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THE MARTYRS' MONUMENT
Geeyfeiars Churchyard

TIDE-MARKS OF THE COVENANT
IN GREYFRIARS CHURCHYARD
When your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What
mean ye by these stones ? Then ye shall answer them. Joshua iv. 6.
It is of the Covenant and the Covenanters we are
thinking to-day ; and there could not be a fitter place
for such thoughts than this place — Greyfriars Church
and Churchyard ; for in all Scotland no other place
can claim association with the Covenant struggle so
close and so continuous as that which this hallowed
spot possesses.
Many another spot in our country is indeed
linked with some one notable episode in that
memorable time — a gallant fight, an heroic death, or
a saintly martyrdom — but Greyfriars is bound to
the Covenant by a triple bond of association. Here
three epoch - making or epoch - marking episodes
befell, and when the three are linked together they
form a remarkable epitome of the great Scottish
struggle of the seventeenth century. Fortunately
too, each episode has left behind it a permanent
memorial, in stone or iron, that helps to keep
precious memories alive which otherwise might fade.
Tide-marks of the Covenant they may be called —
visible memorials of the great religious wave that

[ 2 ]
swept over our land two and a half centuries ago,
marks on which few Scots can look without un
common interest, telling as they do of the first rising
of the Covenant tide, then of its lowest ebb, and last
of all of the final inflow of the great swelling sea of
peace and victory. Aye, and I may dare to say
more. Marks they are on -which few Scots can
look without uncommon emotion, recalling as they
do notable features in the character of the men of
these memorable days — in particular their high
idealism, their steadfast endurance and their com
plete sincerity.
I propose to-night that we should look at those
tide-marks in their historical order, picture to our
selves the scenes which they recall, and emphasise
anew the features in the character of the actors
which these events revealed.

I. Greyfriars Church and the Covenant
Stone
The first of the three tide-marks — this Church
itself — speaks of the Rising of the Tide, when on
the 28th day of February 1638, the National
Covenant was signed.
Seldom has Scotland been so deeply stirred as
then : never perhaps in the religious sphere, for even
the Reformation did not evoke so deep and so wide
spread a passion, as that which issued in the signing
of the Covenant. At the Reformation the Evangel
had come to Scotland through Presbyterian channels,
and from that day, to the great bulk of her people,
Presbyterianism appeared in the light of a necessary

[ 3 ]
accompaniment of the pure Evangel — necessary at
least for Scotland.
But with the seventeenth century clouds arose,
and it was evident to all that Scotland's ecclesiastical
choice was not to be preserved without a struggle.
The Scottish Kings, translated to England, developed
not only an appreciation for Episcopacy, but also a
detestation of Presbytery, and first one and then
another strove to persuade or coerce the Scottish
Church and people to a similar change of mind.
King James, himself a Scot to the backbone, and
well acquainted with the nature of his northern
subjects, proceeded cautiously and not unskilfully ;
but his son Charles I. had neither his father's skill
nor caution. With Charles love for Episcopacy was
a passion, hostility to Presbytery a conscientious
duty : and with a high hand he sought to deliver
Scotland from the presence of the unclean thing.
But Scotland had a mind of her own, and refused
to be delivered against her own will. In spiritual
things especially her Church had from the Reforma
tion maintained its independence of the civil power.
Already oftener than once had it stood up against
the sovereign when spiritual rights were threatened,
and now when like danger appeared neither Church
nor country flinched. In St. Giles', in July 1637,
the stool of Jenny Geddes had spoken for the
commonalty's protest against the imposition of a
liturgy at the royal command. But a dignified
national protest was required if King Charles was to
be convinced, and in the National Covenant the
protest was made.
It was here the deed was done — here in these
Churches of Greyfriars as they then were, still one.

[ 4 ]
undivided and unextended. With all due care the
Covenant had been prepared : notice had been
sent throughout the country of what was proposed ;
and the response was truly national. Edinburgh
was thronged with visitors of every rank and from
every district, and towards two o'clock in the after
noon of Tuesday, 28th February, streams of grave
earnest men converged from all parts of the city on
Greyfriars. Report — no doubt exaggerated — says
that 60,000 people filled the Churchyard. Only a
fraction could find accommodation in the Church, but
these included the foremost men in Church and
State. Outside the dense mass waited patiently all
through the historic service, listening with quiet
devoutness as Alexander Henderson's voice rose in
prayer, and straining to catch a stray word of the
noble speech in which the Earl of Loudon declared
the purpose of the gathering. That done the fair
ramskin parchment, " above an elne in squair," was
upheld by Johnston of Warriston in the sight of the
congregation, and in solemn tones the document
was read. With uplifted hands all present took the
oath of fealty, and then the great signing began.
" Until death," added some when they had signed,
" With my heart," wrote another ; still others, spurning
common ink in a cause so holy, "did draw their
own blood," and in letters red made the entry.
Soon the daylight began to fade, and to the open
churchyard the ramskin was borne, and there out
stretched on a large flat gravestone to the east of the
church. The waiting people had then their oppor
tunity. Name after name was added, nor till " neir
eight " did the work take end.
" Sir," the Earl of Loudon had said to King

[ 5 ]
Charles, on the occasion of the King's visit to
Edinburgh, "the people of Scotland will obey you
in everything with the utmost cheerfulness, if you do
not touch their religion and their conscience!' But
Charles had done both. He had flouted their re
ligion, he had ignored their conscience, and the
Covenant was the consequence.
What was the Covenant? In its essence it
was a declaration of the Spiritual Independence of
the Scottish Church ; practically it was a national
manifesto in favour of the Reformed Faith and the
Presbyterian Polity. As such the King regarded
it, and bitterly though he disliked the polity, he had
to bow to the declared will of the Scottish people.
In the heart of the document were words he could
not afford to ignore. " We promise and swear by
the great name of the Lord our God to continue
in the profession and obedience of the aforesaid
religion ; and that we shall defend the same, and
resist all these contrary errors and corruptions,
according to our vocation, and to the uttermost of
that power that God hath put into our hands, all the
days of our life." And the men who put their
signature to that promise meant to keep it. Said
Andro Cant, one of the leading ministers, preaching
in Greyfriars three months later — " Aye, but say ye,
this work will be hindered ; ere ye get the work
forward ye will find the dint of the fire and sword.
Let it be so, if God will have it so. That will not
impede our work. If our blood be spilt in this
cause, the copestone shall be put on with our blood,
for the Kirk of God hath never prospered better nor
by the blood of saints."
It was a bold step that was taken by the men

[ 6 ]
who signed the Covenant that day in Greyfriars, and
it proved as successful as it was bold. The fight
was won — for that day. To what was the victory
due? Several reasons might be named, each with
truth. The cause was a just cause ; that helped.
The ideal was — at least for Scotland — a high and
beneficent ideal ; that helped. Without these condi
tions, victory had been impossible, but something
else was needed to achieve it. The National
Covenant won because behind it stood a united people.
At its back was practically an undivided Scotland.
Peers and people, nobles and commonalty stood
shoulder to shoulder in defence of the religious
settlement which Knox had given them, which
Melville had preserved, and which the convictions
and experience of the people had approved as
Scotland's ideal — a Church National, Presbyterian,
and Spiritually Free. Never again was Scottish
Presbyterianism so representative of the nation as it
was that day — and in consequence, never again was
its voice so powerful. Even now, though two
centuries and more have gone, the heart thrills as we
read the names of those who signed the historic
deed, and realise how inclusive of the nation's best
the long roll was. We feel in reading it, something
of the pride which Walter C. Smith ascribes to one
who witnessed the signing, —
Truly my heart leaped up in me, while
Douglas and Hamilton, Athole and Mar,
Pressed on the heels of Montrose and Argyll,
And Lindsay and Lauderdale walked down the aisle,
With Kennedy, Cunningham, Scott, and Carr.
Of all our Houses of ancient fame.
Only the Gordons held them back :

[ 7 ]
Hume and Maxwell and Elliot came.
And Stewart and Bruce would have deemed it shame
If men of the Royal blood were slack.
Oh ! what a sight it was : all the land.
Gentle and simple, humble and high,
Setting their seal to our Covenant band.
That vowed the people, with heart and hand.
To stand by the Cause and the Kirk — or die.
No matter what Church crisis might arise
in Scotland to - day, we never could witness a
gathering like that. Presbyterian we still are in
Scotland, but to a large extent the nobility of our
land, the descendants of those who signed this
Magna Charta of Presbyterianism, are not now of
us ; and Presbyterianism has lost by their severance.
Our Church has lost. Yes, but this too is certain,
they themselves have lost far more. Had. they
remained loyal to the church ideal of their fathers,
and met Sunday after Sunday with the people in
the common worship of Almighty God, their in
fluence to-day in Scotland would be tenfold greater
than it is. But cut off", as so many of them are,
from the religious life and institutions of the people,
the strongest bond of brotherhood which Scotsmen
know is for them severed, and living influence has
largely ceased. Alas ! that it should be so.
But that regret is for them rather than for us in
these democratic days. Presbyterianism lives — aye,
and grows : and the ideal that is floating before our
churches and our people to-day is just the old ideal
of the men who signed the Covenant — that of a
Scottish Church at once National, Free, and Presby
terian. This ideal is their legacy to us : and from
them, too, we learn how to realise it. " Sink your

[ 8 ]
minor differences," they call to us. "Close your
ranks, concentrate your strivings on the things that
really count in a nation's fight with sin, and with
undivided front march forward to your goal."
II. The Covenanters' Prison
Forty years have passed before we come on the
next association of Greyfriars with the Covenant.
The tide, which began with so strong a flow, has
turned and reached its lowest ebb ; and the mark
of the ebb which remains is an iron gate, guarding
a walled enclosure in the south-west corner of the
churchyard, and bearing the inscription, " The
Covenanters' Prison." They had been forty years
of varied fortune for the cause so bravely and
determinedly espoused. So long as Charles I. lived,
the fruits of victory were enjoyed by Covenanted
Scotland. Under Cromwell, Presbyterianism con
tinued to be in most things uninterfered with ; but on
the restoration of Charles II. in 1660 the persecut
ing times began. At one sweep Presbyterian Church
government was overthrown and Episcopacy installed :
and to our country's shame Charles found Scotsmen
in abundance willing to do the persecuting work.
Had this not been so, had Scotland been as in 1638,
Charles would have been as powerless as was his
father. But times had changed. The ideal that
moved the men who signed the National Covenant
had narrowed, and with the narrowing had come
division. The Church, too, had become political, and
so had lost the allegiance of not a few of Scotland's
noblest families. The old national unity was gone,
and upon a Church rent by party divisions, weakened

[ 9 ]
by controversy, and largely bereft of the protection
of the nobles, the blows descended. The Royal
power was the hammer, Presbyterianism was the
anvil, and the strokes were both heavy and con
tinuous. In the Grassmarket the gallows were kept
busy for disposing of obstinate Presbyterians, while
at the Cross of Edinburgh the block served for the
dispatch of men of higher rank. Throughout the
country the people were dragooned to the services
of the Episcopal curate, and were haled to prison,
slavery, and death, if they were found preferring the
ministrations of the outlawed Presbyterian ministers
on the moors.
Harsh measures led inevitably to desperate acts
by desperate men. On Magus Moor Archbishop
Sharp was slain, and in revenge the fires of persecu
tion were heated to a fiercer glow. In desperation
the Covenanters rose in arms. At Drumclog, a
fleeting victory roused vain hopes, only at Bothwell
Brig to be irretrievably shattered.
O Bothwell Brig ! that wert so big
with hope to us and more ;
O Bothwell Brig ! the westland Whig
May well thy name deplore.
And ye who would guide the stormy tide,
Think well ere ye begin ;
For ye scrupled away our lives that day,
Ere we the bridge could win.
Never was fight more pitiful. Incompetence in the
leaders and bitter wrangling and division in the
ranks made the battle a rout. Before the royal
army, i 5,000 strong, all trained and disciplined men,
and equipped besides with artillery, what chance
had the 50°° Covenanters — raw, untrained, and

[ 10 ]
undisciplined ? None. Four hundred were slain, and
of the rest some 1200 or more were taken prisoners.
These unfortunates were stripped of most of their
clothing, bound two and two, and then marched
under a strong escort along the weary road to
Edinburgh. A poor welcome they got there.
" Where's your God ? " shouted the jeering mob, when
the long train of miserables reached the city.
" Where's your God ? " But a yet poorer welcome
was to come. The city prisons were full, and the
only accommodation that could be found was the
south-west extension of Greyfriars Churchyard, then
void of tombs — but equally void of shelter. Here,
accordingly, past this old Kirk the pitiful band was
led. Thrust into the enclosure, they huddled like
sheep together, for the room was scant, and as the
iron gate clanged behind them, it must have seemed
to many that the grave itself were a more enviable
resting-place. It was the 24th of June 1679 when they arrived,
and for five weary months there they were left.
No more shameful stain rests on the much-stained
Government of the day, than the treatment they
meted out to these Bothwell prisoners. Their bed
was the bare ground, their roof the open heavens.
As winter drew near some miserable huts were
indeed erected, but for the greater part of the time
they were exposed to all the varying weather of our
northern clime. Their food was of the scantiest — four
ounces of bread per day. By night and day they
were guarded by soldiers whose instructions were
to shoot on the slightest provocation, and who were
answerable with their own lives for every prisoner
who escaped. Women, but no men, were permitted

THE COVENANTERS' PRISON
Greyfriars Churchyard

[ II 1
at times to speak with the prisoners through the
iron bars, and occasionally by favour of the guard
to convey some additional food. As the weeks wore
on the company lessened. Some hundreds were
released on taking an oath never again to take arms
against the Royal Power, many escaped over the
walls, many died, and some were put to death. By
15 th November, when the prison gates were opened
there were only 257 left to be led to yet further
trials. June to November in this old churchyard
and under such conditions ! What a life ! Of it
sings sadly one of the prisoners in Walter C. Smith's
moving verses : —
A bonny kirkyard is the old Greyfriars,
When the wallflower blooms in June,
And scatters its scent with the fresh sweetbriars
Under the glint of the moon :
And we ranged us on the green grass there.
Or under the ivy-tod,
And raised our Psalm and offered our prayer
To Jacob's Almighty God.
But long ere the dank November day,
When the earth was sodden with rain,
And the chill fog clung where the long grass lay,
Rotting with damp amain,
Of all who came from the western shires,
The fifteen hundred men,
Had you reckoned us well in the old Greyfriars,
Not three were there for ten.
There were some that died in the summer-tide,
Rotting away like sheep.
There were some went mad, with the visions they had,
Between awake and sleep :
And some were traitors to the faith.
And signed their hope away,
Better for them had they met their death
On Bothwell Brig that day.

[ 12 ]
And for those who were left, what was the fate
that waited? To be banished to the West Indian
Plantations and sold for slaves ! so the Privy Council
had decreed, and on iSth November the remaining
257 were led down to Leith and placed on board
a vessel. The Crown, which lay in Leith roads.
There their sufferings culminated. Into a space
between decks barely sufficient for a hundred men
the whole two hundred and fifty were crowded, with
what results may be imagined. It was a Scottish
parallel to the Black Hole of Calcutta. "All the
troubles we met since Bothwell," wrote one of them,
James Corson, to his wife, " were not to be compared to
our present circumstances. Our uneasiness is beyond
words. Yet the consolations of God overbalance all ;
and I hope we are near our port, and heaven is open
for us." They were very near, far nearer than the
dreaded West Indies, for the vessel never got beyond
the Orkneys. There, on the night of i oth December,
a storm sprang up which drove her on the rocky
headland of Deerness. With inhuman callousness the
captain refused to open the hatches, and himself with
his crew made escape to land, leaving the prisoned
men to die. When the vessel broke up forty-eight
of them succeeded in reaching the shore, but the
others — two hundred souls, found in the stormy
waters an end to all their troubles. " Was it a
pitiful death ? " asks Dr. Smellie. " Nay," he beauti
fully answers, " was it not a happy enfranchise
ment ? As once before, in a night of storm, Jesus
went unto them walking on the sea, and saying,
' It is /, be not afraid.' "
These are the memories of the Covenanters'
Prison in this old graveyard of ours. Sad

[ 13 ]
memories ! Yes, infinitely sad ; yet surely great
memories too — memories to cherish. If yonder
prison with its iron gate is a tide-mark of the lowest
ebb of the Covenant wave, it is no less a memorial
of the quality in the Covenant men that secured
the return flow — Endurance, steadfast endurance.
" Dour " the Covenanters are said to have been ; and
they were. They were men of iron. They had
tenacity, grip, determination — the power of holding
on with a grim resoluteness to the high and holy
cause they had once embraced, bearing all, enduring
all, and hoping all. Let an example be quoted.
From the prisoners in Greyfriars, ere the remnant
were led down to Leith, there were taken five to
be hanged on Magus Moor. It was a sort of
retaliatory murder for that of James Sharp. All
five went to the scaffold as blithely as they would
have gone to their daily task. One of the five
may speak for all, Thomas Brown, an Edinburgh
shoemaker. Standing on the ladder he said — " If
this day every hair of my head were a man, and
every drop of my blood were a life, I would
heartily lay them down for Christ, and this cause
for which I am now sentenced."
Dour? Yes. Determined? Yes. But surely
a better word is needed. They were heroically
steadfast in the endurance of trials such as have
rarely been equalled in our land. Think of these
things, when next you stand before the old iron gate.
Think of the constancy to a high ideal which behind
the bars was manifested, and give thanks to God
that the men who there were prisoned, were men
who in spite of all held on, and never would relax
their hold.

[ 14 J
III. The Martyrs' Monument
When, for the last time, the Covenant and
Greyfriars touch each other, nigh thirty more years
have gone. We are in a new century, and we look
upon a new Scotland. The fierce cruel storm has
ceased ; the dark clouds have rolled away ; men's
passions have abated, and over the whole land there
rests a welcome peace. The cause for which, seventy
years before, the National Covenant was signed, has
triumphed. In the main the aims of the men who
signed it, and of the men who suffered for it, have
been attained, for Scotland has now the Church of
her own choice, a Church National, Presbyterian, and
to a large extent Spiritually Free. In the quiet
enjoyment of their hard - won rights men took
thought of those to whose high idealism and stead
fast endurance they owed these privileges ; and here
and there over the countryside memorials to the dead
Covenanters began to be set up, tributes of admir
ation and tokens of a people's gratitude and pride.
Soon there was scarce a spot where a Covenanter
had suffered for his faith but bore its humble stone
of tribute — Records left
Of persecution and the Covenant times.
Whose echo rings through Scotland to this hour.
With such a mood and such a movement stirring
men's hearts, Greyfriars Churchyard was sure of the
chiefest honour, for nowhere in all Scotland did so
many martyrs sleep their last sleep as here. The north
east corner of the graveyard, not far from the Grass-
market gate, had long been reserved for the burial

[ 15 ]
of criminals who suffered the last penalty of the law
on the gallows hard by ; and through the eight and
twenty years of anguish — the " Killing Times " — 'it
was to this spot of infamy that the poor mangled
bodies of the Martyrs of the Covenant were brought,
after — in the jeering word of the time, yet infinitely
true — they had " glorified God in the Grassmarket."
No doubt a further mark of contumely was intended,
that they should thus make their grave with the
wicked. But, if tradition may be credited, this last
dishonour to the dead was not carried out. The
grave-diggers had hearts truer and more tender than
their official superiors, and while the interments were,
indeed, near to the spot of shame, they were not in it.
In virgin soil the bodies of the covenanting martyrs
were laid to rest.
So long as the troubles lasted no stone was
raised to mark their graves. But now that happier
times had come, one James Currie, a merchant at
Loanhead, who himself had suffered much, took steps
to secure for later ages the identification of the
hallowed spot, and, in 1 707, there rose the memorial
which Scotsmen all the world over know and
reverence as The Martyrs' Monument. Not, be it
said, that which now stands there, but an earlier
stone, which after 70 years' exposure to the elements
was replaced by the present monument, the earlier
finding a resting-place in the Municipal Museum.
Few, if any, memorials in our Protestant land
draw so many pilgrims to look upon them as does
this — and, while looking, move men to think and pray.
Few are so comprehensive in regard to the dead
whom they commemorate. Not only the hundred
or thereby who died in the Grassmarket and here

[ i6 ]
were buried, not these alone, but the thousands who
in the long struggle fought or suffered, witnessed or
died for Christ's Crown and Covenant, all are
remembered here. Says Robert Louis Stevenson
with absolute truth, " There is no moorsman shot in a
snow shower beside Irongray or Co'monell ; there is
not one of the two hundred who were drowned off"
the Orkneys, not so much as a poor overdriven
Covenanting slave in the American plantations, but
can lay claim to a share in that memorial."
The burials of those whose bones lie here had
been marked by no accompaniment of honour ; the
times did not permit. Yet there is some dust here
that was laid in the grave with all due honour and
becoming reverence, and the weird story of that last
interment in the Covenanters' grave tells of the
reverence for the martyrs that lived on in Scottish
hearts. The tale is told by old Patrick Walker, the
quaintest of Covenanting Chroniclers, and brings us
into touch with the last of the martyrs, James
Renwick. In October 1681, five Covenanters of the
extremest type — one at least of whom had been a
prisoner in Greyfriars — were tried for treason and
suffered death at the Gallowlea in Leith Walk.
Their heads were cut off" and spiked on the
Pleasance Port, as was also the hand of the most
violent of them, one Patrick Forman. At the
gallows-foot their bodies were buried, but there they
could not be allowed to rest. At midnight, James
Renwick, then a student, and some chosen friends
disinterred the headless trunks and carried them to
the West Kirkyard (St. Cuthbert's), where they were
hastily buried. Then away the little band hurried

[ 17 J
to the Pleasance Port to remove the five heads and
the hand from the cruel spikes, designing to lay
them beside the bodies. But daylight came too
quick. All they could do was to wrap these sad
fragments of humanity in a linen cloth, place them
in a box, and bury them in the Lauriston yards —
then outside the city. There for five and forty years
these relics lay undisturbed. Alexander Tweedie, a
gardener, one of the band, " planted a white rose
bush above them, and farther down a red rose
bush, which were more fruitful than any other
bush in the yard." But there was no other mark.
Ere he died he told his son, " There was a treasure
hid in his yard, but neither gold nor silver." Men
knew not what he meant ; but one day the box with
its poor fragments of skulls was found, and then they
knew. " Many came," says Patrick Walker, (to see
the heads) " out of curiosity. Yet I rejoiced to see
so many concerned grave men and women favouring
the dust of our martyrs ! " With reverent care the
fragments were composed. The spot in St. Cuthbert's
Churchyard where the bodies had been buried was
quite unknown, so it was decided that the Covenanters'
grave should receive the last of the Covenanters' dust.
And, says the Chronicler, on 19th October 1726,
" at four of the clock at night, being the hour that
most of them went to their resting-graves, they were
interred close to the martyrs' tomb ; with the
greatest multitude of people, old and young, men
and women, ministers and others, that ever I saw
together." " And so," writes Louis Stevenson, very
beautifully, "they were at last in their 'resting-
graves.' So long as men do their duty, even if it be
greatly in a misapprehension, they will be leading

[ i8 ]
pattern lives. And whether or not they come to lie
beside a Martyrs' Monument, we may be sure they
will find safe haven somewhere in the providence of
God. It is not well to think of death, unless we
temper the thought of it with that of heroes who
despised it. . . . And so the Martyrs' Monument is
a wholesome, heartsome spot in the field of the dead ;
and as we look upon it, a brave influence comes to
us from the land of those who have won their
discharge and (in another phrase of Patrick Walker's)
' got cleanly off" the stage.' " Yea, verily, " they got
cleanly off" the stage," and they did so because they
lived cleanly on it — and sincerely.
That is the crowning virtue of the men and women
whose memories we honour to-day, their unquestion
able absolute sincerity. As we stand beside their
grave, the magnificence of that virtue as displayed
in them comes full upon us, transfiguring their
whole lives, and for the time wiping out from our
consciousness all smaller thoughts of the defects
which they undoubtedly possessed. But we are not
therefore blind to these defects. They were not
blind to them themselves ; and some defects of
which they were not conscious, we to-day see very
clearly. Yet let us be just in speaking of them. To a
large extent their defects were those of their genera
tion shared by all alike : and where that was not so,
they were usually defects which sprang from lack of
regulation of their undoubted virtues. They were
Idealists, and in their devotion to their ideal, when
opportunity off"ered, they passed due limits and
sought to force it upon others whose ideals were of
a different order and of a content less spiritual.
There they erred, and they paid for their error.

[ 19 ]
They were men of iron, steadfast in endurance,
unswerving under trial : and in the hard discipline
of life which they were called to face that virtue
bred little outward loveliness and attractive grace.
Hard and stern, repellent often in their severity of
thought and action, magnifying betimes points into
principles, we may miss in them some of the softer
graces of love and charity that befit the followers
of the meek and lowly Jesus. All that is granted ;
though when we read the lives of individual
Covenanters we are surprised at the extent to
which these softer characteristics persisted. But
despite all these blemishes they were men of whom
Scotland may well be proud — true men, men of high
and holy vision, men of invincible loyalty to truth,
men of unbreakable determination — aye and men of
deep and grand sincerity. Yonder grave proves it.
It calls all succeeding generations to witness that they
died for their Ideal — died rather than be disloyal to
Christ and the vision of truth and duty which He
had showed them. When we stand by their grave,
we bare our heads and give thanks to Almighty
God that our land has bred such men, and we pray
that it may breed them still. Aye, pray for that !
Times change, ideals alter, and the exact line of
duty varies. The Covenant that was signed here
long ago would not be signed in its entirety by
many to-day ; still fewer would put their name,
without some qualifying words, to the Solemn
League and Covenant. But there are some
qualities in men which never can be permitted to die,
without a nation suff"ering. The high ideal, the
power of vision, the steadfast endurance for truth,
the deep sincerity in its pursuance, the hold on

[ 20 ]
Almighty God — these are the qualities which
glorify men and save a nation. They never change.
Of these there is always need. And to-day the need
is very sore. We need them for ourselves. Our
country needs them in us. Yea, God needs them in
us, if through us His will is to be done. And this
night our hope and prayer is that by looking on
those who played their part so nobly long ago we may
Snatch from the ashes of our sires
The embers of their former fires ;
and, when faced with the perils and problems of our
own time, may meet them and conquer them with
the old hold on God, the old resolute endeavour, and
the old unstained, undying sincerity.

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