I doubt not my father regarded this little worn old book, the sword of the Spirit which his ancestor so n.o.bly won, and wore, and warred with, with not less honest veneration and pride than does his dear friend James Douglas of Cavers the Percy pennon borne away at Otterbourne. When I read, in Uncle William"s admirable Life of his father, his own simple story of his early life-his loss of father and mother before he was eleven, his discovering (as true a _discovery_ as Dr. Young"s of the characters of the Rosetta stone, or Rawlinson"s of the cuneiform letters) the Greek characters, his defence of himself against the astonishing and base charge of getting his learning from the devil (that shrewd personage would not have employed him on the Greek Testament), his eager, indomitable study, his running miles to and back again to hear a sermon after folding his sheep at noon, his keeping his family creditably on never more than 50, and for long on 40 a year, giving largely in charity, and never wanting, as he said, "lying money"-when I think of all this, I feel what a strong, independent, manly nature he must have had. We all know his saintly character, his devotion to learning, and to the work of preaching and teaching; but he seems to have been, like most complete men, full of humor and keen wit. Some of his _snell_ sayings are still remembered. A lad of an excitable temperament waited on him, and informed him he wished to be a preacher of the gospel. My great-grandfather, finding him as weak in intellect as he was strong in conceit, advised him to continue in his present vocation. The young man said, "But I wish to preach and glorify G.o.d."
"My young friend, a man may glorify G.o.d making broom besoms; stick to your trade, and glorify G.o.d by your walk and conversation."
The late Dr. Husband of Dunfermline called on him when he was preparing to set out for Gifford, and was beginning to ask him some questions as to the place grace held in the Divine economy. "Come away wi" me, and I"ll expound that; but when I"m speaking, look you after my feet." They got upon a rough bit of common, and the eager and full-minded old man was in the midst of his unfolding the Divine scheme, and his student was drinking in his words, and forgetting _his_ part of the bargain. His master stumbled and fell, and getting up, somewhat sharply said, "James, the grace o" G.o.d can do much, but it canna gi"e a man common sense;"
which is as good theology as sense.
A scoffing blacksmith seeing him jogging up to a house near the smithy on his pony, which was halting, said to him, "Mr. Brown, ye"re in the Scripture line the day-"the legs o" the lame are not equal."" "So is a parable in the mouth of a fool."
On his coming to Haddington, there was one man who held out against his "call." Mr. Brown meeting him when they could not avoid each other, the non-content said, "Ye see, sir, I canna say what I dinna think, and I think ye"re ower young and inexperienced for this charge." "So I think too, David, _but it would never do for you and me to gang in the face o"
the hale congregation!_"
The following is a singular ill.u.s.tration of the prevailing dark and severe tone of the religious teaching of that time, and also of its strength:-A poor old woman, of great worth and excellent understanding, in whose conversation Mr. Brown took much pleasure, was on her death-bed. Wishing to try her faith, he said to her, "Janet, what would you say if, after all He has done for you, G.o.d should let you drop into h.e.l.l?" "E"en"s (even as) he likes; if he does, _He"ll lose mair than I"ll do_." There is something not less than sublime in this reply.
Than my grandfather and "Uncle Ebenezer," no two brothers could be more different in nature or more united in affection. My grandfather was a man of great natural good sense, well read and well knowledged, easy but not indolent, never overflowing but never empty, homely but dignified, and fuller of love to all sentient creatures than any other human being I ever knew. I had, when a boy of ten, two rabbits, Oscar and Livia: why so named is a secret I have lost; perhaps it was an Ossianic union of the Roman with the Gael. Oscar was a broad-nosed, manly, rather _brusque_ husband, who used to snort when angry, and bite too; Livia was a thin-faced, meek, and I fear, deceitfullish wife, who could smile, and then bite. One evening I had lifted both these worthies, by the ears of course, and was taking them from their clover to their beds, when my grandfather, who had been walking out in the cool of the evening, met me. I had just kissed the two creatures, out of mingled love to them, and pleasure at having caught them without much trouble. He took me by the chin, and kissed me, and then _Oscar and Livia_! Wonderful man, I thought, and still think! doubtless he had seen me in my private fondness, and wished to please me.
He was forever doing good in his quiet yet earnest way. Not only on Sunday when he preached solid gospel sermons, full of quaint familiar expressions, such as I fear few of my readers could take up, full of solemn, affectionate, appeals, full of his own simplicity and love, the Monday also found him ready with his every-day gospel. If he met a drover from Lochaber who had crossed the Campsie Hills, and was making across Carnwath Moor to the Calstane Slap, and thence into England by the drove-rode, he accosted him with a friendly smile,-gave him a reasonable tract, and dropped into him some words of Divine truth. He was thus _continually_ doing good. Go where he might, he had his message to every one; to a servant la.s.s, to a poor wanderer on the bleak streets, to gentle and simple-he flowed forever _pleno rivo_.
Uncle Ebenezer, on the other hand, flowed _per saltum_; he was always good and saintly, but he was great once a week; six days he brooded over his message, was silent, withdrawn, self-involved; on the Sabbath, that downcast, almost timid man, who shunned men, the instant he was in the pulpit, stood up a son of thunder. Such a voice! such a piercing eye!
such an inevitable forefinger, held out trembling with the terrors of the Lord; such a power of asking questions and letting them fall deep into the hearts of his hearers, and then answering them himself, with an "ah, sirs!" that thrilled and quivered from him to them.
I remember his astonishing us all with a sudden burst. It was a sermon upon the apparent _plus_ of evil in this world, and he had driven himself and us all to despair-so much sin, so much misery-when, taking advantage of the chapter he had read, the account of the uproar at Ephesus in the Theatre, he said, "Ah, sirs! what if some of the men who, for "about the s.p.a.ce of two hours," cried out, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians," have for the s.p.a.ce of eighteen hundred years and more been crying day and night, "Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord G.o.d Almighty; just and true are all thy ways, thou King of saints; who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy.""
You have doubtless heard of the story of Lord Brougham going to hear him. It is very characteristic, and as I had it from Mrs. Cuninghame, who was present, I may be allowed to tell it. Brougham and Denman were on a visit to James Stuart of Dunearn, about the time of the Queen"s trial. They had asked Stuart where they should go to church; he said he would take them to a Seceder minister at Inverkeithing. They went, and as Mr. Stuart had described the saintly old man, Brougham said he would like to be introduced to him, and arriving before service time, Mr.
Stuart called, and left a message that some gentlemen wished to see him.
The answer was that "Maister" Brown saw n.o.body before divine worship. He then sent in Brougham and Denman"s names. "Mr. Brown"s compliments to Mr. Stuart, and he sees n.o.body before sermon," and in a few minutes out came the stooping shy old man, and pa.s.sed them, unconscious of their presence. They sat in the front gallery, and he preached a faithful sermon, full of fire and of native force. They came away greatly moved, and each wrote to Lord Jeffrey to lose not a week in coming to hear the greatest natural orator they had ever heard. Jeffrey came next Sunday, and often after declared he never heard such words, such a sacred, untaught gift of speech. Nothing was more beautiful than my father"s admiration and emotion when listening to his uncle"s rapt pa.s.sages, or than his childlike faith in my father"s exegetical prowess. He used to have a list of difficult pa.s.sages ready for "my nephew," and the moment the oracle gave a decision, the old man asked him to repeat it, and then took a permanent note of it, and would a.s.suredly preach it some day with his own proper unction and power. One story of him I must give; my father, who heard it not long before his own death, was delighted with it, and for some days repeated it to every one. Uncle Ebenezer, with all his mildness and general complaisance, was, like most of the Browns, _tenax propositi_, firm to obstinacy. He had established a week-day sermon at the North Ferry, about two miles from his own town, Inverkeithing. It was, I think, on the Tuesdays. It was winter, and a wild, drifting, and dangerous day; his daughters-his wife was dead-besought him not to go; he smiled vaguely, but continued getting into his big-coat. Nothing would stay him, and away he and the pony stumbled through the dumb and blinding snow. He was half-way on his journey, and had got into the sermon he was going to preach, and was utterly insensible to the outward storm: his pony getting its feet _balled_, staggered about, and at last upset his master and himself into the ditch at the road-side. The feeble, heedless, rapt old man might have perished there, had not some carters, bringing up whisky casks from the Ferry, seen the catastrophe, and rushed up, raising him, and _dichtin"_ him, with much commiseration and blunt speech-"Puir auld man, what brocht ye here in sic a day?" There they were, a rough crew, surrounding the saintly man, some putting on his hat, sorting and cheering him, and others knocking the b.a.l.l.s off the pony"s feet, and stuffing them with grease. He was most polite and grateful, and one of these cordial ruffians having pierced a cask, brought him a horn of whisky, and said, "Tak that, it"ll hearten ye." He took the horn, and bowing to them, said, "Sirs, let us give thanks!" and there, by the road-side, in the drift and storm, with these wild fellows, he asked a blessing on it, and for his kind deliverers, and took a tasting of the horn. The men cried like children. They lifted him on his pony, one going with him, and when the rest arrived in Inverkeithing, they repeated the story to everybody, and broke down in tears whenever they came to the blessing. "And to think o" askin" a blessin" on a ta.s.s o"
whisky!" Next Presbytery day, after the ordinary business was over, he rose up-he seldom spoke-and said, "Moderator, I have something personal to myself to say. I have often said, that real kindness belongs only to true Christians, but"-and then he told the story of these men; "but more true kindness I never experienced than from these lads. They may have had the grace of G.o.d, I don"t know; but I never mean again to be so _positive_ in speaking of this matter."
When he was on a missionary tour in the north, he one morning met a band of Highland shearers on their way to the harvest; he asked them to stop and hear the word of G.o.d. They said they could not, as they had their wages to work for. He offered them what they said they would lose; to this they agreed, and he paid them, and closing his eyes engaged in prayer; when he had ended, he looked up, and his congregation had vanished! His shrewd brother Thomas, to whom he complained of this faithlessness, said, "Eben, the next time ye pay folk to hear you preach, keep your eyes open, and pay them when you are done." I remember, on another occasion, in Bristo Church, with an immense audience, he had been going over the Scripture accounts of great sinners repenting and turning to G.o.d, repeating their names, from Mana.s.seh onwards. He seemed to have closed the record, when, fixing his eyes on the end of the central pa.s.sage, he called out abruptly, "I see a man!"
Every one looked to that point,-"I see a man of Tarsus; and he says, Make mention of me!" It must not be supposed that the discourses of "Uncle Ebenezer," with these abrupt appeals and sudden starts, were unwritten or extempore; they were carefully composed and written out,-only these flashes of thought and pa.s.sion came on him suddenly when writing, and were therefore quite natural when delivered-they came on him again.
The Rev. John Belfrage, M. D., had more power over my father"s actions and his relations to the world, than any other of his friends: over his thoughts and convictions proper, not much,-few living men had, and even among the mighty dead, he called no man master. He used to say that the three master intellects devoted to the study of divine truth since the apostles, were Augustine, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards; but that even they were only _primi inter pares_,-this by the bye.
On all that concerned his outward life as a public teacher, as a father, and as a member of society, he consulted Dr. Belfrage, and was swayed greatly by his judgment, as, for instance, the choice of a profession for myself, his second marriage, etc. He knew him to be his true friend, and not only wise and honest, but preeminently a man of affairs, _capax rerum_. Dr. Belfrage was a great man _in posse_, if ever I saw one,-"a village Hampden." Greatness was of his essence; nothing paltry, nothing secondary, nothing untrue. Large in body, large and handsome in face, lofty in manner to his equals or superiors;[28] homely, familiar, cordial with the young and the poor,-I never met with a more truly royal nature-more native and endued to rule, guide, and benefit mankind. He was forever scheming for the good of others, and chiefly in the way of helping them to help themselves. From a curious want of ambition-his desire for advancement was for that of his friends, not for his own, and here he was ambitious and zealous enough,-from non-concentration of his faculties in early life, and from an affection of the heart which ultimately killed him-it was too big for his body, and, under the relentless hydrostatic law, at last shattered the tabernacle it moved, like a steam-engine too powerful for the vessel it finds itself in,-his mental heart also was too big for his happiness,-from these causes, along with a love for gardening, which was a pa.s.sion, and an inherited competency, which took away what John Hunter calls "the stimulus of necessity," you may understand how this remarkable man-instead of being a Prime Minister, a Lord Chancellor, or a Dr. Gregory, a George Stephenson, or likeliest of all, a John Howard, without some of his weaknesses, lived and died minister of the small congregation of Slateford, near Edinburgh. It is also true that he was a physician, and an energetic and successful one, and got rid of some of his love of doing good to and managing human beings in this way; he was also an oracle in his district, to whom many had the wisdom to go to take as well as ask advice, and who was never weary of entering into the most minute details, and taking endless pains, being like Dr. Chalmers a strong believer in "the power of littles." It would be out of place, though it would be not uninteresting, to tell how this great resident power-this strong will and authority, this capacious, clear, and beneficent intellect-dwelt in its petty sphere, like an oak in a flower-pot; but I cannot help recalling that signal act of friendship and of power in the matter of my father"s translation from Rose Street to Broughton Place, to which you have referred.
[28] On one occasion, Mr. Hall of Kelso, an excellent but very odd man, in whom the _ego_ was very strong, and who, if he had been a Spaniard, would, to adopt Coleridge"s story, have taken off or touched his hat whenever he spoke of himself, met Dr. Belfrage in the lobby of the Synod, and drawing himself up as he pa.s.sed, he muttered, "high and michty!"
"There"s a pair of us, Mr. Hall."
It was one of the turning-points of my father"s history. Dr. Belfrage, though seldom a speaker in the public courts of his church, was always watchful of the interests of the people and of his friends. On the Rose Street question he had from the beginning formed a strong opinion. My father had made his statement, indicating his leaning, but leaving himself absolutely in the hands of the Synod. There was some speaking, all on one side, and for a time the Synod seemed to incline to be absolute, and refuse the call of Broughton Place. The house was everywhere crowded, and breathless with interest, my father sitting motionless, anxious, and pale, prepared to submit without a word, but retaining his own mind; everything looked like a unanimous decision for Rose Street, when Dr. Belfrage rose up and came forward into the "pa.s.sage," and with his first sentence and look, took possession of the house. He stated, with clear and simple argument, the truth and reason of the case; and then having fixed himself there, he took up the personal interests and feelings of his friend, and putting before them what they were about to do in sending back my father, closed with a burst of indignant appeal-"I ask you now, not as Christians, I ask you as gentlemen, are you prepared to do this?" Every one felt it was settled, and so it was. My father never forgot this great act of his friend.
This remarkable man, inferior to my father in learning, in intensity, in compactness and in power of-so to speak-_focussing_ himself,-admiring his keen eloquence, his devotedness to his sacred art, rejoicing in his fame, jealous of his honor-was, by reason of his own ma.s.sive understanding, his warm and great heart, and his instinctive knowledge of men, my father"s most valued friend, for he knew best and most of what my father knew least; and on his death, my father said he felt himself thus far unprotected and unsafe. He died at Rothesay of hypertrophy of the heart. I had the sad privilege of being with him to the last; and any n.o.bler spectacle of tender, generous affection, high courage, child-like submission to the Supreme Will, and of magnanimity in its true sense, I do not again expect to see. On the morning of his death he said to me, "John, come and tell me honestly how this is to end; tell me the last symptoms in their sequence." I knew the man, and was honest, and told him all I knew. "Is there any chance of stupor or delirium?" "I think not. Death (to take Bichat"s division) will begin at the heart itself, and you will die conscious." "I am glad of that. It was Samuel Johnson, wasn"t it, who wished not to die unconscious, that he might enter the eternal world with his mind unclouded; but you know, John, that was physiological nonsense. We leave the brain, and all this ruined body, behind; but I would like to be in my senses when I take my last look of this wonderful world," looking across the still sea towards the Argyllshire hills, lying in the light of sunrise, "and of my friends-of you," fixing his eyes on a faithful friend and myself. And it was so; in less than an hour he was dead, sitting erect in his chair-his disease had for weeks prevented him from lying down,-all the dignity, simplicity, and benignity of its master resting upon, and, as it were, supporting that "ruin," which he had left.
I cannot end this tribute to my father"s friend and mine, and my own dear and earliest friend"s father, without recording one of the most extraordinary instances of the power of will, under the pressure of affection, I ever witnessed or heard of. Dr. Belfrage was twice married.
His second wife was a woman of great sweetness and delicacy, not only of mind, but, to his sorrow, of const.i.tution. She died, after less than a year of singular and unbroken happiness. There was no portrait of her.
He resolved there should be one; and though utterly ignorant of drawing, he determined to do it himself. No one else could have such a perfect image of her in his mind, and he resolved to realize this image. He got the materials for miniature painting, and, I think, eight prepared ivory plates. He then shut himself up from every one, and from everything, for fourteen days, and came out of his room, wasted and feeble, with one of the plates (the others he had used and burnt), on which was a portrait, full of subtle likeness, and drawn and colored in a way no one could have dreamt of, having had such an artist. I have seen it; and though I never saw the original I felt that it must be like, as indeed every one who knew her said it was. I do not, as I said before, know anything more remarkable in the history of human sorrow and resolve.
I remember well that Dr. Belfrage was the first man I ever heard speak of Free-trade in religion and in education. It was during the first election after the Reform Bill, when Sir John Dalrymple, afterwards Lord Stair, was canva.s.sing the county of Mid-Lothian. They were walking in the doctor"s garden, Sir John anxious and gracious. Dr. Belfrage, like, I believe, every other minister in his body, was a thorough-going Liberal, what was then called a Whig; but partly from his natural sense of humor and relish of power, and partly, I believe, for my benefit, he was putting the Baronet through his facings with some strictness, opening upon him startling views, and ending by asking him, "Are you, Sir John, for free-trade in corn, free-trade in education, free-trade in religion? I am." Sir John said, "Well, doctor, I have heard of free-trade in corn, but never in the other two." "You"ll hear of them before ten years are gone, Sir John, or I"m mistaken."
I have said thus much of this to me memorable man, not only because he was my father"s closest and most powerful personal friend, but because by his word he probably changed the whole future course of his life.
Devotion to his friends was one of the chief ends of his life, not caring much for, and having in the affection of his heart a warning against the perils and excitement of distinction and energetic public work, he set himself far more strenuously than for any selfish object, to promote the triumphs of those whom his acquired instinct-for he knew a man as a shepherd knows a sheep, or "_Caveat Emptor_" a horse-picked out as deserving them. He rests in Colinton churchyard,
"Where all that mighty heart is lying still,"-
his only child William Henry buried beside him. I the more readily pay this tribute to Dr. Belfrage, that I owe to him the best blessing of my professional and one of the best of my personal life-the being apprenticed to Mr. Syme. This was his doing. With that sense of the capacities and capabilities of other men, which was one of his gifts, he predicted the career of this remarkable man. He used to say, "Give him life, let him live, and I know what and where he will be thirty years hence;" and this long before our greatest clinical teacher and wisest surgeon, had made the public and the profession feel and acknowledge the full weight of his worth.
Another life-long and ever strengthening friendship was that with James Henderson, D. D., Galashiels, who survived my father only a few days.
This remarkable man, and exquisite preacher, whose intellect and worth had for nearly fifty years glowed with a pure, steady, and ever-growing warmth and l.u.s.tre in his own region, died during the night and probably asleep, when, like Moses, no one but his Maker was with him. He had for years labored under that form of disease of the heart called _angina pectoris_ (Dr. Arnold"s disease), and for more than twenty years lived as it were on the edge of instant death; but during his later years his health had improved, though he had always to "walk softly," like one whose next step might be into eternity. This bodily sense of peril gave to his n.o.ble and leonine face a look of suffering and of seriousness, and of what, in his case, we may truly call G.o.dly fear, which all must remember. He used to say he carried his grave beside him. He came in to my father"s funeral, and took part in the services. He was much affected, and we fear the long walk through the city to the burial-place was too much for him; he returned home, preached a sermon on his old and dear friend"s death of surpa.s.sing beauty. The text was, "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." It was, as it were, his own funeral sermon too, and there was, besides its fervor, depth, and heavenly-mindedness, a something in it that made his old hearers afraid-as if it were to be the last crush of the grapes. In a letter to me soon after the funeral, he said:-"His removal is another _memento_ to me that my own course is drawing near to its end. Nearly all of my contemporaries and of the friends of my youth are now gone before me.
Well! I may say, in the words of your friend Vaughan-
"They are all gone to that world of light, And I alone sit lingering here; Their very memory"s calm, and bright, And my sad thoughts doth cheer.""
The evening before his death he was slightly unwell, and next morning, not coming down as usual, was called, but did not answer; and on going in, was found in the posture of sleep, quite dead: at some unknown hour of the night _abiit ad plures_-he had gone over to the majority, and joined the famous nations of the dead. _Tu vero felix non vitae tantum claritate, sed etiam opportunitate mortis!_ dying with his lamp burning, his pa.s.sport made out for his journey; death an instant act, not a prolonged process of months, as with his friend.
I have called Dr. Henderson a remarkable man, and an exquisite preacher; he was both, in the strict senses of the words. He had the largest brain I ever saw or measured. His hat had to be made for him; and his head was great in the n.o.bler regions; the anterior and upper were full, indeed immense. If the base of his brain and his physical organization, especially his circulating system, had been in proportion, he would have been a man of formidable power, but his defective throb of the heart, and a certain lent.i.tude of temperament, made this impossible; and his enormous organ of thought and feeling, being thus shut from the outlet of active energy, became intensely _meditative_, more this than even reflective. The consequence was, in all his thoughts an exquisiteness and finish, a crystalline l.u.s.tre, purity and concentration; but it was the exquisiteness of a great nature. If the first edge was fine, it was the sharp end of the wedge, the broad end of which you never reached, but might infer. This gave _momentum_ to everything he said. He was in the true sense what Chalmers used to call a "man of _wecht_." His mind acted by its sheer absolute power; it seldom made an effort; it was the hydraulic pressure, harmless, manageable, but irresistible; not the perilous compression of steam. Therefore it was that he was untroubled and calm, though rich; clear, though deep; though gentle, never dull; "strong without rage, without o"erflowing full." Indeed this element of water furnishes the best figure of his mind and its expression. His language was like the stream of his own Tweed; it was a translucent medium, only it brightened everything seen through it, as wetting a pebble brings out its lines and color. That lovely, and by him much-loved river was curiously like him, or he like it, gentle, great, strong, with a prevailing mild seriousness all along its course, but clear and quiet; sometimes, as at old Melrose, turning upon itself, reflecting, losing itself in beauty, and careless to go, deep and inscrutable, but stealing away cheerily down to Lessudden, all the clearer of its rest; and then again at the Trows, showing unmistakably its power in removing obstructions and taking its own way, and chafing n.o.bly with the rocks, sometimes, too, like him, its silver stream rising into sudden flood, and rolling irresistibly on its way.[29]
[29] Such an occasional paroxysm of eloquence is thus described by Dr. Cairns:-"At certain irregular intervals, when the loftier themes of the gospel ministry were to be handled, his manner underwent a transformation which was startling, and even electrical. He became rapt and excited as with new inspiration; his utterance grew thick and rapid; his voice trembled and faltered with emotion; his eye gleamed with a wild unearthly l.u.s.tre, in which his countenance shared; and his whole frame heaved to and fro, as if each glowing thought and vivid figure that followed in quick succession were only a fragment of some greater revelation which he panted to overtake. The writer of this notice has witnessed nothing similar in any preacher, and numbers the effects of a pa.s.sage which he once heard upon the scenes and exercises of the heavenly world among his most thrilling recollections of sacred oratory."-_Memoir prefixed to posthumous volume of Discourses._
We question if as many carefully thought and worded, and rapidly and by no means laboriously written sermons, were composed anywhere else in Britain during his fifty years-every Sunday two new ones; the composition faultless-such as Cicero or Addison would have made them, had they been U. P. ministers; only there was always in them more soul than body, more of the spirit than of the letter. What a contrast to the much turbid, hot, hasty, perilous stuff of our day and preachers! The original power and _size_ of Dr. Henderson"s mind, his roominess for all thoughts, and his still reserve, his lent.i.tude, made, as we have said, his expressions clear and quiet, to a degree that a coa.r.s.e and careless man, spoiled by the violence and noise of other pulpit men, might think insipid. But let him go over the words slowly, and he would not say this again; and let him see and feel the solemnizing, commanding power of that large, square, leonine countenance, the broad ma.s.sive frame, as of a compressed Hercules, and the living, pure, melodious voice, powerful, but not by reason of loudness, dropping out from his compressed lips the words of truth, and he would not say this again. His voice had a singular pathos in it; and those who remember his often-called-for sermon on "The Bright and the Morning Star," can reproduce in their mind its tones and refrain. The thoughts of such men-so rare, so apt to be unvisited and unvalued-often bring into my mind a spring of pure water I once saw near the top of Cairngorm; always the same, cool in summer, keeping its few plants alive and happy with its warm breath in winter, floods and droughts never making its pulse change; and all this because it came from the interior heights, and was distilled by nature"s own cunning, and had taken its time-was indeed a well of living water. And with Dr. Henderson this of the mountain holds curiously; he was retired, but not concealed; and he was of the primary formation, he had no _organic remains_ of other men in him; he liked and fed on all manner of literature; knew poetry well; but it was all outside of him; his thoughts were essentially his own.
He was peculiarly a preacher for preachers, as Spenser is a poet for poets. They felt he was a master. He published, after the entreaties of years, a volume of sermons which has long been out of print, and which he would never prepare for a second edition; he had much too little of the love of fame, and though not dest.i.tute of self-reliance and self-value, and resolved and unchangeable to obstinacy, he was not in the least degree vain.
But you will think I am writing more about my father"s friends and myself than about him. In a certain sense we may know a man by his friends; a man chooses his friends from harmony, not from sameness, just as we would rather sing in parts than all sing the air. One man fits into the mind of another not by meeting his points, but by dovetailing; each finds in the other what he in a double sense wants. This was true of my father"s friends. Dr. Balmer was like him in much more than perhaps any,-in love of books and lonely study, in his general views of divine truth, and in their metaphysical and literary likings, but they differed deeply. Dr. Balmer was serene and just rather than subtle and profound; his was the still, translucent stream,-my father"s the rapid, and it might be deep; on the one you could safely sail, the other hurried you on, and yet never were two men, during a long life of intimate intercourse, more cordial.
I must close the list; one only and the best-the most endeared of them all-Dr. Heugh. He was, in mental const.i.tution and temper, perhaps more unlike my father than any of the others I have mentioned. His was essentially a practical understanding; he was a man of action, a man for men more than for man, the curious reverse in this of my father. He delighted in public life, had a native turn for affairs, for all that society needs and demands,-clear-headed, ready, intrepid, adroit; with a fine temper, but keen and honest, with an argument and a question and a joke for every one; not disputatious, but delighting in a brisk argument, fonder of wrestling than of fencing, but ready for action; not much of a long shot, always keeping his eye on the immediate, the possible, the attainable, but in all this guided by genuine principle, and the finest honor and exactest truth. He excelled in the conduct of public business, saw his way clear, made other men see theirs, was forever getting the Synod out of difficulties and confusions, by some clear, tidy, conclusive "motion;" and then his speaking, so easy and bright and pithy, manly and gentlemanly, grave when it should be, never when it should not-mobile, fearless, rapid, brilliant as Saladin-his silent, pensive, impa.s.sioned and emphatic friend was more like the lion-hearted Richard, with his heavy mace; he might miss, but let him hit, and there needed no repet.i.tion. Each admired the other; indeed Dr.
Heugh"s love of my father was quite romantic; and though they were opposed on several great public questions, such as the Apocrypha controversy, the Atonement question at its commencement; and though they were both of them too keen and too honest to mince matters or be mealy-mouthed, they never misunderstood each other, never had a shadow of estrangement, so that our Paul and Barnabas, though their contentions were sometimes sharp enough, never "departed asunder;" indeed they loved each other the longer the more.
Take him all in all, as a friend, as a gentleman, as a Christian, as a citizen, I never knew a man so thoroughly delightful as Dr. Heugh.
Others had more of this or more of that, but there was a symmetry, a compactness, a sweetness, a true _delightfulness_ about him I can remember in no one else. No man, with so much temptation to be heady and high-minded, sarcastic, and managing, from his overflowing wit and talent, was ever more natural, more honest, or more considerate, indeed tender-hearted. He was full of animal spirits and of fun, and one of the best wits and jokers I ever knew; and such an asker of questions, of posers! We children had a pleasing dread of that nimble, sharp, exact man, who made us explain and name everything. Of Scotch stories he had as many original ones as would make a second volume for Dean Ramsay. How well I remember the very corner of the room in Biggar manse, forty years ago, when from him I got the first shock and relish of humor; became conscious of mental tickling; of a word being made to carry double, and being all the lighter of it. It is an old story now, but it was new then; a big, perspiring countryman rushed into the Black Bull coach-office, and holding the door, shouted, "Are yir insides a" oot?"
This was my first tasting of the flavor of a joke.
Had Dr. Heugh, instead of being the admirable clergyman he was, devoted himself to public civil life, and gone into Parliament, he would have taken a high place as a debater, a practical statesman and patriot. He had many of the best qualities of Canning, and our own Premier, with purer and higher qualities than either. There is no one our church should be more proud of than of this beloved and excellent man, the holiness and humility, the jealous, G.o.dly fear in whose nature was not known fully even to his friends, till he was gone, when his private daily self-searchings and prostrations before his Master and Judge were for the first time made known. There are few characters, _both sides_ of which are so unsullied, so pure, and without reproach.
I am back at Biggar at the old sacramental times; I see and hear my grandfather, or Mr. Horne of Braehead, Mr. Leckie of Peebles, Mr. Harper of Lanark, as inveterate in argument as he was warm in heart, Mr. Comrie of Penicuik, with his keen, Voltaire-like face, and much of that unhappy and unique man"s wit, and sense, and perfection of expression, without his darker and baser qualities. I can hear their hearty talk, can see them coming and going between the meetinghouse and the _Tent_ on the side of the burn, and then the Monday dinner, and the cheerful talk, and the many clerical stories and pleasantries, and their going home on their hardy little horses, Mr. Comrie leaving his curl-papers till the next solemnity, and leaving also some joke of his own, clear and compact as a diamond, and as cutting.
I am in Rose Street on the monthly lecture, the church crammed, pa.s.sages and pulpit stairs. Exact to a minute, James Chalmers-the old soldier and beadle, slim, meek, but incorruptible by proffered half crowns from ladies who thus tried to get in before the doors opened-appears, and all the people in that long pew rise up, and he, followed by his minister, erect and engrossed, walks in along the seat, and they struggle up to the pulpit. We all know what he is to speak of; he looks troubled even to distress;-it is the matter of Uriah the Hitt.i.te. He gives out the opening verses of the 51st Psalm, and offering up a short and abrupt prayer, which every one takes to himself, announces his miserable and dreadful subject, _fencing_ it, as it were, in a low, penetrating voice, daring any one of us to think an evil thought; there was little need at that time of the warning,-he infused his own intense, pure spirit, into us all.
He then told the story without note or comment, only personating each actor in the tragedy with extraordinary effect, above all, the manly, loyal, simple-hearted soldier. I can recall the shudder of that mult.i.tude as of one man when he read, "And it came to pa.s.s in the morning, that David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. And he wrote in the letter, saying, Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten and die." And then, after a long and utter silence, his exclaiming, "Is this the man according to G.o.d"s own heart? Yes, it is; we must believe that both are true." Then came Nathan. "There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb"-and all that exquisite, that divine fable-ending, like a thunder-clap, with "Thou art the man!" Then came the retribution, so awfully exact and thorough,-the misery of the child"s death; that brief tragedy of the brother and sister, more terrible than anything in aeschylus, in Dante, or in Ford; then the rebellion of Absalom, with its hideous dishonor, and his death, and the king covering his face, and crying in a loud voice, "O my son Absalom! O Absalom! my son! my son!"-and David"s psalm, "Have mercy upon me, O G.o.d, according to thy loving-kindness; according unto the mult.i.tude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions,"-then closing with, "Yes; "when l.u.s.t hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
Do not err," do not stray, do not transgress (? p?a??s?e),[30] "my beloved brethren," it is first "earthly, then sensual, then devilish;""
he shut the book, and sent us all away terrified, shaken, and humbled, like himself.
[30] James i. 15, 16. It is plain that "do not err" should have been in verse 15th.
I would fain say a few words on my father"s last illness, or rather on what led to it, and I wish you and others in the ministry would take to heart, as matter of immediate religious duty, much of what I am going to say. My father was a seven months" child, and lay, I believe, for a fortnight in black wool, undressed, doing little but breathe and sleep, not capable of being fed. He continued all his life slight in make, and not robust in health, though lively, and capable of great single efforts. His attendance upon his mother must have saddened his body as well as his mind, and made him willing and able to endure, in spite of his keen and ardent spirit, the sedentary life he in the main led. He was always a very small eater, and nice in his tastes, easily put off from his food by any notion. He therefore started on the full work of life with a finer and more delicate mechanism than a man"s ought to be, indeed, in these respects he was much liker a woman; and being very soon "placed," he had little travelling, and little of that tossing about the world, which in the transition from youth to manhood, hardens the frame as well as supples it. Though delicate, he was almost never ill. I do not remember, till near the close of his life, his ever being in bed a day.
From his nervous system, and his brain predominating steadily over the rest of his body, he was habitually excessive in his professional work.
As to quant.i.ty, as to quality, as to manner and expression, he flung away his life without stint every Sabbath-day, his sermons being laboriously prepared, loudly mandated, and at great expense of body and mind, and then delivered with the utmost vehemence and rapidity. He was quite unconscious of the state he worked himself into, and of the loud piercing voice in which he often spoke. This I frequently warned him about, as being, I knew, injurious to himself, and often painful to his hearers, and his answer always was, that he was utterly unaware of it; and thus it continued to the close, and very sad it was to me who knew the peril, and saw the coming end, to listen to his n.o.ble, rich, persuasive, imperative appeals, and to know that the surplus of power, if retained, would, by G.o.d"s blessing, retain him, while the effect on his people would, I am sure, not have lost, but in some respects have gained, for much of the discourse which was shouted and sometimes screamed at the full pitch of his keen voice, was of a kind to be better rendered in his deep, quiet, settled tones. This, and the great length of his public services, I knew he himself felt, when too late, had injured him, and many a smile he had at my proposal to have a secret sub-congregational string from him to me in the back seat, to be authoritatively twitched when I knew he had done enough; but this string was never pulled, even in his mind.
He went on in this expensive life, sleeping very little, and always lightly, eating little, never walking except of necessity; little in company, when he would have eaten more and been, by the power of social relish, made likelier to get the full good out of his food; never diverting his mind by any change but that of one book or subject for another; and every time that any strong affliction came on him, as when made twice a widower, or at his daughter"s death, or from such an outrage upon his entire nature and feelings as the Libel, then his delicate machinery was shaken and damaged, not merely by the first shock, but even more by that unrelenting self-command by which he terrified his body into instant submission. Thus it was, and thus it ever must be, if the laws of our bodily const.i.tution, laid down by Him who knows our frame, and from whom our substance is not hid, are set at nought, knowingly or not-if knowingly, the act is so much the more spiritually bad-but if not, it is still punished with the same unerring nicety, the same commensurate meting out of the penalty, and paying "in full tale," as makes the sun to know his time, and splits an erring planet into fragments, driving it into s.p.a.ce "with hideous ruin and combustion." It is a pitiful and a sad thing to say, but if my father had not been a prodigal in a true but very different meaning, if he had not spent his substance, the portion of goods that fell to him, the capital of life given him by G.o.d, in what we must believe to have been needless and therefore preventable excess of effort, we might have had him still with us, shining more and more, and he and they who were with him would have been spared those two years of the valley of the shadow, with its sharp and steady pain, its fallings away of life, its longing for the grave, its sleepless nights and days of weariness and languor, the full expression of which you will find nowhere but in the Psalms and in Job.
I have said that though delicate he was never ill: this was all the worse for him, for, odd as it may seem, many a man"s life is lengthened by a sharp illness; and this in several ways. In the first place, he is laid up, out of the reach of all external mischief and exertion, he is like a ship put in dock for repairs; time is gained. A brisk fever clarifies the entire man; if it is beaten and does not beat, it is like cleaning a chimney by setting it on fire; it is perilous but thorough.