HE had demanded that afternoon to be told the truth, and the doctor, himself a young Scot, had told him plainly that he could not recover, and then he had asked, as one man speaking to another, both being brave and honest men, when he would die, and the doctor thought early next morning.
“Aboot daybreak,” said the Scot, with much satisfaction, as if, on the whole, he were content to die, and much pleased it would be at the rising of the sun. He was a characteristic type of his nation, rugged in face and dry of manner, an old man, who had drifted somehow to this English city and was living there alone, and now he was about to die alone, without friends and in a strange land. The nurse was very kind to him, and her heart went out to the quiet, self-contained man. She asked him whether he would like to see a clergyman, and explained that the chaplain of the infirmary was a good man.
“A've nae doubt he is,” said the Scot, “and that his meenistrations would be verra acceptable to English fouk, but a've never had ony dealin's wi' Episcopalians. He micht want to read a prayer, and I couldna abide that, and mebbe I couldna follow the texts in his English tongue.”
The nurse still lingered by his bed. He looked up to her and assured her he was in no need of consolation. “Saxty year ago my mither made me learn the wale (choice portions) o' the Bible, and they're cornin' up ane by ane to my memory, but I thank ye kindly.”
As the nurse went back and forward on her duties she heard her patient saying at intervals to himself, “I know whom I have believed.”
“I am persuaded that neither life nor death.” Once again she heard him, “Although the mountains depart and the hills be removed,” but the rest she did not catch.
During the afternoon a lady came into the ward whose service to the Lord was the visitation of the sick, a woman after the type of Barnabas and Mary of Bethany. When she heard of the old man's illness and his loneliness, whom no friend came to see or comfort, she went to his bedside. “You are very ill,” she said, “my friend.”
“A'm deein',” he replied, with the exactness of his nation, which somewhat fails to understand the use of graceful circumlocution and gentle phrases.
“Is there anything I can do for you? Would you wish me to sing a few verses of a hymn? Some sick people feel much comforted and soothed by singing; you would like, I think, to hear 'Rock of Ages,'” and she sat down by his bedside and opened her book, while a patient beyond, who had caught what she said, raised his head to enjoy the singing.
“Ye're verra kind, mem, and a'm muckle obleeged to ye, but a'm a Scot and ye're English, and ye dinna understand. A' my days have I been protestin' against the use o' human hymns in the praise o' God; a've left three kirks on that account, and raised my testimony in public places, and noo would ye send me into eternity wi' the sough of a hymn in my ears?”
For a moment the visitor had no reply, for in the course of all her experiences, during which she had come across many kinds of men and women, she had never yet chanced upon this kind of Scot. The patients in the infirmary were not distinguished by their religious scruples, and if they had scruples of such a kind they turned on large and full-blooded distinctions between Protestant and Catholic, and never entered into subtleties of doctrine.
“You'll excuse me, mem, for a'm no ungratefu',” he continued, “and I would like to meet yir wishes when ye've been so kind to me. The doctor says I canna live long, and it's possible that my strength may sune give way, but a'll tell ye what a'm willin' to do.”
The visitor waited anxiously to know what service he was going to render her and what comfort she might offer to him, but both were beyond her guessing.
“Sae lang as a've got strength and my reason continues clear, a'm prepared to argue with you concerning the lawfulness of using onything except the Psalms of David in the praise of God either in public or in private.”
Dear old Scot, the heir of many a covenanting tradition and the worthy son of covenanting martyrs, it was a strange subject of discussion for a man's last hour, but the man who could be true to the jots and tittles of his faith in pain of body and in face of death was the stuff out of which heroes and saints are made. He belonged to a nation who might sometimes be narrow and over-concerned with scruples, but which knew that a stand must be taken somewhere, and where it took a stand was prepared to die.
The visitor was a wise as well as gracious woman, and grasped the heart of the situation. “No, no,” she said, “we will not speak about the things wherein we differ, and I did not know the feeling of the Scots about the singing of the hymns. But I can understand how you love the Psalms and how dear to you is your metrical version. Do you know I have been in the Highlands of Scotland and have heard the Psalms sung, and the tears came into my eyes at the sound of the grave, sweet melody, for it was the music of a strong and pious people.”
As she spoke the hard old Scot's face began to soften, and one hand which was lying outside the bedclothes repeated the time of a Scots Psalm tune. He was again in the country church of his boyhood, and saw his father and mother going into the table seats, and heard them singing:
“More than that, I know some of your psalm tunes, and I have the words in my hymn book; perhaps I have one of the Psalms which you would like to hear.”
“Div ye think that ye could sing the Twenty-third Psalm—
for I would count it verra comfortin'.”
“Yes,” she said, “I can, and it will please me very much to sing it, for I think I love that psalm more than any hymn.”
“It never runs dry,” murmured the Scot.
So she sang it from beginning to end in a low, sweet voice, slowly and reverently, as she had heard it sung in Scotland. He joined in no word, but ever he kept time with his hand and with his heart, while his eyes looked into the things which were far away.
After she ceased he repeated to himself the last two lines:
“Thank ye, thank ye,” he said, after a little pause, and then both were silent for a few minutes, because she saw that he was in his own country, and did not wish to bring him back by her foreign accent.
“Mem, ye've dune me the greatest kindness ony Christian could do for anither as he stands on the banks of the Jordan.”
For a minute he was silent again, and then he said: “A'm gaein' to tell ye somethin', and I think ye'll understand. My wife and me wes married thirty-five years, and ilka nicht of oor married life we sang a psalm afore we gaed to rest. She took the air and I took the bass, and we sang the Psalms through frae beginning to end twal times. She was taken frae me ten year ago, and the nicht afore she dee'd we sang the Twenty-third Psalm. A've never sung the psalm since, and I didna join wi' ye when ye sang it, for a'm waitin' to sing it wi' her new in oor Father's hoose the momin's momin', where there'll be nae nicht nor partin' evermore.”
And this is how one Englishwoman found out that the Scot is at once the dourest and the tenderest of men.
WE will leave the main road which runs through the Glen between oak trees which were planted fifty years ago, but are only now beginning to join their branches, and take our way up the hillside till we come to the purple sea of heather whose billows rise and fall, broken only here and there by an oasis of green or a running burm. Our goal is this little cottage which is so low that its roof merges into the hill behind, and upon whose thatch the wild flowers have encroached. Stoop, if you please, for it is not wise to have high doorways where the winter storm beats so fiercely, and being respectable people, we shall be taken into the inner room, where strangers of high degree are received and the treasures of the family are kept. It will not take long to give an inventory of the furniture, and the value will not run to two figures. A box bed, a small table, four ancient chairs, what they called a chest of drawers, and on the mantelpiece some peacocks' feathers by way of decoration, and certain china ornaments representing animals which never have been seen in this creation, and are never likely to emerge in any process of evolution. Were this all, I should not have troubled you to climb so far, or to leave even for five minutes the glory of the open moor. There is something else in the lowly room which you might well take a journey to see, for it is a rare sight in shepherds' cottages. Here is a bookshelf, and on it, I declare, some dozen volumes bound in full calf, and bearing on one side the arms of a University. You must revise your judgment of this house, and find another measure than the height of the walls and the cubic space in the rooms. It matters not although a house have thirty chambers, with lofty ceilings and soft carpets and carved furniture; if there be no books which belong to literature within its walls it is a poor and narrow home, and the souls therein are apt to be mean and earthly.
While you are looking at the books the shepherd's wife is looking at you. From the moment you crossed the threshold she has been thinking of that bookshelf, and hoping you would take notice thereof, but not for the world would she have mentioned it by word or sign. We had our own code of manners in the Glen, and one of our cardinal sins was “blowing,” by which we meant boasting; and while a man though perhaps not a woman, could be forgiven for “tasting,” there was no mercy shown to the person who allowed himself to brag. When, for instance, old David Ross's son became a professor, his father and mother simply allowed the glorious fact to ooze out through Domsie, who certainly had no scruple in making the most of it, and neither the father nor mother ever said Professor in public, although we believe they called their son nothing else between themselves; but the Glen made up for their reticence by decorating every second sentence about him with the word. All the same, Mistress McPherson is watching us keenly, and she would be utterly disappointed if we had overlooked the shelf; and now, in answer to our inquiry, she will take us into the kitchen and place us by the fireside, that we may hear the story of her scholar son, which, indeed, is the one romance in the history of this humble family.
One morning John left the cottage to go to school, a shepherd's boy, and likely, as it appeared, to herd sheep and live in the Glen all the days of his life as his father had done before him. In the evening the schoolmaster, who is the judge of letters in the Glen, with the minister as a court of confirmation, came up and told the father and mother that in the purposes of the Eternal their son was evidently destined to be a scholar, and that upon them lay the duty of seeing that John made his calling and election sure. Had tidings come to those two people, whose wage in money would not amount to ten shillings a week, that they were heirs to a fortune, it would not have brought such pleasure to their souls as the good hope that their lowly stock would once at least in a generation produce the white flower of a scholar's life. The whole family, father and mother, with their grown-up sons and daughters in service, will now unite in one labour—to save and to sacrifice, that by hook or crook their brother may reach a university, and be sustained in his study there till he has reached its reward. Four years from that evening, had you been standing under the great arch by which students enter the quadrangle of Edinburgh University, you had seen the shepherd's son pass in, plainly dressed and shy in manner, but strong of body and brave in soul, and charged with all the knowledge that his schoolmaster and his minister could impart by patient, ungrudging labour. The lad before him is a noble's son, and the one following is a merchant's, and so sons of the rich and of the poor, of the high and of the low, they go together, into the one Republic on the face of the earth, the Republic of Letters, where money does not count, nor rank, nor influence, nor intrigue, but where every man stands equal and the best man wins.
Another four years and John has obtained his degree, a double first, and he writes to the cottage on the side of the hill that the two old people must come up to see him crowned. For six weeks before the day his mother has just one consuming anxiety, and that is what she should wear on the occasion, and it is only after fifteen long deliberations with her gossips in the Glen that the great affair is settled, while the father's mind is wholly taken up on Sundays with the effort to look as if he were not the father of a graduate.
When the shepherd and his wife enter the gates of the University, they are not to be thought of as two illiterate peasants who cannot distinguish between a University and a dry-goods store. Although they had never themselves expected to see so high a place, and had only cherished it as a secret hope that perhaps one of their boys might attain so far, they have learned by the tradition of their nation, and by the speech of Domsie in the kirk-yard on Sabbath, to enter into the greatness of a university. It is to them the home of the highest knowledge, and a sacred place to which reverend people might well go up as a pious Moslem to Mecca or a Jew to Jerusalem. As they cross the quadrangle, the shepherd touches his wife, and points to an elderly gentleman in the distance. They follow him with respectful attention as he shambles along, half a dozen books under his arm, his shabby cloak held by a single button, a hat as old as Jamie Soutar's resting on the back of his head.
“Keep's a', Jeems,” whispers Janet respectfully “Div ye really think that he's a professor?”
“We canna be sure, woman; he micht juist be a scholar, but I am judgin' that he's a professor—he hes a' the appearance.”
And the two old people stand still in the bit till he disappears, and then they go on their way much lifted. Outside religion there is no word in Scots speech so sacred as “professor.” It means a semi-heavenly body charged with Latin and Greek philosophy and mathematics. It was something to see such a man, and to be in his company was living in an atmosphere where you might catch the infection of his learning. When a glensman, to whom Domsie had spoken of professors with bated breath for more than a generation, learned that in southern parts the title was assumed by hairdressers and ventriloquists, and that they were not sent to gaol for profanity, then Drumtochty discovered another argument for its favourite doctrine of original sin.
As the two go down the half-lit passage to the hall of graduation, they are met by a majestic figure—a young man in evening dress, and over it the gown of an M.A., with its white silk hood, and on his head the Master's cap.
“Are you coming, may I ask,” said he, with quite a nice English accent, to the graduation ceremony, “and can I be of any service?”
“We are, sir; and as we are strangers frae the country, we would be muckle obleeged if ye could shew us the door. We dinna want to go where the gentry are sittin', but if ye would juist tak' us where we could see, we'd be content and terrible pleased. There's a... friend to get his degree to-day, and my man and me would like to see him.”
“Mither,” said the figure, “and ye dinna ken yir ain son,” for he had taken them in well, and played his little trick with much success. They had never seen him in evening dress, nor in his Master's robe, and the light was as darkness; besides, he had dropped the accent of the Glen. The father and the son laughed together joyfully at Janet, but she declared that she had known him all the time, and put it to them if a mother could be mistaken about her son. But she didn't know him all the same, and as long as she lived it was a pleasant jest between them when he came north to visit them, and she met him at the garden gate. “Well, mither,” he would say, “div ye ken yir son the day?”
Janet was well pleased that one should tease her in after times about this ploy of John's, for it always gave her an opportunity of describing how handsome he looked in his black and white silk, and of stating that she. Mistress McPherson, wife of James McPherson, shepherd at Camashach, considered the dress of a Master of Arts the handsomest that a man could wear.
John took his father and mother into the hall, and placed them in the seats reserved for the friends of graduates, and while a man has various moments of pure joy in his life, there is none sweeter than when he brings his mother to see him crowned at the close of his university career. For in this matter he owes everything to two people—the schoolmaster who taught him and the mother who inspired him.
“Now, mither, you watch that door yonder, for through it the procession will come; and when ye see the men wi' the white silk hoods, ye'll ken that I'm there, and ye'll surely no mistake me again.”
He was so provoking, and he looked so handsome with the flush of the day upon his cheek, that, as he stooped over her, she was about to give him a little shove and tell him not to give “any more impi-dence to his auld mither,” when she remembered where she was sitting, and the grand folk round her, and so she only answered with a demure nod of intelligence.
She brought out her glasses, and the shepherd polished them carefully for her because her hands were trembling, and for that matter he had almost to put them on her nose, so shaken was she on this great day; and then she watched the door, as if there was nothing else in all the hall except that door. It seemed to her twelve hours before it opened and the procession streamed through with many a famous man and many a coloured garment. Janet had no eyes for the Chancellor in his purple and gold, nor for the robes of red and the hoods of lemon silk bordered with white fur, for there was nothing beautiful in her eyes that day except black gowns with white silk upon them. When at last the Masters of Arts appeared, she told me afterwards many and many a time in the Glen that they were a body of very respectable-looking young men, but that among them all there was only one outstanding and handsome man, and that, by a curious accident which mothers only can explain, happened to be her son. She followed him as he came down the passage, and was a little disappointed that he was now carrying his trencher in his hand instead of wearing it-on his head, and she saw him take his seat, and could hardly forgive some great lady in front of her, whose bonnet, coming in the line of vision, prevented her catching anything except a little bit of John's shoulder with the white silk upon it. A little later, and she watched him rise and go forward and kneel before the Chancellor, and then there was said over him Latin words so magical that after they were spoken a student was changed from a common man into a Master of Arts. We used to say in our jesting that the Latin could not be translated, it was so mysterious and awful, but the shepherd's wife and John's mother was an accomplished Latin scholar that day, and she heard the Chancellor say, as distinctly as ever man spoke—
“John McPherson, you are the tallest, strongest, handsomest, ablest, kindest-hearted son whom this University ever made Master of Arts.” That was a free translation, but it was true in spirit, and the letter killeth.
Standing behind the Chancellor, and looking down upon the hall, I saw the faces of the shepherd and his wife, and I knew that they would never taste such perfect joy again till they entered through the gates into the city, and then I longed to be lifted above all circumstances, and to have the power of the fairy world, where you do what you please. For I should have gone down into the hall, and held a special and unheard-of graduation ceremony, conferring a degree of a new kind altogether upon that shepherd and his wife, because without their unworldly ideals, and their hard sacrifices, and their holy prayers, John McPherson had never knelt there that day in his white silk glory, Master of Arts with the highest honours.
HIS varied charge was given to the good man on the morning of market day as he brought the mare out from the stable, as he harnessed her into the dogcart, as he packed the butter basket below the seat, as he wrestled into his top coat, worn for ceremony's sake, and as he made the start—line upon line and precept upon precept as he was able to receive it; but the conclusion of the matter and its crown was ever the same, “Dinna forget Spurgeon.”
“There's twal pund o' butter for the grocer, the best ever left this dairy, and he maun gie a shillin,' or it's the laist Andra Davie'ill get frae me; but begin by askin' fourteenpence, else it's eleven ye'll bring back. He's a lad, is Andra, an' terrible grippy.
“For ony sake tak' care o' the eggs, and mind they're no turnips ye're handlin'—it's a fair temptin' o' Providence to see the basket in yir hands—ninepence a dozen, mind, and tell him they're new laid an' no frae Ireland; there's a handfu' o' flowers for the wife, and a bit o' honey for their sick laddie, but say naethin' o' that till the bargain's made.
“The tea and sugar a've markit on a bit paper, for it's nae use bringin' a bag o' grass-seed, as ye did fower weeks ago; an' there's ae thing mair I micht mention, for ony sake dinna pit the paraffin oil in the same basket wi' the loaf sugar; they may fit fine, as ye said, but otherwise they're no gude neeburs. And, John, dinna forget Spurgeon.”
Again and again during the day, and in the midst of many practical operations, the good wife predicted to her handmaidens what would happen, and told them, as she had done weekly, that she had no hope.
“It's maist awfu' hoo the maister'ill gae wanderin' and dodderin' thro' the market a' day, pricing cattle he's no gaein' tae buy, an' arguin' aboot the rent o' farms he's no gaein' to tak', an' never gie a thocht tae the errands till the laist meenut.
“He may bring hame some oil,” she would continue, gloomily, as if that were the one necessity of life to which a male person might be expected to give attention; “but ye needna expect ony tea next week”—as if there was not a week's stock in the house—“and ye may tak' ma word for it there'ill be nae Spurgeon's sermon for Sabbath.”
As the provident woman had written every requirement—except the oil, which was obtained at the ironmonger's, and the Spurgeon, which was sold at the draper's—on a sheet of paper, and pinned it on the topmost cabbage leaf which covered the butter, the risk was not great; but that week the discriminating prophecy of the good man's capabilities seemed to be justified, for the oil was there, but Spurgeon could not be found. It was not in the bottom of the dogcart, nor below the cushion, nor attached to a piece of saddlery, nor even in the good man's trouser-pocket—all familiar resting-places—and when it was at last extricated from the inner pocket of his top coat—a garment with which he had no intimate acquaintance—he received no credit, for it was pointed out with force that to have purchased the sermon and then to have mislaid it, was worse than forgetting it altogether.
“The Salvation of Manasseh,” read the good wife; “it would have been a fine like business to have missed that; a'll warrant this 'ill be ane o' his sappiest, but they're a' gude”: and then Manasseh was put in a prominent and honourable place, behind the basket of wax flowers in the best parlour till Sabbath.
It was the good custom in that kindly home to ask the “lads” from the bothie into the kitchen on the Sabbath evening, who came in their best clothes and in much confusion, sitting on the edge of chairs and refusing to speak on any consideration. They made an admirable meal, however, and were understood to express gratitude by an attempt at “gude nicht,” while the foreman stated often with the weight of his authority that they were both “extraordinar' lifted” by the tea and “awfu' ta'en up” with the sermon. For after tea the “maister” came “but,” and having seen that every person had a Bible, he gave out a Psalm, which was sung usually either to Coleshill or Martyrdom—the musical taste of the household being limited and conservative to a degree. The good man then read the chapter mentioned on the face of the sermon, and remarked by way of friendly introduction:
“Noo we'ill see what Mr. Spurgeon has to say the nicht.”
Perhaps the glamour of the past is on me, perhaps a lad was but a poor judge, but it seemed to me good reading—slow, well pronounced, reverent, charged with tenderness and pathos. No one slept or moved, and the firelight falling on the serious faces of the stalwart men, and the shining of the lamp on the good grey heads, as the gospel came, sentence by sentence, to every heart, is a sacred memory, and I count that Mr. Spurgeon would have been mightily pleased to have been in such meetings of homely folk.
It was harvest-time, however, when Manasseh was read, and there being extra men with us, our little gathering was held in the loft, where they store the com which is to be threshed in the mill. It was full of wheat in heavy, rich, ripe, golden sheaves, save a wide space in front of the machinery, and the congregation seated themselves in a semi-circle on the sheaves. The door through which the com is forked into the loft was open and, with a skylight in the low dusty roof, gave us, that fine August evening, all the light we needed. Through that wide window we could look out on some stacks already safely built, and on fields, stretching for miles, of grain cut and ready for the gathering and, beyond, to woods and sloping hills towards which the sun was westering fast. That evening, I remember, we sang
and sang it to French, and it was laid on me as an honour to read “Manasseh.” Whether the sermon is called by this name I do not know, and whether it be one of the greatest of Mr. Spurgeon's I do not know, nor have I a copy of it; but it was mighty unto salvation in that loft, and I make no doubt that good grain was garnered unto eternity. There is a passage in it when, after the mercy of God has rested on this chief sinner, an angel flies through the length and breadth of Heaven, crying, “Manasseh is saved, Manasseh is saved.” Up to that point the lad read, and further he did not read. You know, because you have been told, how insensible and careless is a schoolboy, how destitute of all sentiment and emotion... and therefore I do not ask you to believe me. You know how dull and stupid is a plowman, because you have been told... and therefore I do not ask you to believe me.
It was the light which got into the lad's eyes, and the dust which choked his voice, and it must have been for the same reasons that a plowman passed the back of his hand across his eyes.
“Ye'ill be tired noo,” said the good man; “let me feenish the sermon,” but the sermon is not yet finished, and never shall be, for it has been unto life everlasting.
Who of all preachers you can mention of our day could have held such companies save Spurgeon? What is to take their place, when the last of those well-known sermons disappears from village shops and cottage shelves? Is there any other gospel which will ever be so understanded of the people, or so move human hearts as that which Spurgeon preached in the best words of our own tongue? The good man and his wife have entered into rest long ago, and of all that company I know not one now; but I see them as I write, against that setting of gold, and I hear the angel's voice, “Manasseh is saved,” and for that evening and others very sacred to my heart I cannot forget Spurgeon.
THE departure of a minister of the Scots Kirk from his congregation is, of course, a subject of regret if he has the heart of the people, but this regret is tempered by the satisfaction of knowing that there will be an election. While a free-born Scot is careful to exercise his political suffrage, he takes an even keener interest in his ecclesiastical vote, and the whole congregation now constitutes itself into a constituency. Every preacher is a candidate, and everything about him is criticised, from his appearance—in one district they would not have a red-headed man; and his dress—in another district they objected to grey trousers, up to his voice and to his doctrine; but, of course, the keenest criticism bears upon his doctrine, which is searched as with a microscope. As a rule there is no desire to close the poll early, for a year's vacancy is a year's enjoyment to the congregation giving endless opportunity for argument and debate for strategy and party management. One congregation had been ruled so firmly by the retiring pastor, who was a little man and therefore full of authority, that they hardly dared to call their souls their own.
If any one ventured to disagree with this ecclesiastical Napoleon he was ordered to the door and told to betake himself to some church where freedom of action was allowed. This magnificent autocracy might have emptied another church, but it secured a Scots kirk, because to tell a Scot to go is to make, him stay. As a matter of course, no person did leave, for that would have been giving in, and the consequence was that the whole congregation was knit together by the iron bonds of rebellion.
When Napoleon retired the congregation smacked its lips, for now at least every one had found his voice and could go his own way. There never was such a vacancy known in the district. They heard thirty candidates and rejected them all: they held a meeting every week, which lasted till midnight, and there were six motions proposed, and no one dreamed of agreement. It was like the emancipation of the slaves, and the whole of Scotch cantankerousness came to a height. Every obscure law was hunted up in order to be used against the other side, and every well-known law they endeavoured to break. Not because they did not know the law, but because they wanted to find out whether the presiding minister knew it. This poor man had the duty of conducting the meetings of the congregation, and was utterly unfitted for the position by his exceeding goodness. He was a pious and soft-hearted man, who used to address them as “dear brethren,” and appealed to them on the grounds of harmony and charity. “You will wish to be at one,” he used to say, when they all really wished to be at sixes and sevens, or, “I am sure,” he would say, “you didn't mean to oppose our dear brother who has just spoken,” when that had been the speaker's intention for twenty-four hours. One party was led by a tall, raw-boned Scot, with a voice like a handsaw, who opposed everything, and the other was really managed by the wife of one of the elders, who could be heard giving directions sotto voce how to meet the handsaw. They finally drew the wretched acting moderator to distraction, so that his head, which was never so good as his heart, gave way, and he required six months' rest in a hydropathic.
The Presbytery then sent down a minister of another kind, fairly equipped in law and with no bowels of mercy; a civil, courteous, determined, fighting man, and there was a royal evening. This minister explained that they had held many meetings, most of which were unnecessary, and that they had proposed fifty motions, all of which he believed were illegal. It was his own conviction he freely stated that they knew perfectly well that they had been wrong, and that they had simply been amusing themselves, and he concluded by intimating that they had met for business on this occasion, that a minister must be elected before departing, and it was his business to see that he was elected unanimously. He stood facing the congregation, who were now in a high state of delight, feeling that there was going to be a real battle, and that there would be some glory in contending with an able-bodied man, who would not speak about charity, and say “dear brethren”—words which always excite a secret feeling of disgust in a Scot. The minister stood up opposite the congregation, tall, square and alert. “Will you pay attention and I'll lay down the law; if any one breaks the law he must sit down at once, and if he does not, I shall not allow him to vote. You can propose any candidate who is legally qualified, and I will allow one man to propose him and another to second him, and I will give each five minutes in which to speak to the excellence of his candidate, and the moment any person refers to another candidate he must stop. When the candidates have been proposed we shall take the vote, and we shall go on voting until we settle upon the candidate who has the majority, and we will do all this in an hour, and then we will sing a Psalm and go home.”
During this address several stalwart fighters were seen to nod to one another, and one went the length of slapping his leg, and already the moderator had acquired the respect of his turbulent congregation. The handsaw arose and proposed his candidate, and almost immediately attacked the other party. “Sit down, sir,” said the moderator, “you're out of order,” and after a brief stare of amazement and a measuring of the force against him, the handsaw gave a glance around and collapsed. A candidate was proposed from the other side, but his name was hardly mentioned before the mover commenced to refer to the handsaw. “You are out of order,” said the moderator; “not another word,” and, although the female leader of that side nodded to him to go on, he thought better, and also collapsed. Then an astute old strategist at the back, who had embroiled many a meeting, and who was sitting with a law book in his hand, proposed that they should delay the election until another meeting. “That motion,” said the moderator, “I shall not receive. We have not met to delay; we have met to vote.” Whereupon another Scot arose and stated that he had risen to a point of order, which is always the excuse by which the proceedings can be interrupted. “What,” he said, “I want to know is this: Is it regular to vote when there was no notice given that the voting was to take place?” “There was notice given,” said the moderator; “sit down in your place.” “Can I not object?” he said. “No,” he said, “you can't.” He looked around the meeting. “What,” he said, “is the use of being a Presbyterian if I am not allowed to object? I might as well be an Episcopalian.” The moderator, still standing, eyed him, and said: “Are you going to sit down or are you not?” “Do you order me to sit down in your private or in your public capacity?” said the recalcitrant. “As a man or as a moderator?” For nothing delights a Scot more than to make this contrast between public and private capacity, like the Scotch magistrate, who said, “In my public capacity I fine you five shillings for the assault; in my private capacity I would have done the same myself.” “As moderator,” said the minister, “I command you to take your place.” “I consent—I consent,” said the Scot, with infinite relish, like a man who had had a wrestling match and had been fairly beaten, and he leant back to a friend behind, saying, “Sall, he's a lad, the moderator,” for this is the way in which a man wins respect from Scots. In a moment he had risen again. “Moderator,” he said, “ye commanded me in yir official capacity to sit doon, and I obeyed, but”—and there was a silence through the church—“I'll no sit down for that woman,” indicating the elder's wife. “She would turn round and order me to sit down as if I had been her husband, but, moderator,” he said, “I thank the Almichty I'm not.”
Greatly cheered by this episode, the congregation proceeded to vote, the leaders taking objections to different voters, which were all overruled by the moderator, who was now going from strength to strength. And then at last a minister was elected by a large majority. “Now,” said the moderator, “you've had a fair fight and a year's argument, and there is not a privilege you have not used, and you have done a thousand things you had no right to do, and I appeal to the minority to agree with the majority, as Scots ought to do when they have had their rights.” Whereupon the handsaw arose and declared that he was never prouder of the Scotch Church than he had been during the last year, and that in all his life he had never spent a happier time. “We've had a grand argument and richt stand up fecht, and now,” he said, “I'm willing, for masel, and I speak for my friends, to accept the minister that's been elected, for I consider him to be a soond preacher and vary spiritual in the exercises. The fact is,” he added, “I would have been content with him at ony time, but it would have been a peety to have had an immediate election and to have missed this year. When he comes he'll have my hearty support, and I'm willing to agree that he should have a proper stipend, and that the manse be papered and painted and put in order for his coming.” As he sat down he could be heard over all the church saying to himself with immense satisfaction, “It's been a michty time, and the law's been well laid down this nicht.” The minister gave out the Psalm—
Which was sung with immense spirit, and, after the benediction, every man whom the minister had ordered to sit down came up and shook hands with him, assuring him that they knew all the time that he was right, and that they respected him for his ability. They also entreated him to come and administer the sacrament before the new minister arrived, believing that a man who could rule with so firm a hand would be an acceptable preacher of the gospel.
EVERY country has its own sports, and Scotland has golf, but golf only satisfies the lighter side of the Scots; the graver side of the Scot finds its exercise in the prosecution of a heretic. Nothing so delights this theological and argumentative people as a heresy hunt, and they have no more ill-will to a heretic than sportsmen have to a fox. It sometimes occurs to me that they dally with cases in order that they may be prolonged, and that the sportsmen may have a good run after the fox. I have even dared to think that they would be willing to preserve heretics as foxes are preserved in hunting counties in order that they might have a good time now and again. Every one throws himself into a heresy case, from the highest to the lowest, from the Duke in his castle to the shepherd on the hills, from the lawyer in his office to the railway guard in his van. They all read about it and form their opinion, and take sides and watch the event, and the issue of the case is a national incident. From the conflict of wits, in which the hardest heads have tried conclusions on the deepest subjects, the people return to business shrewder than ever, more confident and self-satisfied.
We had missed the connexion, and the North train had gone fifteen minutes ago, and how I was to reach the station of Pitrodie that night was a question beyond solution. The station master could give no help, and only suggested that I might sleep at the inn and take the morning train, but in that case I would have been too late for the funeral to which I was going. When he heard the nature of my errand he bestirred himself with much more zeal, for, although a Scot may not facilitate your journey for a marriage, which he regards as an event of very doubtful utility, and associated with little geniality, he is always ready to assist you to a funeral to which the heart of the Scotch people goes out with pathetic interest.
“Would you mind travelling in the guard's van of a luggage train and ye would be in fine time?”
On the contrary, I would be delighted, for I had never travelled in such circumstances, and the guard's van would be a pleasant variety upon a third-class carriage.
The guard received me with considerable cordiality and gave me his seat in the van, which was decorated with pictures of kirks and eminent divines. For a while he was engaged with various duties, shunting trucks and making up his train, but after we had started and were out upon the line he came and placed himself opposite.
“Now,” he said, “we've a run of twenty miles, and it's not likely we'll be interrupted, for the rails are clear at this time of night, and we're an express goods. I regard it,” he said, “as a providence that ye lost yer train, for if I'd been asked what I would like this very nicht I would ha said, 'Gie me a minister.'”
When I expressed my pleasure at his respect for the cloth, and my willingness to be of any service to him, he waved his hand as one does who has been misunderstood. “It's no,” he said, “releegious conversation that I'm wantin', although I'm willing enough to have that at a time, but there's a point in the Robertson-Smith heresy case that I would like to have cleared up to my satisfaction.”
A tall and grey-bearded man, about fifty years of age, with a keen eye and a shrewd face, he leant forward from his place, and, with the light of the lamp shining on his face, he began: “Now, ye see, the first article in the libel against Prof. Robertson-Smith has to do with the construction of the Book of Deuteronomy,” but I will not inflict what he said, for it took ten miles of the railway to open up his point. As we rattled along the birling of the heavy break van was like music to words of sonorous sound—“Pentateuch,” “Mosaic Authorship,” “Confession of Faith.”
For another ten miles we discussed the length and breadth of the eminent Hebrew scholar's views till we reached a crisis, which happened also to be a junction on the railway. “One minute,” he said, “and we maun stop, for we're coming to the junction.” The point we were at was the place of the Song of Solomon in the Old Testament. “Now, I contend,” he continued, “that it hes to be read spiritually, and I've given three reasons. I've three mair, but I maun shunt the trucks. I'll be back in ten minutes, and ye'll not forget that the discussion is no closed but just adjourned, and I've the richt to give the other three reasons before ye reply.” And then, after the three had been given and thirty more, we parted as the day was breaking. At Pitrodie station he crossed the platform with me, and shook hands till my bones were almost broken.
“It's been a very edifying nicht, and I'll gie fair consideration to all your arguments. Mind ye, I'm proud o' the Professor, for he's a michty scholar, and I wouldna like to see him put out o' the kirk, but I'm jalousing that he's a heretic.” I stood at a turn of the road and saw the train pass, and my friend waved his hand to me from the back of the van, but I could see him sadly shake his head. He was still jalousing (suspecting) that Prof. Robertson-Smith was a heretic.
IT is difficult for one nation to perfectly understand another, and there is a certain quality of the Scots' intellect which is apt to try the patience of an Englishman. It is said that an Englishman was once so exasperated by the arguing by a Scot, who took the opposite side on every subject from the weather to politics, that at last he cried out in despair: “You will admit at least that two and two make four,” to which the delighted Scot replied with celerity, “I'll admit naething, but I'm willing to argue the proposition.” It is not recorded whether the Scot escaped alive, but it is hardly possible to believe that he was not assaulted. You may be the most conciliatory of people, and may even be cleansed from all positive opinions—one of those people who are said to be agreeable because they agree with everybody; and yet a thoroughbred Scot will in ten minutes or less have you into a tangle of prickly arguments, and hold you at his mercy, although afterwards you cannot remember how you were drawn from the main road into the bramble patch, and you are sure that the only result was the destruction of your peace of mind for an afternoon. But the Scot enjoyed himself immensely, and goes on with keen zest to ambush some other passenger. What evil spirit of logic has possessed this race? an English person cannot help complaining, and why should any person find his pleasure in wordy debate?
From his side of the Tweed and of human nature the Scot is puzzled and pained by the inconsequence and opportunism of the English mind. After a Scot, for instance, has proved to his Southern opponent that some institution is absolutely illogical, that it ought never to have existed, and ought at once to be abolished, and after the Scot pursuing his victorious way of pure reason, has almost persuaded himself that a thing so absurd never has existed, the Englishman, who has been very much bored by the elaborate argument, will ask with a monstrous callousness whether the institution does not work well, and put forward with brazen effrontery the plea that if an institution works well, it does not matter whether it be logical or not. Then it is that a Scot will look at an Englishman in mournful silence and wonder upon what principle he was created.
The traveller no sooner crosses the border from the genial and irresponsible South than he finds himself in a land where a nation forms one huge debating society, and there is a note of interrogation in the very accent of speech. When an English tourist asked his driver what was the reason of so many religious denominations in Scotland, and the driver, looking down upon a village with six different kirks, answered, “Juist bad temper, naething else,” he was indulging his cynicism and knew very well that he was misinforming the stranger.
While it is absolutely impossible to make plain to an average Englishman the difference between one kirk and another in Scotland, yet every one has its own logical basis, and indeed when one considers the subtlety and restlessness of the Scots intellect he wonders, not that there have been so many divisions, but that there have been so few in Scots religion. By preference a Scot discusses Theology, because it is the deepest subject and gives him the widest sphere for his dialectic powers, but in default of Theology he is ready to discuss anything else, from the Game Laws to the character of Mary, Queen of Scots. He is the guardian of correct speech and will not allow any inaccuracy to pass, and therefore you never know when in the hurry of life you may not be caught and rebuked. When I asked a porter in Stirling Station one afternoon at what hour the train for Aberfoyle left I made a mistake of which I speedily repented. The train for Aberfoyle—I had assumed there was only one train that afternoon, for this beautiful but remote little place. Very good, that was then the position I had taken up and must defend. The porter licked his lips with anticipation of victory, for he held another view. “The train for Aberfoyle,” he repeated triumphantly. “Whatna train div ye mean?”—then severely as one exposing a hasty assumption—“there's a train at 3.10, there's another at 3.60, there's another at 6.30” (or some such hours). He challenged me to reply or withdraw, and his voice was ringing with controversy. When I made an abject surrender he was not satisfied, but pursued me and gained another victory. “Very good,” I said, “then what train should I take?” He was now regarding me with something like contempt, an adversary whom it was hardly worth fighting with. That depended on circumstances he did not know and purposes which I had not told him. He could only pity me. “How can I tell,” he said, “what train ye should go by, ye can go by ony train that suits ye, but yir luggage, being booked through, will travel by the 3.10.” During our conversation my portmanteau which I had placed under his charge was twice removed from its barrow in the shifting of the luggage, and as my friend watched its goings (without interfering) he relaxed from his intellectual severity and allowed himself a jest suitable to my capacity. “That's a lively portmanteau o' yours. I'm judging that if ye set it on the road it would go Aberfoyle itsel'.” When we parted on a basis of free silver he still implied a reproach, “so ye did conclude to go by the 3.10, but” (showing how poor were my reasoning faculties even after I had used them) “ye would have been as soon by the 3.50.” For a sustained and satisfying bout of argument one must visit a Scot in his home and have an evening to spare. Was it not Carlyle's father who wrote to Tom that a man had come to the village with a fine ability for argument, and that he only wished his son were with them and then he would set Tom on one side of the table and this man on the other place, and “a proposeetion” between them, and hear them argue for the night? But one may get pleasant glimpses of the national sport on railway journeys and by the roadside. A farmer came into the carriage one summer afternoon, as I was travelling through Ayrshire, who had been attending market and had evidently dined. He had attended to the lighter affairs of life in the sale of stock and the buying of a reaping machine, and now he was ready for the more serious business of theological discussion. He examined me curiously but did not judge me worthy, and after one or two remarks on the weather with which I hastened to agree, he fell into a regretful silence as of one losing his time. Next station a minister entered, and the moment my fellow-passenger saw the white tie his eyes glistened, and in about three minutes they were actively engaged, the farmer and the Minister, discussing the doctrine of justification. The Minister, as in duty bound, took the side of justification by faith, and the farmer, simply I suppose to make debate and certainly with a noble disregard of personal interests—for he had evidently dined—took the side of works. Perhaps it may seem as if it was an unequal match between the Minister and the farmer, since the one was a professional scholar and the other a rustic amateur. But the difference was not so great as a stranger might imagine, for if a minister be as it were a theological specialist every man in Scotland is a general practitioner. And if the latter had his own difficulties in pronouncing words he was always right in the text he intended. They conducted their controversy with much ability till we came to the farmer's station, and then he left still arguing, and with my last glimpse of that admirable Scot he was steadying himself against a post at the extremity of the platform, and this was his final fling: “I grant ye Paul and the Romans, but I take my stand on James.” Wonderful country where the farmers, even after they have dined, take to theology as a pastime. What could that man not have done before he dined.
In earlier days, the far back days of youth, I knew a rustic whose square and thick-set figure was a picture of his sturdy and indomitable mind. He was slow of speech and slow also of mind, but what he knew he held with the grip of a vice and he would yield nothing in conversation. If you said it was raining (when it might be pouring) he would reply that it was showery. If you declared a field of com to be fine he said that he had seen “waur” (worse), and if you praised a sermon he granted that it wasna bad; and in referring to a minister distinguished throughout the land for his saintliness he volunteered the judgment that there was “naething positively veecious in him.” Many a time did I try, sometimes to browbeat him, and sometimes to beguile him into a positive statement and to get him to take up a position from which he could not withdraw. I was always beaten, and yet once I was within an ace of success. We had bought a horse on the strength of a good character from a dealer, and were learning the vanity of speech in all horse transactions, for there was nothing that beast did not do of the things no horse ought to do, and one morning after it had tried to get at James with its hind legs, and then tried to bring him down with its fore legs, had done its best to bite him, and also manoeuvred to crush him against a wall, I hazarded the suggestion that our new purchase was a vicious brute. He caught the note of assurance in my voice, and saw that he had been trapped; he cast an almost pathetic look at me as if I was inviting him to deny his national character and betray a historic part of unbroken resistance. He hesitated and looked for a way of escape while he skilfully warded off another attack, this time with the teeth, and his face brightened. “Na!” he replied, “I'll no admit that the horse is veecious, we maun hae more experience o' him afore we can pass sic a judgment, but”—and now he just escaped a playful tap from the horse's fore-leg—“I'm prepared to admit that this momin' he is a wee thingie liteegious.” And so victory was snatched from my hand, and I was again worsted.
If the endless arguing of the Scot be wearisome to strangers and one would guess is a burden to himself, yet it has its advantages. It has been a discipline for the Scots mind, and the endless disputations on doctrine and kirks as well as more trifling matters like history and politics has toughened the Scots brain and brought it to a fine edge. When I hear a successful Scot speak lightly of the Shorter Catechism, then I am amazed and tempted to despise him, for it was by that means that he was sent forth so acute and enterprising a man, and any fortune he has made he owes to its training. He has been trained to think and to reason, to separate what is true from what is false, to use the principles of speech and test the subtlest meaning of words, and therefore, if he be in business, he is a banker by preference, because that is the science of commerce, and if he be an artizan, he becomes an engineer because that is the most skilful trade, and as a doctor he is spread all over the world. Wherever hard thinking and a determined will tell in the world's work this self-reliant and uncompromising man is sure to succeed, and if his mind has not the geniality and flexibility of the English, if it secretly hates the English principle of compromise, and suspects the English standard of commonsense, if it be too unbending and even unreasonably logical, this only proves that no one nation, not even the Scots, can possess the whole earth.