in Edinburgh,” it was provided that the aim to be kept in view was “ to reclaim the neglected and destitute children of Edinburgh, by affording them the benefits of a good common and Christian education, and by training them to habits of regular industry, so as to enable them to earn an honest livelihood, and fit them for the duties of life.” The following classes of children were excluded '.—first, Those who are already regularly attending day schools; second , Those whose parents are earning a regular income, 54 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. and able to procure education for their children; third, Those who are receiving, or are entitled to receive, support and education from the Parochial Board;—with this declaration, that it shall be in the power of the Acting Committee to deal with special cases, though falling under any of these classes, having regard always to the special objects of the Association. The general plan upon which the schools were to be conducted was as follows:— To give the children an adequate allowance of food for their daily support. To instruct them in reading, writing, and arithmetic To train them in habits of industry, by instructing and employing them daily in such sorts of work as are suited to their years. To teach them the truths of the gospel, making the Holy Scriptures the groundwork of instruction. On Sabbath the children shall receive food as on other days, and such religious instruction as shall be arranged by the Acting Committee. The movement grew and prospered. The first yearly report, dated March 31, 1848, showed that the total number of children admitted since the opening of the school was 310 boys, 199 girls; total, 509. Of this number 230 were under ten years of age. As to the particular cir¬ cumstances in which the children were found, one of the annual reports thus speaks:— Found homeless, and provided with lodgings, 72 Children with both parents, - - 32 With the father dead, - - - - 140 Mother dead,.89 Deserted by parents, - - - - 43 RAGGED SCHOOLS. 55 With one or both parents transported, - 9 Fatherless, with drunken mothers, - - 77 Motherless, with drunken fathers, - - 66 With both parents worthless, 84 Who have been beggars, - - - - 271 Who have been in the police office, - - 75 Who have been in prison, - - - 20 Known as children of thieves, - - 76 Believed to be so, including the preceding, - 148 In the face of such terrible figures as these it is perhaps little wonder that a lady once asked Dr Guthrie whether he invented his stories. For a number of years Dr Guthrie threw his whole heart and soul into the cause of the ragged schools. Nothing afforded him greater pleasure than the opportunity of show¬ ing to his friends and those who sat in high places, the beneficent operations of the system. One day, he had shown Thackeray and a distinguished member of Parliament through the schools Turning to Mr Thackeray, the latter said, “This is an agreeable sight.” The distinguished novelist replied, it was the finest view in all Edinburgh— the most touching sight he ever saw. The other then remarked, “I see where the whole power of this ragged school lies. It is, first, in the food; and secondly, in the twelve hours daily in the school.” Dr Guthrie’s own opinion was that these two things constituted the whole secret and power of their machinery. The Doctor was never tired of urging the claims of the ragged school on politico-economical grounds. Referring on one occasion, shortly after their establishment, to the Lord Advocate’s calculation that the expense of a criminal to his country, on an average, cannot be less than £300, he argued that of the 216 children that had up till then been 56 LIFE OF KEY. THOMAS GUTHRIE. D.D. sent to employment, supposing that 186 had done well, that number, multiplied by 300, would have saved to the country an expense of between £50,000 and £60,000. There was, of course, a large per centage of the children who failed to improve their opportunities, and returned to their old haunts and associations. But an overwhelming majority became respectable members of society. Speaking at one of the annual meetings on the results achieved, Dr Guthrie said, “We have ragged scholars that are cutting down the forests in America. We have them herding sheep in Australia. We have them in the navy; and what d’ye think! there was an odd thing in this way; we had a competition among boys in the navy, and the ragged school boys carried off the highest prize. We have them in the army, too. Just the other day I had in my drawing-room one of my ragged scholars. What was he doing there, you ask? Well, he was just standing beside a very pretty girl dressed like a duchess, and all that. There he was, and on his breast he carried three medals. He had fought the battles of his country in the Crimea. He had gone up the deadly march to Lucknow, and rescued the women, and the chil¬ dren, and the soldiers there. And was I not proud of my ragged school boy when I saw him with his honours?’' No more eloquent testimony to the success of the ragged school movement could be furnished than this well attested fact, that, whereas formerly five per cent of the criminals were under fourteen years of age, in the fourth year after the establishment of these schools, the proportion was reduced to one per cent, and in the fifth year, the per centage was only half a juvenile. Every one who has had occasion to knock at the door of the National Exchequer, especially on behalf of new and doubtful projects, has found admission very difficult. This HAC4GED SCHOOLS. 57 was long the experience of Dr Guthrie. Every resource within his power he used to move the Government; but the national purse strings were drawn closely together, and he could only obtain the merest pittance for his schools. He was, however, encouraged to persevere in his appeals, believing that it was the duty of the State to care for the moral training of the outcast and destitute, and that pre~ vention and preventive measures should be more generally attended to. He complained that the Government gave much more to the reformatories than to the ragged schools, and remarked thereanent, -‘It is a grand thing to give a man a fever, and then cure him; but it is better to drain and clean the town and prevent the fever from coming. Think of the Government refusing money to save a man's leg, but giving him money instead to buy a wooden leg when the limb is cut off!” His righteous indignation at the apathetic indifference of the Government to the training of the children for whom the ragged schools were designed, was expressed even more forcibly on another occasion when, speaking of Lord Palmerston's Reformatory Act, he thus described it: “ The Act says to us, ‘ Don't take a child and send him to a ragged school, where you may prevent him from becoming a criminal. Don’t take him while he is on the edge of the precipice, but wait till he has fallen down. Wait till he has become a criminal. If you attempt to save a child from becoming a criminal, I will help you with a penny a-week; but if you will allow the child to become a criminal through your neglect, and then try to rub out the mark, you will get seven shillings ! 9 99 But Dr Guthrie was not a man to be disheartened because he could not get his own way. He continued to knock at the Treasury door. Three times he was at the head of a deputation that went to Downing Street and complained of E 58 LIFE OF REV„ THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. the Government treatment of ragged schools. The last time he informed Mr Lowe, who was then at the Exchequer, of the success that had attended the operations of the ragged schools; of the extent to which it had reduced the number of commitments to prison; and of the remedy against crime which it provided. Mr Lowe, making use of the very arguments used by the deputation, replied in effect, “ Gentlemen, it’s no affair of mine; it’s a matter of crime and police. Go to the Home Office, and they’ll give you the money.” It is needless to add that the Home Office did not see the case in the same light, and the money was not got. As to the transformation that is effected in the children attending the ragged school, he says, “ I have seen heaps of filthy rags, such as may be cast off by a vagrant, received by the man of science and art, and turned into a creamy pulp, and afterwards manufactured into a fabric as white as snow, destined to receive from the pen the words of wisdom and of knowledge, and to carry men’s thoughts abroad over the wide world. And so it is with these unhappy children. They are the raw material, and by-and-bye you will see the fabric we make out of it.” Very soon after the ragged school movement was fairly commenced, a dissension arose on account of the resolution of the Committee to have the Bible taught to the children. It was of course the authorised version that was introduced, and as this did not square with the views of the Roman Catholics, there was unpleasantness and recrimination. Dr Guthrie and his Committee Avere accused of introducing “ a system of religious tests,” and of “ excluding the largest por¬ tion of those children for whom the schools were designed,” who belonged to Irish and Roman Catholic parents. Being thus put upon their trial, the Committee published a state¬ ment in which, by the constitution and rules of the schools, RAGGED SCHOOLS. 59 they justified the use of the Bible, and concluded that “ it would be utterly ruinous to the plan, and defeat all its benevolent purposes, especially considering the criminal and vagrant habits of the children who are to be benefited by it, if any other system were adopted than that of subjecting them to the entire moral and religious discipline—simply based upon the Word of God—which it purposes to bring to bear upon them.” Although this rupture threatened at the time to restrict the usefulness of the institution, the probability is that in the end it was overruled for good. Lord Murray and several other gentlemen who objected to the use of the Bible, took steps for the founding of another school, which was successfully established under the name of the “ United Industrial School,” in South Gray's Close. Both schools have failed to meet the actual wants of the city; the harvest is as plentiful as ever; and although conducted, so far as religious teaching is concerned, on essentially different principles, they are aiming primarily at the same end. C II APTEE I X. NATIONAL EDUCATION. From the part that Dr Guthrie took in the promotion of ragged schools, and the earnestness with which he sought for them State support, it will readily be inferred that he held decided and liberal opinions on the general subject of education. He was a warm supporter of the Lord Advocate —James MoncreiiFs Education Bill of 1855, “feeling,” as he has put it, “ that the first duty of the State is to educate her people, and the last to hang them; believing that her first duty is to prevent crime, and her second to punish it; believing that the first duty of the State is to build schools, and her second to build prisons; and believing that the State should charge herself with the duty of seeing that no child within her borders goes without education,” he had no hesitation in pleading that education should be made com¬ pulsory, as he does in these words :— “ Why does the State take care that the child of every mill-spinner should be taught, and punish the party for neglecting it, and not take the same care of the children of the Grassmarket and the Cowgate ] The law does not allow a man to starve his child; it is very cruel, it may be said, to starve the body; very cruel, it is true, and the State interferes with the liberty of the subject there. But if it is right in the law to compel the parent to feed his child's body, is it right in the law to allow him to starve his child’s soul ] Suppose the law did not compel him to feed his child’s body, death would step in, and relieve society of the evil there; but if it does not compel him to feed the child’s NATIONAL EDUCATION. 61 mind, what happens] The untaught child, in nine cases out of ten, becomes a burden, a nuisance, and a danger to the State. “From the First Book of Discipline I find that one of the first things John Knox set himself to was the matter of schools. He provided that there should be in every large town in Scotland a college, in every notable town a grammar school, and in every parish a common school. Ay, and still more—and in this I have always been a follower of John Knox, and intend to be so to the end of the chapter—John Knox goes on to say that no parent, whoever he may be, whether a dealer in rags in the Cowgate, or whether a laird or a duke, ‘that no parent, of whatever station he might, be allowed to train up his children according to his own fantasy, but that he should be compelled to give his children an education in virtue and learning/ I maintain that no man is entitled to breed wild beasts in this country for the sake of the play of hunting tigers and wolves which will endanger the lives of other men. No man is entitled to breed the most dangerous of all wild beasts, a two-legged uneducated animal! Talk of liberty! I hold that any liberty, the liberty of walking about in freedom and personal safety, is encroached on, if children are brought up in such a way as to be dangerous to the community. Men are ‘ havering ? up yonder in Parliament about espionage. Do we hear anything of espionage in levying the taxes of the country, as in making a man tell what his income is; and will any man call it espionage to see that every parent educates his children ]” He was in favour of the Bible being taught in the school, but did justice to the views and motives of those who believe that it would be for the interest of religion itself that its teaching should be left to the home circle, the 62 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. Sabbath school, and the church. He was strongly opposed to the denominational system, and augered the best results from a national, unsectarian, and liberal system of education. He greatly disliked the continuous fighting over petty differences whilst the children were neglected and perishing, and he severely rebuked, in his own style, the efforts made by the Established Church to get, by means of the Parish School Bill, the control of education almost wholly into her own power. In view of the Bill which has now become law, his words of rebuke and warning may be regarded as almost prophetic. We give with pleasure some of his manly, able, truthful utterances on these various phases of the education question. “ I have heard of kirks where so few sat that you might drive a cart-load of whins through them, and it would not job a living soul; but these kirks would be entirely eclipsed by any secular schools if they were attempted in Scotland. I would have no objections myself that religion should be in the Bill, but then I don’t care whether it is or not, for I am sure it will be in the school. ~ “I prefer secular education to no education whatever; and the principle has been recognised by the Church of Scotland, which never thrust on Roman Catholics the principles of the Protestant faith. The people of Scotland are at one as to the religion taught in the school, and even as to that taught in the pulpit. Give us a national education for Presbyterians, and I will join you in doing what can be done for those not provided for. The fear of secular education is the veriest bugbear. There have been many voluntary adventure schools in Scotland, managed by the people themselves, in which I put more confidence than in church or State; and I challenge any one to mention an instance of a school so set up, where the Bible is not as well, if not better taught than NATIONAL EDUCATION. 63 in the pulpit schools. Just put on the door of a school in Scotland, The Bible is not taught here, and I will answer for it, you will have no scholars. “ I am, however, bound to say in favour of those who are secularists, that there are many among them who, to my own knowledge, are as devout as any man on this platform. I am bound to say this in justice to them, that they believe that religion would be better taught in the houses of the people than at school, and therefore they would roll the whole responsibility of this over upon the pastors and parents. I don't agree with them in this, it is true ; but if you ask me whether I believe the religion taught at home or in the school is the best, I would at once answer, the religion taught at home. But if this were a good reason why we should have no schools with religion taught in them, it is just as good a reason why we should have neither churches nor pulpits; and if you ask me whether it is best to have religion taught in the school or religion taught in the parental home, I say with the man, Why, both are best. “ I am no bigot. Everybody that knows me knows that I hold what many of my friends think loose views on the subject of education. People tell me I should take high ground on that subject. Why, I think the top of a steeple is high ground, but it is not very safe. “ Give me a common education, the different denomina¬ tions working together in one common good cause. Give me this, as Dr Chalmers used to say, and it will sweeten the breath of society, and soften the asperity of the violent speech, and, I may say, the uncharitableness of which we have heard of late too much from the people of all parties, especially from the clergy. I have extremely regretted the strong language which has been used. I do not think I have 64 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. used such language myself; but when I read the reports of some of those meetings where men have brought into the question the artillery of their prejudices and passions, and when afterwards I have walked down the High Street, or some such part of the city, I must say I have felt my indig¬ nation burning within me in a way I found difficult to express. Why, what are these points about which they make such wrangling as has deafened the ears of the people, to those wretched, naked, unwashed, unshorn, uncared-for, lost, perishing, doomed children, that crowd the streets and lanes—what are these points to them? My disturbing points will look little enough when I am lying on a bed of death; and my disturbing points look little too when I go down among my poor fellow-creatures; and sure I am, that if some of my friends would come with me, and spend one short forenoon in these places where I have been till my heart has been like to break, and I could hardly eat the bread on my own table, it would make them ready to agree almost to anything. “You may not get the old stagers to unite on a system of education. You will not get the old branches of the tree to unite; but take the young branches, and twist and twine them together, and they will be uniting before another summer is gone. I have no hope of these old stagers, but I have great hope of the children. It is wonderful what you may do if you get the young to agree together. I saw a happy family the last time I was in London; animals of the most antagonistic natures lying together in peace, because they had been put together when young, and fed, bred, and nursed together. I saw the mavis sleeping under the wing of the hawk; and I saw an old, grave, reverend owl looking down most complacently on a little mouse; and, with the restless activity of his species, & monkey sitting on a branch, NATIONAL EDUCATION. 65 scratching his head—for an idea, I presume—and then reaching down his long arm and seizing a big rat on the floor, and lifting it into his breast, and dandling it like a baby. This is what early training will do. I just put it to you: Suppose these animals had been brought up in the denominational system, if they had been brought up in the sectarian system, and then brought together in one place, what a row there would have been. “As to the different views regarding the Bill [for education] entertained by different bodies, and the empty cries that are raised against it, all of which I hope Parliament will dis¬ regard, and will consider only, whether this Bill is or is not contrary to the Word of God and the good of society—to each and all of these religious bodies, beginning with the Free Church, I will give the advice tendered to an honour¬ able Baronet. When Sir John Sinclair was chosen member of parliament for his native county, a man came up to him and said, ‘Noo, maister George, I’ll gi’e ye an advice. They’ve made ye a parliament man, and my advice to you is, Be ye aye tak takin’ what ye can get, and aye seek seekin’ till ye get mair/ “At the time of the Disruption a certain party would yield nothing. At the University Bill time they would yield nothing; and, at this time [of the Education Bill] they will yield nothing. There was a very sagacious man in this city, perhaps the most sagacious of all the citizens, I mean the late Sir James Gibson-Craig, who, on one occasion, was dealing with a gentleman who insisted on his having the last rights of law. Sir James advised him to yield a little. The man said he would not yield a straw. Sir James urged him, but he was obstinate. ‘Well, then, let me tell you/ said Sir James, ‘that the man who will have the last right and the last word at law, is very like the man who will have 66 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. the last drop in the tankard, he has the chance of getting the lid down on his nose/ Now, if my friends in the Established Church would just hear me—for I know there are many sensible men among them—I would say that, at the time of the Disruption, down came the lid; at the time of the University Bill they would have the last drop, and smash came the lid; and now that they would have the last drop again, let them take care that the lid does not only hit them on the nose, but that it does not hit it off altogether.” CHAPTER X, FREE ST. JOHN’S—MODERATORSHIP. Dr Guthrie, as we liave seen, had not been long in the collegiate charge of Old Greyfriars before he made up his mind that more good might be accomplished if the parish was divided. With this view he set about the formation of a new parish and the erection of a new church, which would be in closer proximity to the Cowgate and the West Port, where he recognised the need of more provision for the spiritual wants of the inhabitants. He ventilated and advocated the propriety of this scheme until, in 1840, the new parish of St John’s was erected, St John’s Church built, and he was appointed minister—Mr Sim retaining the Church of Old Greyfriars. In carrying out the arrangements for his new church and parish, he made it a condition, to which the subscribers and the Town Council agreed, that one-third of the seats were to be entirely free, while another third should be charged for at a merely nominal rate, so as to encourage the poor and destitute to avail themselves of religious ordinances. He rigorously enforced compliance with these conditions ; and even when he was in the zenith of his popularity and power, drawing to his church crowds of people from all parts of the city, he would not allow a single seat to be occupied by strangers until his own parishioners, no matter what their appearance, position, or character, had been accommodated. So far as practicable, the same regulations were carried out in Free St John’s, to which he removed after the Disruption ; and it caused no little offence to many of his warmest admirers that their 68 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. social status was entirely disregarded, and they had to give way to men and women from whom, in all probability, they would have shrunk as from a plague. Protests innumerable were made to the Doctor with a view of having this rule de¬ parted from, but he was perfectly inexorable ; and strangers continued to be accommodated in a hall underneath the church until the regular members and adherents of the congregation were in their places. In the winter of 1844-45 Dr Guthrie entered upon the new church of Free St John’s, which, as we have said, was built for him at the top of the West Bow, within a stone’s throw of his old parish church. Most of his congregation went with him at the Disruption; but whilst the new church was being built they saw very little of their minister, who was absent on his great work of the Manse Scheme. On his return from that tour with flying colours, he received from his congregation a most cordial welcome; congratula* tions poured in upon him on every hand; and he was perhaps the most popular man of the whole church. But while his popularity had gained, his health had suffered; the Her¬ culean labours he undertook sapped his usually robust constitution, and laid the foundations of permanent disease. His heart became affected. On several occasions he was laid aside from active duty, and he was recommended to seek change of air and scene. This induced him to visit the Continent; and he travelled on this and subsequent occasions through France, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany. In these visits he acquired a large amount of useful infor¬ mation, and frequently conducted religious services—both giving and receiving benefit. In 1856 Dr Hanna was appointed his colleague in Free St John’s. Up to this time he had been without either colleague or assistant, although the precarious state of his FREE ST. J OHN’S —MODERATORS HIP. C9 liealth sometimes kept him out of the pulpit for weeks together. The appointment of Dr Hanna was brought about in the following manner. He hacl made an arrange¬ ment with the Kev. Mr Addis, of Morningside Church, to exchange pulpits for a few Sundays while he was editing the works of Dr Chalmers. Mr Addis thus removed to Dr Hanna’s church at East Kilbride, and the latter took up his quarters at Morningside. About this time Dr Guthrie had made up his mind that he must either retire altogether from pulpit duties, or have a colleague. The congregation deprecated the adoption of the former course; and having heard Dr Hanna preach in St John’s on several occasions when their own minister was unable to be present, they resolved to invite him to become collegiate minister of St John’s. The formal call was given by the Congrega¬ tion, and accepted by Dr Hanna, who continued, with great satisfaction to all concerned, to be Dr Guthrie’s colleague for a period of eleven years, retiring in 1867. From the time that he obtained the assistance of Dr Hanna, the pulpit appearances of Dr Guthrie became much less frequent, and he officiated in his own pulpit for the last time in 1865, although subsequent to that date he occasion¬ ally assisted at communion services, both in his own church and elsewhere. On the 22d day of May, 1862, Dr Guthrie was appointed Moderator of the Twentieth General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. But for his infirm health, it is probable that this honour,—the highest that it is in the power of the church to bestow,—would have been conferred upon him years before. His election was proposed by the retiring Moderator, Dr Candlisli, who, among other justly laudatory sentiments, gave utterance to the following:—“ His genius has long since placed him at the head of all the gifted and popular preachers 70 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. of our day, and with his other rare qualifications, has won for him an influence in quarters otherwise all but inaccessible; an influence nobly used; never for any selfish end, but always for Christ's truth and cause alone. His efforts in every work of benevolence, and specially on behalf of ragged children, have made his name, like that of Howard, synonymous with philan¬ thropy. For our church he has been in many ways a benefactor as well as an ornament; and hundreds of manses all over the land will be his endearing monument.” The nomination was seconded by his intimate friend and warm admirer the Earl of Dalhousie, who concluded his speech with these truthful and noble words:—“ It was his lot to show the example of preach¬ ing to the outcast people of the land, in the wilds and amid the snows of Canobie; it was his privilege to take up the question of providing manses for our houseless ministers, and we know how nobly he wrought that scheme. Having estab¬ lished, on a foundation which, I trust, will not be easily moved, the ragged schools, Thomas Guthrie directed his ever active mind to put down intemperance and drunkenness throughout our city. Brethren, there is not a sin in this city with which he has not endeavoured to do battle,—not a sorrow in it with which he has not sympathised,—and those of you who are citizens of Edinburgh, to you I say again, This is the man whom you are this day invited to honour. In honouring Thomas Guthrie, the Court is conferring honour on itself; and I cannot help feeling a selfish pleasure in seeing him so highly honoured, seeing we come from the same country, were born in the same town, and love to dwell among the same scenes.” Dr Guthrie was introduced to the Assembly by Dr Buchanan of Glasgow. Often has the Free Assembly Hall been crowded with anxious and expectant faces; but never did it exhibit a more memorable aspect than on this occasion. It seemed as if the whole city had turned out to welcome the man whom his MODERATORSHIP. 71 church delighted to honour. Hundreds tried in vain to obtain admission. The audience stood on the tiptoe of expectation, for it was pretty generally understood that the moderator-elect was prepared to make one of his most brilliant oratorical efforts. Dr Guthrie did not disappoint liis numerous and expectant friends. His opening address began with a plea for indulgence, on the ground that “ he was not conversant with the forms of church courts, having, before the Disruption, oftener found himself at a gun than by the wheel; and, since the Disruption, such time as he could spare from pulpit and pastoral duties had been given to other fields.” He then referred, in his own peculiar manner, to the services rendered by former Moderators; the growing and gratifying desire for union among Christians; his attachment to the principles for which, as Free Churchmen, they had fought and suffered; the Court of Session and the Cardross case; the Veto and Church Settlement Act; and the immediate duty and ultimate destiny of the Free Church not to pull down the Established Church, but “ to bring our church into a state of the highest efficiency,—filling our pro¬ fessors' chairs with the best professors, our pulpits with the best ministers, our schemes with the best conveners, our eldership with the cream of the people, and our people with the very finest of the wheat,”—and thereby “ prove that a church faithful to her Head in heaven, and to the Bible on earth, and faithful to the people's rights and to the interests of souls, without aid from the State, can stand on her own good feet.” At the close of his address, Dr Guthrie paid a tender, cordial, and nobly eloquent tribute to the memory of Hugh Miller and Dr Cunningham. Of Miller he said, “ Talk to the people of Scotland of a name that lent lustre to the Free Church, and a pen that did her the greatest service, and I will tell you a name that rises in the minds of Scotland's people, and 72 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. trembles on their lips—the name of Hugh Miller. . Years have passed since we lost him. Years often abate the sense of loss, but in my mind they have here only increased the sense of it. How often have events happened when we would have wished to have him back again—back in our field of battle—how often have we been ready to cry, like our fathers, when hard pressed by the English, c Oh ! for one hour of Wallace wight!’—Oh ! for one hour of Miller! one paper from him ! one flash of his steel in the battle field ! . . . Who had a pen like his, who so ready for the onset, and who showed such prowess in the field 1 Ay, whose name in lordly hall, or Highland glen, or crowded city, by seashore or among our mountains, was more a familiar word than Hugh Miller’s name. He fell a sacrifice; he was a martyr in his own way to his mighty efforts in the cause of truth, of patriotism, of the Free Church, of civil and religious liberty; and, I will also add, to the cause of science, ministering as a priestess at the altar of religion.” Of Dr Cunningham he said, “He, whom Miller loved so well,—whom, next to Chalmers, he most revered,—who was, of all men, as a man¬ at arms, facile jprinceps ,—who might of all men have received the noble title of defensor fidei , defender of our faith,—is, since the meeting of last Assembly, dead and gone. We shall see his face no more. We miss him here, and what can I say of him more than this—we would have missed him more in the day of conflict i I leave it to this Assembly to record, in terms suitable to his worth, his distinguished abilities, and his distin¬ guished services, their sense of the value they set on William Cunningham; that generations hereafter may know how much we valued him who carved his name on the very pillars of our church; how much we owe to him who was a lion in the battle¬ field and a lamb at home; how much we owe to him who, while he lived, and now by his works when dead, did so much to anchor MODEllATORSHIP. 73 this church over the ground of that old and sound theology which Paul revealed, Calvin illustrated, Knox imported, and William Cunningham so nobly defended. Fathers and Brethren, where he did so much to anchor our bark, I trust she will ever ride. In these days, when men are lifting the anchors of their faith and driving on the shores of infidelity, now and hereafter also, may our church never depart from that sure anchor-ground; and may her ministers ever be men whom no earthly advan¬ tages will tempt to sign what they do not believe, and no earthly loss will deter from avowing what they do !” Dr Guthrie’s speech, in closing the Assembly, was worthy of himself and of the occasion. It was long, elaborate, racy, and comprehensive. We give one or two brief extracts, valuable in themselves, and as fair specimens of the whole speech. Repudiating all sympathy with the errors of Bunsen, he adds, “ Far less do I sympathise with those who, having embraced German errors, still hold Church of England livings; and, so doing, deal with the most sacred vows after a fashion that, I will take leave to say, would in commerce be counted fraud—would in domestic life destroy its peace, and end in actions of divorce—and would, in the affairs of State, brand a man with the name of a traitor; and would, in other days, have brought his head to the block. I have no sympathy with such men. If ministers of the church may do what ministers of the State may not,—what men in commerce may not—what men in domestic life may not— may sign one thing and believe and act upon another—then, in 1843, we were ‘ martyrs by mistake.’ We might have held both our livings and our principles in that way. We acted otherwise, and what a fatal blow to religion had we not acted otherwise! There is something more eloquent than speech, I mean the eloquence of action; and I am bold to say that Hall, Foster, or Chalmers never preached a F 74 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D sermon so impressive or sublime as the humblest minister of our church did on that day of May, when he gave up his living to retain his principles, and joined the crowd that, bursting from the doors of St Andrew’s Church, with Chalmers at its head, marched out, file by file, in steady ranks, giving God’s people, who anxiously crowded the streets, occasion to weep tears, not of grief but of joy, as they cried, ‘They come, they come; thank God! they come.’” He referred with approval to the idea of Bunsen, that the Free Church had been raised up, and placed in favourable circumstances for solving the problem, whether a church, without aid or countenance from the State, could fulfil the two grand objects of every living being—sustain itself and extend itself; and, after noticing one or two collateral matters, added: “If we can secure for our church the rising talent and genius, as well as the piety of the country—if we can fill our pulpits with our ablest as well as our most pious youths, I do not despair of a favourable result. We are very near it already. The Free Church is only nineteen years old, and already we have a revenue of above £300,000 a-year, as much as the whole revenues of the whole Estab¬ lished Church. We are engaged in this grand experi¬ ment, and we shall work it out successfully, if we do our duty to the missionary cause abroad, and what I make free to call the ‘minister cause’ at home.” To a remarkably eloquent and unique pleading for the “minister cause” the remainder of the address was devoted. We give a few of the noble utterances : “ Genteel poverty ! may you never know it! genteel poverty, to which some doom themselves, but to which ministers are doomed, is the greatest evil under the sun. Give me liberty to wear a frieze coat, and I will thank no man for a black one—give me liberty to rear my sons to be labourers, and my daughters to be domestic servants. MODERATORSHIP. 75 and the manse may enjoy the same cheerful contentment that sheds its sunlight on many a pious and lowly home. But to place a man in circumstances where he is expected to be generous and hospitable, to have a hand as open as his heart is to the poor, to give his family a liberal education, to breed them up according to what they call genteel life,— to place a man in these circumstances, and deny him the means of doing so, is, but for the hope of heaven, to embitter existence. , . . There are certain ways of evading the claims of ministers to such a competence as they are entitled to. Some people do not like to hear of these matters. Some, not many, I hope, are like an honest man belonging to Aber¬ deenshire—begging the pardon of the Aberdonians here, I tell the story as I heard it—who, on being asked what he thought of the Free Church, replied, ‘Oh, I admire her principles, but I detest her schemes. . . . An honest weaver stood up, and was clear for keeping the incumbent at the lowest figure. He saw no reason why ministers should receive more for weaving sermons than he had for weaving webs. He alleged, in proof of the advan¬ tage of a poor stipend, that the church never had bettor nor so good ministers as in those days when they went about in sheepskins and goatskins, and lived in caves and holes of the earth. If any sympathise with the weaver, I answer that I have an insuperable objection to ‘caves and holes’—they create damp; and, secondly, as to the habili¬ ments, it will be time enough to take up that question when our people are prepared to walk Princes Street with us, not in this antique dress, but in the more primitive and antiquated fashion of goatskins with the horns on. So I dispose of all such wretched evasions. “ I now pass on to a second evasion, drawn from a case which actually occurred though not in our congregation, 76 LIFE OF KEY. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. nor in any congregation of the Free Church. A lady, rustling in silks, and in a blaze of jewels, went to visit her minister’s wife, more a lady than herself, with the excep¬ tion of the dress. She condoled with her on the straitened circumstances and means of ministers; and looking into the pale care-worn face of the excellent woman, said, as she turned up the white of her eyes, ‘ But, my dear, your re¬ ward is above!’ From the bloodless lips of some poor sinner in a cold, unfurnished garret, where the man of God, facing fevers and pestilence, has gone to smooth the dying pillow, and minister consolation in that last dark hour, I have been thankful to hear the words, ‘Your reward is above ’—but from silks and satins—disgusting !—cant, the vilest cant, and enough to make religion stink in the nostrils of the world! Does that saying pay the minister’s stipend ? —will it pay his accounts ] Fancy the worthy man going to his baker or his butcher, and instead of paying down money, turning up the white of his eyes to say, 'Your reward is above.’ I fancy they would reply, 6 Oh, no, my good Sir, that will not pay the bill;’ and I say what does not pay bills does not pay ministers’ stipends as they ought to be paid.” CHAPTER XI. EFFORTS IN THE TEMPERANCE CAUSE. Next to the Manse Scheme and Ragged Schools, there is no movement in which Dr Guthrie took such a conspicuous interest as that of temperance. Forty years ago, a teetotaler was comparatively a ram avis . He was regarded as a well meaning but eccentric man, who had “ a bee in his bonnet.” Then it required more courage than it does now, to resist the temptations planted thick as thorns on a rose bush, in the path of the total abstainer. The movement was treated, even by men otherwise respectable and exemplary, with scorn and ridicule. The use of intoxicating drinks had become so common with the people, no matter what their rank or condition, as to enter into the economy of every day life—and be regarded as an indispensable adjunct to christenings, births, marriages, and even funerals. The common mind had come to regard drink as a panacea fcr all the evils that flesh is heir to; and alike in the palaces of the rich and the hovels of the poor, it was as much in request as the very “ staff of life” itself. Under these circumstances, it required no little moral courage to take, as Dr Guthrie ultimately did, such a firm and determined stand against the drinking usages of society. The Doctor gives the follow¬ ing account of the origin of his teetotalism. Along with Mr J. 0. Brown and Mr Bridges he had been travelling in Ireland, as a deputation to that country, shortly after the Disruption. “In this journeying,” he says, “we reached a town called Omagh, from whence we had to travel a mountainous country to another place called Cocton. 78 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. The day was one of the worst possible, with bitter cold and lashing rain. Half-way there stood a small inn, into which we went, as a sailor in stress of weather runs into the first haven. Those were the days, not of tea and toast, but when it was thought that the best cure for a wet coat and a cold body was a tumbler of toddy; and we no sooner got within the inn than the toddy was ordered. We took our toddy, and, no doubt, in moderation. But if we, with all our haps on, were in an uncomfortable state, far more uncomfortable was our half-ragged carman ; if we were drenched, he was drowned. Of course, we felt for our courteous and civil driver, and we thought that what was sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander, and we offered Tiim a glass; but the carman was not such a gander as we, like geese, took him for; to our perfect amazement, not one drop of the toddy would he touch. He said, *1 am an abstainer, and will take no toddy/ Well, that stuck in my throat, and it went to my heart and (though in another sense than drink) to my head. That and other circumstances made me a teetotaler.” The “ other circumstances ” referred to are undoubtedly his experiences of the effects of drink in his pastoral work among the inhabitants of the Cowgate, and other slums of Edinburgh. Very soon after he came to the metropolis, he saw enough to convince him that, so far as the poor were concerned, drink was the root t)f nearly all their destitution, misery, and crime. When the “ Scottish Association for the Suppression of Drunkenness” was formed in 1851, Dr Guthrie was urgently requested to write the introductory pamphlet of a series to be issued by the Association. This was the origin of his “ Plea on behalf of Drunkards and against Drunkenness.” In this Plea he announced himself as an abstainer. “ Speaking EFFORTS IN THE TEMPERANCE CAUSE. 79 individually,” he says, “we think ourselves bound to say, that we go much farther than the principles of this Association would carry us—than most of the esteemed and honourable men with whom we are here associated. On principles of patriotism and Christian expediency, we think that the evil has arrived at such a pitch, that it were well if, instead of either attempting to muffle or even to muzzle the monster, the country would agree to put a knife through its heart, in the entire disuse of all intoxicating liquors.” The " Plea” was argumentative throughout, gave a number of very telling facts and figures, and produced a profound impression. A still greater effect, however, was produced by the delivery and publication, some years afterwards, of the discourses on “ The City: its Sins and Sorrows.” Lest its pictures should be regarded as exaggerations, he says:— “No good cause has ever but suffered from injudicious zeal and extravagant statements. Regard for truth, and my very anxiety to see this evil arrested, unite in preventing me from indulging in exaggeration—were it possible here to exaggerate: I say possible to exaggerate. For what flight of fancy, what bold strokes of painting, what graphic powers of description, could convey any adequate idea of the evils and sorrows that march in the train of this direful and most detestable vice ] Standing on the surf-beaten shore, when ocean, lashed by the tempest into foaming rage, was up in her angry might, I have seen a spectacle so grand; and where she couched in the valley, arrayed in a gay robe of summer flowers, I have seen nature so beautiful; and where rattling thunders mingled with the roar of the avalanche, and untrodden peaks of eternal snow rose clear and serene above the dark mysterious gorge, within which the battle of elements was w r aging, I have looked upon scenes so sublime, as to pass description. Nor colour nor words can convey an 80 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. adequate idea of them. To be understood they must be visited, to be felt they must be seen. “ Incredible as it may appear, this remark is no less true of many regions of sorrow, and starvation, and disease, and vice, and devilry, and death, that the smoke-stained walls of these dingy houses hide from common view. These were for years the painful field of my labours. Let no man fancy that we select the worst cases, or present the blackest side of the picture. Believe me, it is impossible to exaggerate, impossible even truthfully to paint the effect of this vice either on those who are addicted to it, or on those who suffer from it—crushed husbands, broken-hearted wives, and most of all, those poor innocent children that are dying under cruelty and starvation, that shiver in their rags upon our streets, that walk unshod the winter snows, and with their matted hair and hollow cheeks, and sunken eyes, and sallow countenances, glare out on us, wild and savage-like, from these patched and dusty windows. Besides, if the extent of this evil has been exaggerated, it is a fault that may be pardoned. It is a failing that ‘leans to virtues side/ Perhaps she exaggerates his danger, but who quarrels with the mother, whose love for her sailor boy keeps her tossing on a sleepless pillow—praying through the long hours of a stormy night, as her busy imagination fancies that in that wild shriek of the fitful wind she hears his drowning cry. When the nursery only has caught fire, and a faithful domestic, plucking the babe from a burning cradle, rushes into your chamber, and makes you leap to the cry, The house is all on fire ! will he, that hurries away to save the rest, challenge the exaggeration 1 ? Exaggeration is as natural to earnestness of purpose and depth of feeling, as a blush to shame, or a smile to happiness, or the flash of the eye to anger/’ EFFORTS IN THE TEMPERANCE CAUSE. 81 We give one or two of the Doctor’s word pictures, mode of putting the argument, and heart-stirring appeals:— “ With a pagan from any part of China, that vast empire, hut one which our opium trade and greed of gain has demoralised, I say that I should be afraid to find myself in many districts of this city of schools, and colleges, and churches, and hospitals, and benevolent societies, and people of high Christian worth and unquestionable piety. Amid the idle groups of bloated women, and half-naked children, and wrecks of men, filling up many a close-mouth and foot of filthy stair—with our path crossed by some reeling drunkard, who launches himself headlong into the common sewer—with so many shops, under Government licence, turning health into disease, decency into tattered rags, love into estrangement or bitter hatred, young beauty into loathsomeness, woman’s natural modesty into loud and coarse effrontery, mothers’ milk into poison, mothers’ hearts • into stone, and the image of God into something baser than a brute—how could I look that sober, upright pagan in the face, and ask him to become a Christian ] I must be dumb, lest he should turn round on me to ask:—Are these Chris¬ tians ] Be these the fruits of Christianity ] I would repel the charge. But what if he should follow it up with a blow less easy to parry ] Pointing up to those here who are rolling in wealth, or enjoying the abundant comforts of their homes, or the ordinances of their worship, he might next ask:—What are these Christians doing] What do they to save their fellow-creatures from miseries that move a pagan to tears ] AVhat to save them from crimes unpractised by those whom you call the followers of the false prophet, by us to whose distant land you send your missionaries to turn us from our fathers’ idols ] What could I say ] How would I look] With what answer could I meet the withering sarcasm:—‘Physician, heal thyself]’ LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, P.T). “ Go not away, 1 pray you, under the delusion, that like a fog-bank which lies thick and heavy on the valley, when heights are clear, and hill tops are beaming in the morning sun, intemperance is confined only to the lowest stratum of society. I know the contrary. Much improved as are the habits of the upper and middle classes—and we thank God for that, extending as that improvement has done to those who stand beneath them in the social pyramid—and we bless God also for that, and hoping that this improvement, like water percolating a bed of sand, will sink down till it reaches and purifies the lowest stratum—we have met this vice in all classes of society. It has cost many a servant her place, and—yet greater loss—ruined her virtue. It has broken the bread of many a tradesman. It has wrecked the fortunes of many a merchant. It has spoiled the coronet of its lustre, and sunk the highest rank into contempt. It has sent respectability to hide its head in a poor-liouse, and pre¬ sented in luxurious drawing rooms scenes which have furnished laughter to the scullions in the kitchen. ^But it has done worse things than break the staff of bread, lower rank, wreck earthly fortunes, and crown wealth with thorns. Most accursed vice! What hopes so precious that it has not withered, what career so promising that it lias not arrested, what heart so tender that it has not petrified, what temper so fine that it has not destroyed, what things sc noble and sacred that it has not blasted 1 It has changed into ashes the laurel crown on the head of genius, and, the wings of the poet scorched by its hell-fire flame, he who once played in the light of sunbeams, and soared aloft into the skies, has basely crawled in the dust. Paralysing the mind even more than the body, it has turned the noblest intellect into drivelling idiocy. Not awed by dignity, it has polluted the ermine of the judge. Not scared away by the sanctity EFFORTS IN THE TEMPERANCE CAUSE. 83 of the temple, it has defiled the pulpit. In all these particulars, I speak what I know. I have seen it cover with a cloud, or expose to deposition from the office and honours of the holy ministry, no fewer than ten clergymen, with some of whom I have sat down at the table of the Lord, and all of whom I numbered in the rank of acquaintances or friends. “The frightful extent of this vice, however, is perhaps most brought out by one melancholy fact. There are few families amongst us so happy as not to have had some one near and dear to them either in imminent peril—hanging over the precipice—or the slave of intemperance, altogether ‘sold unto sin/ Considering the depravity of human nature, and the temptations to which our customs and circumstances expose us, that fact, however melancholy and full of warning, does not astonish us. But, to see a father or mother, to see a brother or sister venturing on the edge of a whirlpool, in whose devouring, damning vortex they themselves have seen one whom they loved engulplied, does fill us with astonish¬ ment. I knew a mother once, who saw her only son drowned before her eyes. Years came and went ere she could calmly look upon the glorious ocean, or hear without pain the voice of the billows amid which her boy was lost. How many have a better, or rather a bitterer, cause for hating the sight of the bowl! Considering liow many are lost—sink into perdition, victims to this vice—I do wonder that so few Christian, or no Christian, but loving parents, candidly consider the question, whether it be not their duty to train up their children according to the rule, ‘ Taste not, touch not, handle not/ I have wondered most of all to see a pious father indulging in the cup that had been poison— death to his son. Why does he not throw it away—cast it from him with trembling horror] Taking up the knife, red with the blood of his child—making sure that it shall be the 84 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. death of no one else—why does he not fling it after the lost —down, down into the depths of hell? “ Grant that there were a sacrifice in abstaining, what Christian man would hesitate to make it, if by doing so he can honour God and bless mankind ? If by a life-long abstinence from all those pleasures which the wine-cup yields, I can save one child from a life of misery—I can save one mother from premature grey hairs, and griefs that bring her to the grave—I can save one woman from ruin—bringing him to Jesus, I can save one man from perdition—I should hold myself well repaid. Living thus, living not for myself, when death summons me to my account, and the Judge says, Man, where is thy brother ? I shall be found walking, although at a humble distance, in the footprints of Him who took his way to Calvary. He said, ‘ If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me/ This cross, which has been borne by missionaries to pagan lands, which has been held high in the battle-field by men nobly fighting for their faith, which rose above the red scaffold flowing with martyrs’ blood, may be carried into our scenes of social enjoyment, and, a brighter ornament than any jewels flashing on beauty’s breast, may adorn the festive table. If this abstinence is a cross, all the more honour to the men who carry it. It is a right noble thing to live for God and the good of man.” Thus, in his “Plea,” and in “The City: its Sins and Sorrows,” he laid so much to the door of strong drink, and appealed so earnestly on behalf of its victims, that public feeling in Edinburgh, and wherever his books were read, was stirred to its uttermost depths. Perhaps no works that have ever been written, either before or since, have done more to promote the temperance reformation. The terrible earnestness of the writer, his well known philan- EFFORTS IN THE TEMPERANCE CAUSE. 85 thropic character, his thorough knowledge of the evil, and his impassioned and pictorial eloquence, gave his opinions and pleas a force and power that seldom attaches to temperance literature, even of the most radical and pronounced type. Besides that phase of the evil most familiar to him in Edinburgh, there was another aspect of drunkenness with which he had often come into contact in the country, and which had made an impression on him from his earliest years. It was that form of the evil which is so com¬ mon at hiring fairs, and which often leads simple young men and women into temptation and crime. He had seen in his early days, at the two half-yearly markets in his native town of Brechin, scenes of debauchery and riot that were simply, or at least chiefly, the result of the absence of any counter-attraction; and he made up his mind that he would endeavour to provide an antidote. Accordingly, lie made a point of visiting some of the principal fairs in the Lothians and the adjoining counties, commencing with Biggar. Referring to this, he says:— “Four weeks ago I was at Biggar Fair, and the week after next I am going to Calder Fair—not to buy sweeties, far less to drink whisky toddy; but recollecting what I witnessed in my early days at the two hiring markets in my native town of Brechin, and the scenes of drunkenness, dissipation, and disorder there enacted, I will go there for the purpose of doing wdiat I can to stop them, with God’s help. I believe I succeeded at Biggar Fair in keeping some hundreds of people sober, and sending them home sober as judges; ay, and more sober than many judges have often been.” Besides his “Plea for Drunkards,” &c., and “The City: its Sins and Sorrows,” Dr Guthrie wrote two of the Pic¬ torial Tracts issued monthly by the Scottish Temperance 86 LIFE OF REV ; THOMAS GUTHRIE, D,D. League. They were entitled “ The Contrast,” and “ A Word in Season.” Both tracts were written for the month of January, in different years, and had an enormous circula¬ tion. The last of the two had reference to a most tragic and touching incident, of which the neighbourhood of Blair¬ gowrie was the scene. Dr Guthrie frequently appeared upon the temperance platform; and the style of his advocacy will be seen from the following extract,—taken from a speech delivered by him at a meeting of the Free Church Temperance Society, held in the City Hall, Glasgow, 9th February, 1859 :— “Well, then, if these drinks are not good for the body, are they good for work? I say they are not. What do you take a dram for?—Oh, because it is cold. And in summer why do you take it ?—Because it is so hot. It is a most extraordinary thing this whisky. It is so good when they are cold, and it is good when they are hot; but it is neither good when they are cold nor when they are hot. Sir John Ross, Admiral Beecher, Edward Parry, Dr Richard¬ son, Sir John Franklin—all these men have faced the northern climate. These were men that had never for weeks a dry stitch upon their backs—it often happening that they were sheathed in ice; and the universal testimony (and if these men are not to decide it, is it some wretched toper in Glasgow that was to do so ?) of these men, who lived in sixty degrees below zero, and faced the roaring storm and washing sea, was one unanimous testimony to this effect, that spirits are the worst things that a man could take when exposed to a severe climate, hard weather, and painful circumstances. (Cheers.) Let us take one jump from the Pole to India. Look at the list of the soldiers divided into as many total abstainers, moderate drinkers, 9,nd drunkards. Now, the proportion in which they die is EFFORTS IN THE TEMPERANCE CAUSE. 87 this—46 drunkards, 26 moderate drinkers, and just 15 teetotalers. That is the question in regard to heat. I have settled that question in regard to cold, I have settled that question in regard to heat; and, I say, I defy any man in the world, in health, heavy work or light, in cold or warm weather, to shew that the taking of porter, or ale, or spirits, will give him more vigorous health. Now, don’t tell me it is for heat. Then do you take it for your temper ] Do you say so] Many a poor wife knows the opposite—that it has turned a husband into a hard-hearted, cruel, and unfeeling father. I would not give anything for the company of a man who needed spirits to put him in good spirits. Will any one dare to say that I am a gloomy man, or ill-tempered ] I defy them. Will any one say that I am an unhappy man ] I am very happy, I am glad to say. I can tell you that I feel my spirits lighter, and I feel my purse heavier. I feel my head clearer, and my heart better, and my stomach better, for being a teetotaler. (Cheers.) I was in ill health through over exertion in the cause of the church, and ordered by my physician to take wine. I took it for three years; and as I was threatened with gout, meeting Professor Miller one day, he said, ‘ If you continue to take wine, you may lay your account to have the gout.’—‘Then,’ said I, ‘ henceforth I will give it up.' Since that day, three years have elapsed, and I have had better health ever since, and worked more than before. (Cheers.) Now, I adopted this cause of total abstinence, and I’ll tell you why; I don’t think it is sinful to take spirits, but I hold it a matter of the highest Christian expediency to be a teetotaler. I went to the poor-house, and found five out of six of the paupers til ere, directly or indirectly, through drinking. I went to the prison, and found five out of six of the culprits there, directly or indirectly, through drinking. I went to the ragged LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. school, and found 99 out of the 100 of them there, directly or indirectly, out of drinking. I went down to the Gowgate, Grassmarket, St Mary’s Wynd, College Wynd, Brodie’s Close, and I found it meeting me at every corner, defeating me in every effort; it defeated our schools, churches, and mission¬ aries, and I felt that if these wretched, lapsed, lost, degraded classes were ever to be raised in the platform of humanity, drink must be banished from the land. I want to know if you ever saw a city missionary not a teetotaler] I have seen some begin as moderate drinkers, but they never continued long until they became teetotalers; and if this audience were to go down and live in the Saltmarket for a few days, it would do more good than my speaking to doomsday. If any one of you would go down and hear that cursing, brutal husband, who, six years ago, was a noble workman with a lovely wife, to whom he had pledged his heart and affections, with their children clothed, and, happy to see their father, running to meet him; but now they run from him, and his wife trembles to meet him, and makes her prayer to God to strike her dead and take her out of the world. If you were to see such a scene, I am sure you would all give your heart and hand in this noble work. I am sorry to detain this meeting so long, but, as I understand there is a large number of office-bearers of the Free Church as well as members present, I would like to say a few words more, especially to them. My friends, I assume no presumptuous position. It was some time before I made up my mind to join the temperance cause; and I would use the argument with you that I did with a lady. I said to her—If you tell me of the good drink does, I will tell you of the ill it does. I need scarcely say that she could not tell me any good it does. (Cheers.) Well, now, I wish you to think severally what good it does. Will you have a worse head, a worse purse, EFFORTS IN THE TEMPERANCE CAUSE. 89 or a worse body for being teetotalers? Do you think it would be a great sacrifice to give them up ] There never was so great a mistake in the world. The first day I wanted my wine I thought the servant had not cooked the dinner so well; the second day there was something funny about it; the third day I never thought of the wine at all; and now when I go to dinner, and see ladies and gentlemen drinking, it looks to me as if they were drinking salts or castor oil. (Loud laughter.) Depend upon it, it requires no sacrifice at all. If you mean to make a trial, I say, God help you. If you do make it,—if you are a drunkard—oh! you need to pray long and deep to God to help you. In regard to those who are not drunkards, believe me there is no sacrifice whatever. I speak from experience. I put it to the Free Church elders, to my brethren in the ministry, —I put it to the Free Church members—that drink does no man real good except as a medicine. Is it true that it does thousands eternal evil ] Is it true that it has carried more souls into hell than any other vicious indulgence ] Is it true that it is the cause of all the wrecks that flutter in your streets—the cause of the ruin of nine-tenths of the females that walk the streets and disgrace their sex ] Is it true that it fills the prison and the poor-house, and breaks human hearts, and destroys more happiness than any other indulgence whatever ] If you cannot put your hand on any good, and I can lay my hand on that world of evil, my dearly beloved Christian friends, what are we to live for ] Am I to live for my own indulgence when that is the cause of the ruin of thousands and millions in the land ] I say, No! Did Jesus live for himself] He said, ‘The Son of man came not to be ministered unto but to minister/ Did Paul live for himself] He said ‘He would eat no flesh while the world lasted, lest he made his brother to offend/ 90 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. I pray you to take this subject home to your knees to-night. I say, souls are perishing in thousands by these drinks, and I am entitled to ask, and do ask it, that you Christian men and women pray to God that he would direct you and teach you what is your duty. If you can go down before God and pray that he may keep you from being a total abstainer—if you can pray God to keep you from being carried away by this speech, do it, do it! This is a question that requires your solemn consideration, and as you shall answer to Him wdio wont take from us this reply, ‘ Am I my brother's keeper]’ ” When Dr Guthrie was a student, there was not, so far as he knew, an abstaining student within the University, nor was there an abstaining minister in the whole Church of Scotland. But the success of the temperance movement had effected a wonderful change in this respect, and he was not more zealous in its promotion than sanguine of its ultimate triumph. “ In the course of another generation,” he said, “the man who shall sit down to his bottle of wine or his tumbler of toddy, will be as rare as those creatures, the Megatheriums, which remain to us the strange specimens of another, and, let us be thankful, a past generation.” He was specially anxious to secure the support of the ministry to the temperance movement. “ He would rather see in the pulpit a man who was a total abstainer from this root of all evil—drink, than a man crammed with all the Hebrew roots in the world.” In speaking of the benefits of temperance, he was accustomed to urge four reasons for being an abstainer—“my head is clearer, my health is better, my heart is lighter, and my purse is heavier.” His plan for closing the mouths of objectors to temperance principles, was to ask them if there was no young man among their acquaintances or relations who had been ruined by indulgence EFFORTS IN THE TEMPERANCE CAUSE. 91 in intoxicating liquors ? He seldom got a negative answer. His opinion was that Scotland was about the most drunken country in Europe. On this subject he says, “During a tour in France, Belgium, Sardinia, Switzerland, Prussia, and Germany, I have seen, in seven weeks, although I was in Paris at the time of the baptismal fetes , and in Brussels during the three days’ celebration of Leopold having been on the throne for a quarter of a century, less drunkenness than might be seen in Edinburgh in three days.” “ What a blessed providence it is,” said a distinguished foreigner, “ that you Anglo-Saxons are a drunken race; for, were you not, there is a power, talent, and energy within you, would make you masters of the whole world!” One more reference to the dark record of his experience, and we have done with this subject. It will show how strongly and acutely he felt that the temperance cause deserved sympathy and support. “Seven years of my ministry,” he says, “were spent in one of the lowest localities of Edinburgh; and it almost broke my heart, day by day to see, as I wandered from house to house, and from room to room, misery, wretchedness, and crime; the detestable vice of drunkenness, the cause of all, meeting me at every turn, and marring all my efforts. If there is one thing I feel more intensely than another, it is this; that drinking is our national curse, our sin, our shame, our weakness. I speak the words of truth and soberness when I say that this vice destroys more men and women, bodies and souls, breaks more hearts, and ruins more families, than all the other vices of the country put together! Nor need I speak of the multitude of lives it costs. Nothing ever struck me more, in visiting those wretched localities, than to find that more than a half of these families were in the churchyard. The murder of innocent infants in this city by drunkenness, out- 92 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.T). Herods Herod in his slaughter of the innocents of Bethlehem. I appeal to every missionary and every minister who visits these localities, whether the great obstacle that meets him at every corner, is not drunkenness. I believe we will in vain plant churches and schools, though they be as thick as trees in the forest, unless this evil is stopped.” CHAPTER XII. MISCELLANEOUS INCIDENTS AND MOVEMENTS. Hitherto we liave looked only at the more prominent features of Dr Guthrie's public career. There were many movements and occurrences, however, of minor import and significance, to which he lent a helping hand. Indeed, without travelling out of the record, we might go much further, and say that there were no movements of a chari¬ table, moral, social, or religious kind with which he has not been more or less prominently identified. At a meeting held in the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, on the 20th Dec., 1838, for the purpose of commemorating the restoration of civil and religious liberty, and of Presbyterian Church Government, as secured by the celebrated General Assembly at Glasgow in 1638, he made a speech, in which the follow¬ ing passage occurs :—“ I remember when Mr Dunlop and Mr Cunningham brought out, from the dust and rubbish of forty years, the anti-patronage banner, and unfurled and shook it in the face of the Assembly, thirty-three good men and true were all who mustered round it, and I had the honour to be one of the number. The next time it was displayed there were forty-two of us, and they called us in scorn the 42d Highlanders. I remember being at Arbroath, calling on the people to send up petitions against patronage, and I told them that, although they called us the 42d Highlanders last year, we would be the 92d this year, and I was nearly a correct prophet.”" It was this same small despised nucleus of forty-two who brought about the Disruption, and established the Free Church. 94 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. The national commemoration of the tri-centenary of the Reformation from Popery in Scotland, was held in Edinburgh, in August, 1860. The proceedings lasted for four whole days, and were of a most interesting character. These consisted of devotional exercises, the reading of papers on Reformation subjects, and the exhibition of a collection of memorials of the Reformation. The opening sermon was preached on Tuesday, the 14th August, by Dr Guthrie, and has been properly described as one of his most thrilling and magnificent efforts. It produced such a profound impression, that, regardless of the sacred character of the service and occasion, the audience at its close gave expression to their admiration and approval in a burst of cheering. From the first, he took a warm interest in the question of Union among the Churches, and to the last, he ably and earnestly pleaded for its consummation. We give a few of his manly and truly Christian utterances:— “I cannot consent to give a silent vote on this great and momentous occasion. When I say that I intend to vote for Dr Buchanan’s motion, I have said nothing that has taken the House by surprise at any rate. I have made no progress any more than my friend Dr Gibson. I am in the very position to-day that I stood in, in the year 1843, when I made my first speech as a Free Church minister in our General Assembly. Whether I have logic or not, I have a good pair of eyes, and I saw a long way a-head of me, which was more than Dr Gibson, with all his logic, did. I see a long way a-head of me this happy day; and I expressed the very sentiments in the Free Church General Assembly of 1843, that I stand up now to express. I find, in turning to the Witness of that period, that I said, ‘ I am for union in the meantime, in the way of co operation. I would propose to MISCELLANEOUS INCIDENTS AND MOVEMENTS. 05 Dr Brown/ (speaking of home mission work), ‘ you take that portion of the work, and to Dr Alexander, you take that, and I will take this; let us devote ourselves to this labour, and go forth to the heathen lanes of Edinburgh just as we go forth to the heathen lands of Africa.' ‘ But, sir/ I added, ‘ We cannot stop there.' And in reference to the very chapter which Sir Henry MoncreifF read here this day, I went on to say, ‘ I defy any man to stop there, who has at heart what our clerk read this evening, that touching and affecting prayer of Jesus for His disciples! What is first and foremost in that prayer] What is mentioned, once, twice, thrice, four, and five times] What is repeated over and over again, in that prayer of our Redeemer ]—“That they may be all one, as I and my Father are one." And I never will rest content, I will never cease to pray and work, till that end is achieved, and, as I do so, I will bury in oblivion the memory of former controversies.' Yes, sir; ‘oh that the day were come,' (and it is not far distant now); ‘oh that the day were come, that I might meet with my brethren,' (and I see some of them before me in this House), ‘ over the grave of all former controversies, that we might shake hands, and join hearts, and be one in Christ Jesus; one regiment bearing the same colours, and going forth like an army mighty for battle, against one common and tremendous foe.' “There are still some crotchety spirits among us. I don’t doubt there are some among the Dissenters, too, who still keep their wounds rankling that they received in the Voluntary controversy. For my part, my wounds have been healed for many a day; and I wish to remind those who have got their old sores about them, that if they are not yet healed, it is a proof they have got a bad constitution. So I say, both to the Free Church and the Dissenters, that if they have not yet got their wounds healed, they will need to look 96 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. after their constitution. There is something wrong about the heart. “No matter what the subject is, there are some men who can’t unite or co-operate unless you drive them into a corner, and bring them to what they call a logical conclusion. I’ll tell you what, and you know it as well as I do, that on all points we will never be agreed till we are in a better church than any here below. Is that a reason why we should not act together, because there may be differences of opinion among us ? Just think of the roses on a bush kicking up a row because they are not all painted alike. Just think of the planets resolving that they won’t go round the sun be¬ cause they have not the same weight, or the same orbit. When is this going to end] It would destroy all nature. And if people refuse to act together for God’s glory and for a good cause, for the reason that in all points they do not think alike, it will not be so much the dividing of the church into sections, as it will be the dividing of the blessed robe of Christ into separate threads; we would all be reduced to the condition of an excellent and learned man in Edinburgh, who would agree in worship with nobody but his own house¬ keeper, and who, when she died, was left to worship alone in the world. Now, if asked what I am going to do with men who won’t agree with us, I just say that I will try to remove their difficulties; I will get up the steam of love, of zeal, and of charitable affection, till I get a pressure of fifty pounds to every square inch on my brother, and he goes over the difficulty like a railway train.” Of every question he took a broad, catholic, and large- hearted view; and this was especially characteristic of his dealings with other religious denominations. Unity, concord, and reciprocity were the aim of his efforts; and freedom in matters of conscience and ecclesiastical polity—more espe- MISCELLANEOUS INCIDENTS AND MOVEMENTS. 97 cially the freedom of a congregation to elect its own minister —was the height of his great argument. No more fitting example of his toleration could be quoted than the following extract from his examination before the Committee, appointed to consider the subject of refusing sites to the Free Church, to which reference has already been made. “ Committee man —‘ I ask you what is your opinion on that point—your claiming sites for the Free Church upon the great and general principles of toleration 1 Are you of opinion that that toleration ought to exist, and to extend, if pushed to its legitimate consequences, to granting sites to Koman Catholics V Dr Guthrie —‘I would grant a site to a Mahometan—to any man who worshipped God according to his conscience/ Committee-man —‘ Jew or Mahometan V Dr Guthrie —‘Yes/ Committee-man —‘Or idolater'?’ Dr Guthrie —‘Yes; I have no right to stand between man and his God, whatever that God may be/ ” He had a longing for millennial peace, and did what he could to hasten its accomplishment by maintaining reciprocity with other denominations. He preached in many churches and chapels that had little in common with the Free Church; and he was ever ready to accommodate himself to the peculiar idiosyncrasies and customs of the sect, with which he was for the time being identified. It is related of him that, being invited to preach one evening in a chapel in Edinburgh, and not aware of the dislike of the congregation to badges of priesthood, he despatched his beadle with a bag containing his gown and bands to await him in the vestry. While assuming these insignia of office, one of the deacons caught sight of him, and, if not horrified, at least, felt the “ old man ” rising within him. He speedily communicated the fact to his brother deacon, and the two, with edifying zeal, hastened to the scene of 98 LIFE OF KEY. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. action. After telegraphing to each other for a little, one of them took speech in hand— “ Ahem! Mr Guthrie, we’re no unco fond o’ seein’ thae things in the poopit—we’re no used to the gown—we wad like better to see you without it.” “ Very well, gentlemen ; it’s all the same. Hae, Jamie, put that in the bag.” “ Ahem ! and the bands ?” “ Oh ! ye like me better wanting them too, do yeV 1 The deacons nodded. “ Here then, Jamie, put them beside the gown.” The night had been very wet, and Mr Guthrie had walked through the rain. He proceeded to put on a pair of dry shoes which Jamie handed him. Looking at them for a minute with a droll expression on his countenance, he held them up to the Nonconformists, adding,— “ Maybe, gentlemen, ye wad like me better wantin’ these, too V 9 The abashed and rebuked elders looked foolishly at each other for a moment, muttered something about the “ plate no bein’ attended to,” and made off to watch its contents. We can only mention, in the briefest possible manner, Dr Guthrie’s labours for the suppression of the social evil—the compassion with which he looked upon fallen women, and the strong, kindly hand that he was ever ready to extend for their rescue and reclamation. Nor can we forget that such movements as that of early closing, and the better payment of the toiling, wage-earning classes, had his hearty sympathy and co-operation. He encouraged, also, the efforts made by working men and .women to improve their circumstances, and was especially given to enjoin habits of thrift and economy. Strikes and all violent efforts at social ameliora¬ tion, he deprecated as “ productive of enormous evils,” MISCELLANEOUS INCIDENTS AND MOVEMENTS. 99 although, admitting “that the working man may have justice on his side, in refusing to work for low wages and demand¬ ing higher.” He valued the Volunteer movement “because it is not, nor can it be, one of offence or aggression, but is, and must be, one of defence alone;” and he held that every man who had health and strength ought to be a volunteer. He took a warm interest in the regular army, and pleaded that our soldiers should be provided more regularly and systematically with the means of grace; and he contrasted our army in this respect with the. army in the days of Crom¬ well, when religious parents sent their sons to be soldiers that they might receive a religious training. Another point on which he felt strongly and spoke effectively was the practice of celibacy in the army, and* the recent legislation to which it has led. Certain Acts, much discussed at present, had no more uncompromising enemy than Dr Guthrie. We quote a few of his utterances on some of these subjects:— “ What right has Government to collect a thousand men together and give them no minister of religion ] If Govern¬ ment, in the matter of Established Churches, thought it right that a thousand people in a parish should have a minister, what right have they to collect a thousand men together, bound and prepared to die for their country’s de¬ fence, and leave them without a minister ? I know no men who have more need; and it is both a cruel and an anti- Christian system, to deprive these men of the regular provision of the means of grace. In the days of Marlborough, every regiment had its chaplain, who marched and cam¬ paigned with the soldiers, and even went to the field of battle with them. In Marlborough’s time, the soldiers never battled with the enemy but they rose from their knees to do it; and the regular practice was for the men to join in prayer before they joined in fight; and many of the officers went to 100 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, L.D. the Lords table and communicated, believing it might be for the last time; and, with all honour to the British army, we have never had better soldiers than in the days of Marl¬ borough. In the days of Cromwell, Christian parents did what no Christian parents in our day would do. They sent their sons into the army, that they might get a religious up¬ bringing. Yes, they sent their sons to be privates in the army, that they might be brought up in the strictest, godliest system. And what was the result ? It was then that Crom¬ well’s men, from the very power which they felt and exercised, got the name of Ironsides, and they never went into battle but they went to victory—a complete proof that the more religious a man is, he is the better soldier, and that the more a man fears God, he is the less likely to fear man. There is another thing that prevents the army from being the true representative of a Christian nation; and that is, that domestic comforts and influence are denied to the soldier. Now, that is a grievous wrong, and it is idle to prove it. I hold that if celibacy is a bad thing in the church, it is a worse thing still in the army. They may blame the soldier if they would, but I blame the system under which the soldier is tempted. Ah, it will be said, married soldiers would be a great expense. But what right has a Christian nation to secure its defence at the risk of the ruin of a man’s happiness'? Give a soldier better pay. That’s it. The soldier was at one time paid twice the wages of a day labourer; and I say, that until they pay the soldier as well as they do the mason or the carpenter, they will not do the army justice.” The Doctor was fond of seeing innocent amusements. “ He liked to see a kitten chasing its own tail, if it had nothing else to do.” But his toleration on this point was used as a testimony against him. On one occasion, at Dundee, he MISCELLANEOUS INCIDENTS AND MOVEMENTS. 101 had advocated more and better ways and means of providing amusement for the working classes, and, to quote his own words, “ a short time afterwards there was sent me a play bill. Yes, a play bill with my name in it! The Reverend Dr Guthrie in a play bill issued in Dundee by some provincial players! I never was more astonished in all the days of my life. I found that my friends, the players, had made an unfair use of an expression made by me on that occasion, and had stuck my name into the bill between, if I recollect, The Merry Wives of Windsor and A Roland for an Oliver. Surely I may say, necessity makes strange bed¬ fellows, and play bills strange companions.” In keeping with his kindly disposition and commisera¬ tion for those whose lines had fallen in less pleasant places, he never tired of speaking a word in season, if it was likely to have anything like an ameliorating influence. He was particularly anxious that the harsh practice of allowing “no followers” to servant girls should be dispensed with. To the horror of not a few old ladies, and with the result of lowering himself in their estimation, he asserted that “lads and lasses should have opportunities for courting,” and declared that he “ had always given his servants facili¬ ties for seeing decent and respectable young men.” Speak¬ ing of the “no follower” condition, he said—“The world would come to an end before many years if that rule was to take place; and what is the world to do ? I say that is not the way to treat a servant. Ho good servant would like to have boundless liberty; but I say that every servant should have liberty to have her holiday, and that every servant should have liberty to see her lad at a decent hour, and the more (I was going to say), the more she had the better; but that would not be good. I say that every attempt to fly in the face of nature and prudence can only lead to mischief; and 102 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. to prevent a decent servant girl from being courted is folly, for, firstly, she wilf be courted whether you will or no; and, secondly, to refuse a servant girl proper time and opportunities for being courted, is to drive her into dangerous times for being courted.” As might be anticipated, Dr Guthrie took a deep interest in the movement for the abolition of slavery in America and throughout the world. He regarded slavery as the sum of all villanies, and the origin of the worst evils that afflict humanity. Hence, he was ever ready to lift up his pen and his voice against the accursed system. Among other meetings at which he spoke with effect on this subject, there is one that stands out with special prominence. It was the meeting held in the’'Queen Street Hall, Edinburgh, on the 24th December, 1859, to express sympathy with Dr Cheever under the painful circumstances in which that eminent divine was placed—some of the wealthier portion of his congregation having, it will be remembered, endeavoured to get him to resign in consequence of his preaching on the subject of slavery, and, failing in that, sought, by withholding all support from the congregation, to shut him up to the necessity of abandoning the position which he held as pastor of the Church of the Puritans in New York. Referring at this meeting, which was exceptionally numerous and influential, to his having declined many invitations to go to America, Dr Guthrie assigned as his reason for not going, that, if he went, he could not keep his temper on seeing the operation and effects of slavery. “I could not,” he said, u go and see a fellow-creature, a little child, or a woman, set up to be sold by auction, perhaps with a horse or a wheel¬ barrow; it would stir my blood, and I could not hold my tongue. I could not stand the sight of such things in the South, and there are things also in the North which I could MISCELLANEOUS INCIDENTS AND MOVEMENTS. 103 not stand. I could not go into one of tlieir pulpits and see a large sea of faces, and there behold some poor negro, in whose beaming eye, in the tears rolling down whose cheeks, I see a loving heart towards my blessed Lord and Saviour, and who, perhaps, is a believer passing any in that house— I could not see that man standing in a corner and professing Christians refusing to sit down with him at the Lord’s table •—the man who perhaps will go into the kingdom of heaven in front of them all—these are things which I could not stand. Neither could I stand this in a railway carriage— some poor woman whose misfortune it is, if it is a misfortune, to be black, and who, because she is black, is turned out of that carriage, and dares not set her foot among her white¬ footed and proud oppressors. These are thing^T could not stand; and therefore I have never gone to America.” When the war which led to the complete abolition of slavery in the United States was at its height, many meetings expressive of sympathy with the North were held all over the United Kingdom. Being such a pronounced abolitionist, Dr Guthrie’s feelings were entirely in favour of the Northern States, not so much because he wished to see the integrity of the Union preserved, as because the success of the North ultimately involved, as its necessary corollary, the abolition of slavery. On this account he believed that good would come out of evil. “ There,” said he, “ in America at this moment, you have a house divided against itself. You liavo brethren in mortal combat by the cradle where they were rocked, over the graves of their common parents. The world has never seen such a horrid strife; and, if the dead walk this earth, I could fancy the spirits of the Red Indians saying, that the hour of their revenge had come now, when the sons of those that had exterminated them were exter¬ minating each other. Ay, and I could fancy the negro, 104 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE. D.D. though he does not express it, chuckling in his heart at the sight which America now presents, when the men who hunted him, and the men who assisted in the hunt, are in a death-grapple, and having each other by the throat, and are burying their swords in each other’s bosoms ; and if the negro knows our proverb, I can fancy him saying to himself, 6 When de rogues fall out, de honest men will get dair own.’ “ I believe God will overrule the American struggle for good, and, I hope, that when fathers in America are washing the blood from the bodies of their sons, they will come to abhor the cause of all the turmoil and ruin in that country! I say of it, what the man now lying in Dundee jail under sentence of death, said of drink. He was a poor, honest, well-doing man, and the highest testimony was borne to his character at the trial. When his wife learned the habit of drinking, she spent his hard-earned wages ! His children were ragged and neglected. Driven to desperation, the man took to drinking himself. On one occasion, he gave her twenty shillings to pay an account, but soon after the creditor came in, and he found that his wife had only paid thirteen shillings, and had drunk the rest! Back she came with the children. His passions were roused. He knocks her down. He tramples on her body, he beats her with his heavy shoes, till he beats her dead. By-and-by the storm is over. Ah! there is the bleeding corpse of his wife. They assure him she is dead. He hangs his head in misery, and covering his face with his hands, exclaims, £ Curse that drink.’ And when America stands over the bleeding bodies of her own sons fallen in this fraternal war, I trust she will cover her face with her hands, and cry, Curse that Slavery” CHAPTER XIII. THE PULPIT— PLATFORM—SOCIETY—PERSON. Although not, in the strictest sense of the term, a refined and intellectual preacher, Dr Guthrie drew around him many of the litemti and rank of Edinburgh. Hugh Miller not only attended his church, but officiated for years as one of his elders. Sir James Y. Simpson, the professor of mid¬ wifery in Edinburgh University, and one of the most genial, accomplished, and characteristic Scotchmen that the nine¬ teenth century has produced, was also a member of his congregation, and superadded to that the honour and value of his personal friendship. Lord Dalhousie, when he visited Edinburgh, was regularly accustomed to “sit under” him; and strangers, illustrious and obscure, came from far and near to listen to his unique oratory. As a preacher, Dr Guthrie might be regarded as variable and discursive. Still, his sermons had always this one characteristic, that in them he never lost sight of Christ and the gospel. To this extent, he adopted the Horatian maxim, and “Kept one consistent plan from end to end;” although his modes of carrying out that plan were not always the same. His exuberant fancy sometimes carried him away into regions where his hearers could hardly follow him. His figures were alternately full of beauty or of terror, of gracefulness or of sublimity. “ Sometimes fair truth in fiction we disguise, Sometimes present her naked to men’s eyes.” It is a mistake to call him, as some have done, an ad captan- H 106 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. dum orator. His oratory wanted none of the polish that distinguished Chalmers’ wild whirlwind bursts, or Hall’s grandly ascending periods, but it had qualities entirely its own. All at once he emerged from a practical common¬ place exordium, and ascended to the highest flights of eloquence with a rapidity and dazzling grandeur that was perfectly electric. A moment more, and the preacher’s voice resumed its ordinary tone. The variety of his style concentrated attention on his discourse. No one could go to sleep under him. One of his Boanerges-like bursts of passion was not only an antidote against somnolency, but was sufficient to rouse the deepest slumberer. More, per¬ haps, than any other preacher of his time, he had the power or knack of fixing truths on the memory. He sent them home as if they had been discharged from a battery, and fixed them there by a process peculiar to himself. Not a little of his popularity as a preacher has been put down to his manner of delivery; but there was nothing so exceptional in that as to give it any distinguishing features, if we except a habit, that he often indulged, of making a liberal use of his pocket handkerchief, not in the way nor for the purpose appropriate to that useful article, but, as many thought, in the way of an oratorical trick. He was accustomed to throw it out at full length, and then, catching it as one might catch a cricket ball, he would repeat the operation with a little touch of variety. Guthrie needed not such a meretricious aid as this to assist the effect of his oratory. But whether it was an involuntary habit or a deliberate trick, it was done with such perfect naturalness and apparent lack of consciousness, that the action was entirely destitute of vulgarity. Many of our greatest preachers have involuntarily acquired habits in the pulpit equally, if not more singular. We need only refer to Dr Candlish’s invariable practice of THE PULPIT—PLATFORM—SOCIETY—PERSON. 107 violently thrusting his fingers through his hair, as if he would tear a handful out by the roots, when in the midst of his peroration, as a parallel instance of the force of habit. If Dr Guthrie was great in the pulpit, he was not less so on the platform. In his speeches, it has been said, “ There is always a flourish of far-resounding laughter, and then a mailed truth steps down upon the stage.” No matter what the cause on whose behalf his sympathies were enlisted, he felt it a matter of duty to assist it to the utmost of his power. Besides this, he could more easily indulge in the platform his keen perception of humour, and his quiet satire on the prevailing fashions of the day. But he could also burn with indignation, and utter words that scorched and scathed by their very truthfulness. He was fearless as a lion, while gentle as a lamb. He never hesitated to call a spade by its proper name. He was slow to wink at follies or vices, however fashionable or frivolous, and yet he allowed the utmost liberty of thought, speech, and action, where there was no sacrifice of morality or religious principle. To sum up the qualities which were developed in the course of his long and distinguished career, it may be said that Dr Guthrie was neither a reasoner nor a scholar, but was simply a powerful public orator, both in the pulpit and on the platform. In both places his style was picturesque, as was his personal appearance. He had an immense com¬ mand of natural imagery, a large fund of humour, and could produce great effects by an apparently simple pathos. He did great service to whatever cause he espoused. In society he showed remarkable conversational powers. A genuine Scotchman in feeling and sentiment, he had a great fund of anecdote, chiefly of a national character, and few could tell a quaint Scotch story with better effect. His catholicity of spirit led him to associate with persons of all 108 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. sects, and he enjoyed the friendship of not a few eminent men of the day. As indicating that he was not unknown in the highest quarters, it may be mentioned that on the occasion of the marriage of the Princess Louise he was honoured with an invitation to the wedding ceremony, and was presented to the Queen by her Majesty's express desire. But it was round the social board and in the domestic circle that the humour, geniality, and strong manly sense of Guthrie were most strikingly displayed. He had a fault common to all great speakers, although in him it became a virtue, that, namely, of practically absorbing, while he only seemed to assist and suggest conversation. He was accustomed to indulge in monologue—another characteristic of men abundantly gifted with a ready utterance. But no matter what the circumstances or the subject might be, Guthrie was always edifying and interesting. If sometimes a little didactic, he never became “ stale, flat, or unprofitable;” and his friends paid as much deference to his opinions as did the Literary Club to the ipse dixit of old Dr Johnson. Nor was he unmindful of the claims of others. He had the power of silence as well as of speech. We have referred to his intimacy with Hugh Miller, and one reminiscence of this intimacy may be given here. It needs not be premised that being what they were, and standing to each other as they did, in the relation of minister and elder, the friendship of the two men was of the closest and warmest kind. Dr M‘Cosh has described how he was invited to Dr Guthrie's house for the purpose of meeting Miller at dinner. The two “Doctors” had been walking together on this particular day, and at some distance from the house of rendezvous they saw Miller approaching the door. They ran to overtake him, Dr Guthrie remarking, TIIE PULPIT—PLATFORM—SOCIETY—PERSON. 109 “If lie goes to my house and finds me not in, he will set off.” At dinner there were several others present, and Dr M‘Cosh tells how “Dr Guthrie restrained his usual flow of mingled manly sense, humour, and pathos, to allow his friend Miller to speak freely.” In personal appearance, Dr Guthrie was tall and robust- looking, though rather loosely built. His style of dress was careless, and in his attitudes, whether in walking or in speaking, there was perhaps more of spontaneous freedom than of grace. CHAPTER XIV. WRITINGS AND TRAVELS. So much space has been devoted to the labours and opinions of Dr Guthrie, that little room is left for a consideration of his writings. This, however, is less to be regretted, seeing that there are very few in the religious world unacquainted with his works, which have found a prominent place in English literature. As an author, he blossomed somewhat late. His more notable works were written after he had attained his fiftieth year. It was not until then that he per¬ mitted himself to enjoy any measure of the otium cum dignitate, without which literary labours can scarcely be carried on with either pleasure or profit. In addition to his “ Pleas for Ragged Schools/’ “Plea for Drunkards,” and “The City: its Sins and Sorrows,” all of which have already been referred to in a preceding chapter, Dr Guthrie has written “The Gospel in Ezekiel,” (Edin., 1856), “Discourses from Colossians,” (Edin., 1858), “Speaking to the Heart,” (Edin., 1862), “The Way to Life,” (Edin., 1862), “Man and the Gospel,’’(Edin., 1865), “On the Parables,” (London, 1866), and a great variety of miscellaneous and able articles for the Sunday Magazine and other publications. Without attempting to analyse his works in detail, we may say generally that they are all permeated by earnest sympathy with the truths of the gospel—that they exhibit a mastery of doctrinal distinction and evangelical truth—that they are eminently practical and devout—and that they are character¬ ized by a liberality and toleration which might be thought by the narrow-minded to border on latitudinarianism. WHITINGS AND TRAVELS. Ill There is little of the letter that killeth, but much of the spirit that giveth life. But perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of his writings, is their wonderful fertility, beauty, and felicity of illustration. Similes and images occur on almost every page; and these are not the more re¬ markable for their exquisite beauty, than for their appro¬ priateness, and being the fruit of his own observation and experience as a traveller, as a philanthropist, and as a minister of the gospel. In illustrations borrowed from the sea he is par¬ ticularly felicitous. But sea, air, wind, and indeed all the forces and features of external nature, are alike amenable to his keen and glowing imagination. His “ Gospel in Ezekiel ” has been described as “the most remarkable volume of ser¬ mons that has appeared since Chalmers’ Astronomical Dis¬ courses, for general popularity and sustained fluency of composition.” It would be difficult to give a better idea of his style than the following extract from this work conveys:— 4i One day the door of Egypt’s palace is thrown open, and Joseph—a model of beautiful manhood, mind in his eagle eye, strength in his form, majesty in his manner, and on his countenance that lofty look which bespeaks high virtue and integrity—enters, accompanied by his father. The old man’s step was slow and feeble; the old man’s eyes were dim with age; a few thin silver locks mingled with the snowy beard that flowed down his breast, as he came for¬ ward leaning on Joseph’s arm, and bending beneath the weight of years. Struck by the contrast, and moved to respect by the patriarch’s venerable aspect, Pharaoh accosted him with the question—‘ How old art thou 1 ’ Age naturally awakens our respect. ‘ Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man.’ That beautiful and divine command touches a chord in every heart, and 112 LIFE OF KEY. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. sounds in harmony with the best feelings of our nature; and so a Greek historian tells how in the pure and most virtuous days of the republic, if an old man entered the crowded assembly, all ranks rose to give room and place to him. Age throws such a character of dignity even over inanimate objects, that the spectator regards them with a sort of awe and veneration. We have stood before the hoary and ivy- mantled ruin of a bygone age with deeper feelings of respect than ever touched us in the marble halls and amid the gilded grandeur of modern palaces; nor did the proudest tree which lifted its umbrageous head and towering form to the skies ever affect us with such strange emotions as an old, withered wasted trunk that, though hollowed by time into a gnarled shell, still showed some green signs of life. Nor, as we lingered beneath the shade of that ancient yew, could we look on such an old tenant of the earth without feelings of veneration, when we thought how it had been bathed by the sun which shone upon the cross of Calvary, and had stood white with hoar-frost that Christmas night on which angels sang the birth of our Saviour King. It is a curious thing to stand alone beside a swathed, dark, dusty mummy, which some traveller has brought from its tomb on the banks of the Nile, and to mark with wonder how the gold leaf still glitters on the nails of the tapering fingers, and the raven hair still clings to the mouldering skull, and how, with the arms peacefully folded on the breast, and the limbs stretched out to their full extent, humanity still retains much of its original form. But when we think how many centuries have marched over that dead one’s head—that in this womanly figure, with the metal mirror still beside her, in which she once admired her departed charms, we see, perhaps, the wife of Joseph, perhaps the royal maid who, coming to give her beauty to the pure WRITINGS AND TRAVELS. 113 embraces of the Nile, received the infant Moses in her kind protecting arms—our wonder changes into a sort of awe. Age, indeed, heightens the grandeur of the grandest objects. The bald, hoar mountains rise in dignity, the voice of ocean sounds more sublime on her stormy shores, and the starry heavens sparkle with brighter splendour, when we think how old they are—how long it is since that ocean began to roll, or those lamps of night to shine. Yet these—the first star that ever shone, nay, the first angel that ever sang—are but things of yesterday beside this manger, where, couched in straw and wrapped in swaddling clothes, a new-born babe is sleeping. ‘ Before Abraham was/ or these were, ‘ I am/ says Jesus. His mother's maker, and his mother's child, he formed the living womb that gave him birth, and, ten thou¬ sand ages before that, the dead rock that gave him burial. A child, yet Almighty God,—a son, yet the everlasting Father,—his history carries us back into eternity; and the dignities which he left, those glories which he veiled, how should they lead us to adore his transcendant love, and to kneel the lower at his cross to cry—Jesus ! thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women; my soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.” Or take the following equally suberb blend of imagery and every-day experience :—“ Ere autumn has tinted the wood¬ lands, or the corn-fields are falling to the reaper’s song, or hoary hill-tops, like grey hairs on an aged head, give warn¬ ing of winter’s approach, I have seen the swallow’s brood pruning their feathers, and putting their long wings to the proof ; and though they might return to their nests in the window-eaves, or alight again on the house-tops, they darted away in the direction of sunny lands. Thus they showed that they were birds bound for a foreign clime, and that the 114 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. period of their migration from the scene of their birth was nigh at hand. Grace also has its prognostics. They are infallible as those of nature. So, when the soul, filled with longings to be gone, is often darting away to glory, and, soaring upwards, rises on the wings of faith, till this great world, from her sublime elevation, looks a little thing, God’s people know that they have the earnest of the Spirit. These are the pledges of heaven—a sure sign that their ‘ redemption draweth nigh.’ Such devout feelings afford the most blessed evidence that, with Christ by the helm, and ‘ the wind/ that ‘ blowetli where it listeth/ in our swelling sails, we are drawing nigh to the land that is afar off; even as the reeds, and leaves, and fruits that float upon the briny waves, as the birds of strange and gorgeous plumage that fly round his ship and alight upon its yards, as the sweet- scented odours which the wind wafts out to sea, assure the weary mariner that ere long he shall drop his anchor, and end his voyage in the desired haven.” Such passages might be multiplied to any extent, as they abound in every sermon. They are beautiful in themselves; and still more so, when seen in the framework of their context, and read in the light of the truth they are intended to illustrate. We give the following as fair samples of hundreds more :—“ With the Sabbath hills around us, far from the dust and din, the splendour and squalor of the city, we have sat on a rocky bank, to wonder at the varied and rich profusion with which God has clothed the scene. Nature, like Joseph, was dressed in a coat of many colours —lichens, grey, black, and yellow, clad the rock; the glossy ivy, like a child of ambition, had planted its foot on the crag, and, hanging on by a hundred arms, had climbed to its stormy summit; mosses, of hues surpassing all the colours of the loom, spread an elastic carpet round the gushing WRITINGS AND TRAVELS. 115 fountain; the wild thyme lent a bed to the weary, and its perfume to the air; heaths opened their blushing bosoms to the bee; the primrose, like modesty shrinking from obser¬ vation, looked out from its leafy shade; at the foot of the weathered stone the fern raised its plumes, and on its sum¬ mit the foxglove rang his beautiful bells; while the birch bent to kiss the stream, as it ran away laughing to hide itself in the lake below, or stretched out her arms to em¬ brace the mountain-ash and evergreen pine. By a very slight exercise of fancy, in such a scene one could see Nature, engaged in her adaraiions, and hear her singing, ‘The earth is full of the glory of God/ ‘ How manifold are thy works, Lord God Almighty ! in wisdom thou hast made them all/ ” “When in a sultry summer day the sky gets overcast, and angry clouds gather thick upon its brow, and bush and brake are silent, and, the very cattle, like human beings, draw close together, standing dumb in their untasted pastures, and while there is no ripple on the lake, nor leaf stirring on the tree, all nature seems struck with awe, and stands in trembling expectation, then, when the explosion comes, and a blinding stream of fire leaps from the cloud, and, as if heaven’s riven vault were tumbling down upon our head, the thunders crash, peal, roar along the sky, he has neither poetry nor piety, nor sense, who does not reverently bow his head and assent to the words of David, ‘The voice of the Lord is full of majesty/” “The voice of every storm that, like an angry child, weeps and cries itself asleep—the voice of every shower that has been followed by sunshine—the hoarse voice of ocean breaking in impotent rage against its ancient bounds—the voice of the seasons as they have marched to the music of the spheres of unbroken succession over the earth—the scream of the satyr in Babylon’s empty halls—the song of 116 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. the fisherman, who spreads his net on the rocks, and shoots it through the waters where Tyre once sat in the pride of an ocean queen—the fierce shout of the Bedouin as he careers in freedom over his desert sands—the wail and weeping of the wandering Jew over the ruins of Zion—in all these I hear the echo of this voice of God, 1 1 the Lord have spoken, and I will do it/ These words are written on every Hebrew forehead. The Jew bartering his beads with naked savages—bearding the Turk in the capital of Mohammedan power—braving in his furs the rigour of Russian winters—overreaching in China the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire—in Golconda buying diamonds—in our metropolis of the commercial world standing highest among her merchant princes—the Hebrew everywhere, and yet everywhere without a country; with a religion, but without a temple; with wealth, but without honour; with ancient pedigree, but without ancestral possessions ; with no land to fight for, nor altars to defend, nor patri¬ monial fields to cultivate; with children, and yet no child sitting under the trees that his grandsire planted; but all floating about over the world like scattered fragments of a wreck upon the bosom of the ocean—he is a living evidence, that what the Lord hath spoken, the Lord will do. “ True to his threatenings, Almighty God will be true to all his promises; and to both we can apply the words of Balaam—‘ Rise up, Balak, and hear; hearken unto me, thou son of Zippor : God is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent. Hath he said, and shall he not do it, hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?’” u What, for instance, were the most tempting banquet to one without appetite, sick, loathing the very sight and smell of food % To a man stone-deaf, what the boldest blast of trumpet, the roll of drums, stirring the soldier’s soul to deed§ Writings antravels. 117 of daring valour, or the finest music that ever fell on charmed ear, and seemed to bear the spirit on its waves of sound up to the gates of heaven 1 Or what, to one stone- blind, a scene to which beauty has lent its charms, and sub¬ limity its grandeur,—the valley clad in a many-coloured robe of flowers, the gleaming lake, the flashing cascade, the foaming torrent, the dark climbing forest, the brave trees that cling to the frowning crags, the rocky pinnacles, and, high over all, hoary winter looking down on summer from her throne on the Alps’ untrodden snows? Just what heaven would be to man with his ruined nature, his low passions, and his dark guilty conscience. Incapable of appreciating its holy beauties, of enjoying its holy happiness, he would find nothing there to delight his senses. How he would wonder in what its pleasures lay; and, supposing him once there, were there a place of safety out of it, how he would long to be away, and keep his eye on the gate to watch its opening, and escape as from a doleful prison !” Few men occupying the same position and rank in life, have been greater travellers in their day than Dr Guthrie. Travelling and angling were his two great resources for health and recreation. The latter predilection he w T as able to gratify at pleasure, through the kindness of Lord Dalhousie and other influential friends. As for his travels, they extended to nearly every part of the United Kingdom and the Continent. With the length and breadth of Scot¬ land he was as familiar as with his own parlour. The “wilds of Kincardineshire, the grim solitude of Glentilt and Loch Lea, the shores of Angus, the wooded gorges of the Bum, the fat, fair valley of the Home o’ the Mearns,” and many other Norland regions that are a terra incognita to the majority of travellers, were quite within his ken. As for the Con¬ tinent, towards the close of his life, he made it a 118 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. practice to go there nearly every winter. He was frequently appointed by the Free Church as a deputation to foreign churches. He attended the Waldensian Synod at Turin in this capacity. A few years before his death he was appointed to visit the American churches; but after having taken passage on board an Atlantic steamer, he became unwell, and abandoned the voyage, to the regret of the church both in Scotland and in America. Many reminiscences of his travels have appeared in the Sunday Magazine , where they have been read with great interest. In 1872, he printed a volume for circulation among his own family and friends, containing recollections of a tour through Italy two years before. Arrangements had been made for his visiting Rome in the winter of 1872-73, with a view of relieving the Rev. Dr Lewis, minister of the Presbyterian Church in the “ Eternal City,” but dangerous illness overtook him, and rendered the journey impossible. CHAPTER XV. ILLNESS—DEATH—FUNERAL—CONCLUSION. Nearly ten years have elapsed since Dr Guthrie was, in consequence of failing health, laid aside from the more active and laborious duties of his clerical office. Since then he has been living quietly, and enjoyed a fair measure of strength until last summer, when he had an attack of acute rheumatism, which, lasting as it did for some months, aggravated a morbid affection of the heart that had subsisted for many years. This illness was to a certain extent got over, but in November last he was again brought very low by an attack of congestion of the lungs, from which he never effectually rallied. A remission of the symptoms admitted of his being removed to St Leonards-on-Sea, in Sussex, where it was hoped by his medical adviser that he might benefit by change of air. No improvement, however, took place. On the contrary, there was a gradual falling off, until the symptoms again assumed an alarming character. On Tuesday, the 18th February, the change in his appear¬ ance, and particularly in the colour of his face, was so great, that the members of his family were telegraphed for—it being considered quite uncertain when a fatal crisis might arrive. This paroxysm passed, and he lingered on, suffering much from breathlessness, but perfectly conscious, and cheered by the presence of those near and dear to him. Day after day, further failure of strength took place, but consciousness remained, and he looked forward in peace and resignation to what now seemed the not far distant end. On Friday, a telegram was received from Her Majesty the Queen, 120 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. desiring information as to Dr Guthrie's condition. For two days more no material change occurred, though the continually-increasing prostration indicated that the end was drawing near. At a late hour on Sunday night he was still conscious, and at twenty-five minutes past two, on the morning of Monday, the 24th February, 1873, he peacefully breathed his last. Thus died, in a good old age, in his 71st year, at a distance from his native place, but surrounded by the members of his family, and enjoying all the solace of domestic affection, and the consolation of an unwavering faith in the Eedeemer, one of whom the Free Church and Scotland may be justly proud, and whose name will long be a household word in many lands. “ Sure the last end Of the good man is peace ; how calm his exit; Night dews fall not more softly to the ground, Nor weary worn out winds expire so soft.” On Friday, the 28th of February, the mortal remains of Dr Guthrie were interred in the Grange Cemetery, Edin¬ burgh. The weather was exceedingly fine. The sun shone brightly, and even warmly, through a clear, blue, frosty sky, flecked with fleecy clouds. It was just such a day as one could have wished for the funeral of a man of genial nature, and whose name will ever be associated with sunny me¬ mories. The family had complied with the general desire that the funeral should be public, and it was attended by the municipal, ecclesiastical, and other public bodies; by many private citizens, and by numerous strangers from a distance. The route of the funeral procession—from the house in Salisbury Koad to the cemetery—extended for about a mile, and both sides of the streets were crowded with decorous and mournful onlookers; whilst in the ceme¬ tery itself pasuiy thousands had assembled to testify their re- FUNERAL. 121 spect for the deceased. The funeral procession extended for about three-quarters of a mile, and was arranged in the fol¬ lowing order:— Detachment of Policemen. Original Ragged School. Edinburgh Industrial Brigade (Directors and Boys). Kirk Session and Deacons’ Court of St John’s. U.P. Presbytery of Edinburgh. Free Presbytery of Edinburgh. Professors and Students of the New College. Magistrates and Town Council. High Constables. Mutes. Hearse, with Pall Bearers. Relatives and Mourners. Congregation of St John’s. General Public. Private Carriages. Probably upwards of thirty thousand were assembled— the largest funeral gathering seen in Edinburgh since the death of Sir James Y. Simpson. On the arrival of the funeral procession at the grave, a suitable and impressive prayer was offered up by the Rev. Dr Blaikie, and the coffin, of zinc and polished oak, was lowered into the tomb. The coffin bore the following inscription;— Thomas Guthrie, D.D., Born, July 12th, 1803, Died, Feb. 24th, 1873. The children of the ragged school sang “There is a happy land/’ and two of their number—a girl and a boy—amid the tears of the spectators, placed a wreath upon the new made grave. I 122 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. The place of interment is the family burying-ground, and is next the south wall of the cemetery. A slab of stone let into the wall bears the simple inscription, “ Burying-ground of Rev. Thomas Guthrie, D.D.” The wall around the stone is thickly covered with ivy, and at each side of the extensive ground there grows a weeping ash. It is on the sunny side of the pleasant grounds of the Grange, and we may suppose that, with his keen sense of the beautiful in nature, and the becoming in Christian burial, he selected this spot where the grassy turf should cover his dust, and “many an evening sun shine sweetly o’er his grave.” On the Sabbath following the funeral, reference was made in many churches, and in all denominations, to the death of Dr Guthrie. Dr Candlish preached in Free St John’s Church, which was densely crowded, from the text, Hebrews ix. 27, 28— “ And as it is appointed unto all men once to die, but after this the judgment; so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.” In concluding his discourse he said :—I ask you, beloved brethren, to listen to these sentences which I am about to read, and which are not mine, but another’s. “ Thank God my tongue has been unloosed ! ” “ All reserve is gone—I can speak out now.” “ Oh ! most mighty and most merciful, pity me, once a great sinner, and now a great sufferer.” “Blessed Jesus! what would I now do but for thee !” “I am a father, and I know what a father’s heart is. My love to my children is no more to God’s infinite love as a Father than one drop of water to that boundless ocean out there.” “ Death is mining away here, slowly, but surely, in the dark.” “ I often thought, and even hoped, in past years, that God would have granted me a translation like Chalmers or Andrew CONCLUSION. 123 Thomson. But it would appear now this is not to be the way of it.” “ Oh ! the power yet in that arm ”—the right arm stretched out with force while in bed—“ I doubt it presents the prospect of a long fight; and if so, Lord help me to turn my dying hours to better purpose than ever my preaching ones have been.” “The days have come in which I have no pleasure in them.” “ Vani- tas vanitatum! I would at this moment gladly give all my money and all my fame for that poor body's”—(a smiling country woman tripping by)—“ vigour and cheer¬ fulness.” “ A living dog is better than a dead lion.” “I have often seen death-beds. I have often described them; but I had no conception till now what hard work dying really is !” “ Had I known this years ago, as I know it now, I would have felt far more for others in similar circumstances than I ever did.” “ Ah! my dear children, you see I am now just as helpless in your arms as you ever were in mine.” Of telegraphic messages about him, he said—“ I bless God for the telegraph; because these will serve as calls to God’s people to mind me in their prayers.” Of the Queen's inquiry —“ It is very kind.” Of a young attendant—“ Affection is very sweet; and it is all one from whatever quarter it comes —whether from this Highland lassie or from a peeress—-just as to a thirsty man cold water is equally grateful from a spring on the hillside as from a richly-ornamented fountain.” Parting with a humble servant—“God bless you, my friend.” “I would be most willing that any man who ever wrote or spoke against me should come in at that door, and I would shake hands with him.” These are fresh and racy death-bed utterances; true to the nature of the man who, to the last, retained his genial originality; the man who, with genuine courtesy and his wonted humour, apologised for the trouble he was giving, referring to Charles the Second's begging his 124 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. courtiers to excuse him for being such an unconscionable time in dying; the man who, child-like as he always was, chose “ bairns' hymns,” as he called them, for his solace in his weakness—“ Oh ! that will be joyful,” “ There is a happy land;” relishing them as he relished that one of Cowper’s, “There is a fountain filled with blood;” and preferring them to all other uninspired songs of praise. Here I would fain stop, and leave the last words of a singu¬ larly true and gifted man to tell with their own proper weight, free from the intrusion of more commonplace re¬ marks. I cannot, in fact, in the view of such an affecting chamber of sickness, find it in my heart to deal in the ordi¬ nary topics of consolation and edification for which death furnishes occasion. I am in no mood for moralising or ser¬ monising over my beloved brother's grave. Nor can I at¬ tempt to compose a funeral oration or eloge upon the life and character, the rare endowments and accomplishments, the manifold good works and services, of him who is gone. This is not the place, this is not the time, for eulogy. I am not the man competent to such a theme. His praise is in all the churches, and through all society in many lands. I am here simply to express my own feelings and yours under the pressure of a heavy grief. How I admired and loved Thomas Guthrie, and how he reciprocated my affection during all the years, some five-and-thirty, of our close familiarity and most intimate and cordial friendship; how genuine and trustworthy a friend I ever found him; what experience I have often had of his noble generosity; how very pleasant he has been to me, I dare not trust myself to say. Friend and brother, comrade in the fight, companion in tribulation, farewell! But not for ever. May my soul, when my hour comes, be with thine ! A great man truly in Israel has fallen. Men of talents, men of abilities, men of learning, are not CONCLUSION. 125 uncommon. Men powerful in thought and speech are often raised up; but genius, real poetic genius, like Guthrie's, comes but once in many generations. We shall not look upon his like soon, if ever. Nor was it genius alone that distinguished him. The warm heart was his and the ready hand; the heart to feel, and the hand to work. No sentimental dreamer or mooning idealist was he. His pity was ever active. Tears he had, but also far more than tears, for all who needed sympathy and help. His graphic pictures of the scenes of misery he witnessed were inspired by no idle dreamy philan¬ thropy after the fashion of Sterne or Eosseau, but by a human love for all human beings intensely real and vigor¬ ously energetic. His self-denying labours among the families of the Cowgate, where he shrunk from no drudgery for him¬ self, and shunned no contact with poverty and vice in others; his noble zeal in every good and holy cause; his rising, al¬ most alone at first, to the full height of one of his best enter¬ prises—the rescuing of children from sin and sorrow, from ignorance and crime: these and many other like memorials of his wide, comprehensive, practical benevolence, will not soon pass from the grateful memories of his countrymen. The fruits of his evangelical ministrations, and that powerful preaching of the Word which captivated so many thousand ears and hearts, the day will declare. The blank which his removal makes in our own church, the church of our fathers,—the Free Church of Scotland,—is one that can scarcely soon, if ever, be supplied. It will be felt for years to come. In fact, the church does not seem to me what it was, now that Guthrie is away. He was a power, unique in himself, and rising in his uniqueness above other powers. He did not, indeed, venture much on the uncongenial domain, to him, of ecclesiastical polemics, or the wear and tear of ordinary church administration; leaving that to others whose superi- 126 LIFE OF REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. ority in tlieir department he was always the first to acknow¬ ledge. But in his own sphere, and in his own way, he was to us, and to the principles on which we acted, a tower of strength. His eloquence alone—so expressive of himself— so thoroughly inspired by his personal idiosyncrasy—so full always of genial humour—so apt to flash into darts of wit— and yet withal so profoundly emotional and ready for pas¬ sionate or affectionate appeals,—that gift or endowment alone made Guthrie an invaluable boon to our church in the times of her Ten Years’ Conflict, and afterwards. But the Guthrie monument, so far as our Free Church is concerned, is in our thousand manses; a monument which he himself reared, and in the rearing of which he may be truly said to have sacri¬ ficed his health and strength. But endangered health and diminished strength did not quench the ardour of his burning soul. Laid aside from enforced professional labour, in pulpit or in parish, Guthrie was still the man for men, holding himself always open to all calls and appeals in the line of Christian and catholic benevolence. To our own church he was to the last loyal and loving. No one more so. But he grew, as I would desire to grow, more and more from year to year, in sympathy with all who love Jesus and hold the truth as it is in Him. May the Lord, in His own good time, answer his many prayers for the repairing of all breaches in Zion, and send to the divided and distracted Christian family all over the world that peace and living unity on which his large heart was set. We close this all too imperfect record of a noble life with the following sentences from a personal friend of Dr Guthrie:—The leading and most essential and character¬ istic peculiarity of this great man is—that he was deeply, earnestly, intensely Christian. All other qualities of mind and heart and life were merged in the intensity of Christian CONCLUSION. 127 feeling. In his studies, his pursuits, his family—in his social habits, his warm-hearted friendships, his zealous philanthropy —in his pastoral labours and his pulpit ministrations—in his work and in his life, love for “the Master” was the pervading, animating, sustaining power which upheld him. That Master has now called his servant home. He had no fear of death. He had long known and felt that his life was precarious, and that his death might be sudden. Yet the tranquillity, the trustfulness, even the joyfulness of his walk, was not disturbed by the conviction that he held life by a very feeble tenure. In a spirit of serene and devout trust, he awaited his call. As he himself once expressed it, in speaking of a departed friend, “Death was to him like the chariot which Joseph sent to bear his brethren home.” In the crisis of his alarming illness in Edinburgh, some months ago, he was, by himself and his weeping family, believed to be at the point of death, and at the gates of the Eternal Kingdom. Turning his tender eye to the dear ones around, he said, “It may be that, before the morning dawns, I shall see my mother, and my Saviour.” Few things could more sweetly and touchingly illustrate the rare combination of the child-like tenderness of human love, and the devout simplicity of Christian faith. He was spared for a season. That call was a call for preparedness. Another call has come, and been obeyed. As a preacher, Dr Guthrie, notwithstanding some excel¬ lent published discourses, can scarcely be appreciated by those who have not heard him. None who have heard him could readily forget him. Few heard without deep impres¬ sion. To a rugged nobleness, a majestic simplicity of figure, voice, and manner, was added a vivid imagination, solemnized by the sacredness of his theme, a fine poetic feeling, and a wealth of varied illustration from the world of nature and 128 LIFE OF REV. TH 3 0112 098688986 the experiences of life. He combined the highest rhetorical power with simple and earnest evangelical preaching. There is probably no instance of a man who, for nearly thirty years, sustained in so signal a manner the high repu¬ tation and great popular acceptance of his pulpit ministra¬ tions. His church was uniformly crowded to the doors; and many a man has stood in the passage to hear him, and, with streaming eyes and throbbing heart, has bowed before the power of his soul-stirring eloquence. A zealous Free Churchman, he loved all who loved the Master. He had many warm friends within the Established Church and other churches; and he was earnest and un¬ wavering in his desire for union among all Presbyterians; and, in the first place, and at all events, for union among the Nonconforming Presbyterian Churches. He was the zealous advocate of National Education—liberal according to the enactments of the State, and religious according to the con¬ victions of the people; and he was, under all circumstances and at all times, the friend of the principles of civil and religious liberty, which he used to speak of as “the good old cause.” The distinguished abilities, attractive manners, and great popularity of Dr Guthrie brought him frequently into the society of persons of high rank. He was there, as elsewhere, greatly liked and highly respected; but he was not spoiled. He retained to the last the simplicity of the Scottish pastor, and the manly and genial nature which endeared him to high and low. There are great preachers and good men left among us, but we shall rarely see one leave us for the better land who will be more widely, deeply, and affectionately remembered than Dr Thomas Guthrie, - TKE LIBHAnY Z? THE JUL 14 1931 UNIVERSITY Of ILLINOIS otomount mphlet nder Bros. Inc nT s •*VT V