Parish life in the north of scotland
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| Mr. Forbes was a man of highly respectable talents, a profound and scriptural divine, a pious man, and a truly devoted servant of the Lord Jesus. His pastoral duties to his people he discharged with the strictest fidelity, and his pulpit exercises in both languages were accurate, able, and deeply impressive. His temperament was intensely nervous, and often threw him into moods of feeling the very reverse of each other-at one time in a high flow of spirits, laughing until his eyes ran over at his own anecdotes, told with no ordinary powers of humour and drollery-at another sunk in the deepest gloom, which his countenance, naturally dark and sallow, was peculiarly well fitted to express.
His wife, my sister Jean, was in the most important sense a helpmeet for him. She was a truly pious woman, and, through the mists which so often overspread them, she was capable of discerning, and fully appreciating, the excellencies of his Christian character. My stepmother always entertained the profoundest esteem for Mr. Forbes, and he on his side cherished feelings of regard for her, so much so that he named his second daughter Jane after her. 1: His successor in Aberdeen was the late eminently pious Mr. Neil Kennedy, a man of prayer and of deep Christian experience. He was minister of the chapel during my first two sessions at college, and in 1813 was settled minister of Logic in Easter-Ross, where he died in 1836, aged 56 years. After Mr. Kennedy's departure the congregation recalled Mr. John Mackenzie, who, not feeling himself suited as pastor of the Duke Street chapel in Glasgow, readily returned to his former charge. Mr. Mackenzie very soon after returned to Glasgow, not indeed to his former charge, but to a newly formed Gaelic congregation in the Gorbals. He was succeeded in Aberdeen by Mr. Duncan Grant, who, at the time he received the call, was a teacher in Fortrose Academy. When I first settled among them I found the Gaelic congregation to be a very respectable one. My annual income was £150, £10 of which were paid by the S.P.C.K. The stated services on every Lord's day were, a sermon forenoon and afternoon in the Gaelic language, and an optional English sermon or lecture in the evening. I was the first minister inducted by the Presbytery, for it had only been sanctioned as a charge by the General Assembly of 1819. During the winter I usually lectured in English at six o'clock on Sabbath evening, but in summer I devoted that portion of the Sabbath, as well as weekdays, to the duty of catechising. I commenced my catechetical exercises among them by family visitation, which I found to be at once satisfactory to myself, and edifying and acceptable to the people. With one exception the ministers of Aberdeen were, I think, the same who had held office when I was at college thirteen years before. At that time Mr. Doig was minister of the Trinity Chapel, but since then, on the death of Mr. Gordon of East Church, he became the colleague of Dr. Ross. Aberdeen was not then, as it is now, divided into parishes, the ministers of which are independent of each other, and have each their respective kirk sessions. In 1819 there were only four ministers of the Church of Scotland for the whole population of the city of Aberdeen, amounting then to upwards of 40,000. The spiritual destitution of the extra population in connection with the church was supplied by those who were then styled Chapel of Ease ministers, i.e., ministers who, though they were ordained to discharge all ministerial functions to their own congregations, were not members of the courts of the church, nor were they even moderators of kirk sessions for the due regulation of their congregation. Besides, the East and West Churches were collegiate charges, i.e., two ministers preached to the same congregation, the one in the forenoon and the other in the afternoon of every Lord's Day. These four, therefore, were the only strictly constitutional ministers of the city, the Chapel of Ease ministers being, Dr. Dewar of Greyfriar's, Dr. Thomson of Footdee, Dr. Kidd of Gilcomston, and Mr. Murray of Trinity Chapel, besides myself. With the ministers of the West Church I, as a minister, hardly ever came in contact, but was more intimately acquainted with those of the East Church. Dr. Ross was a man of great modesty and unfeigned piety, but a dry, uninteresting preacher. He was much beloved by his own flock, and by all his friends and acquaintances. By the great body of the citizens of Aberdeen he was highly esteemed; indeed, all who knew him were, by the uniform sweetness of his disposition and the faultless purity of his life, inclined to make a great deal of him. He died in 1824, aged 64 years; and was succeeded by the most intimate friend of the latter part of his life, Dr. James Foote, minister of Logiepart, in Forfarshire. Dr. Ross's funeral was the most numerously attended inn the memory of the oldest man then living. Mr. Robert Doig was the colleague of Dr. Ross, and successor of Dr. Gordon. During my attendance at college he was minister of the Trinity Chapel, but now of the East Church. Mr. Doig was a very respectable preacher. It was he who inducted me into my charge. He was professedly of the Evangelical arty. He died at Edinburgh in 1824, shortly after having attended' the General Assembly as a member. He was thrice married, but had only one son who, when I was in Aberdeen, was minister of the second charge in Arbroath. He was, some years thereafter, presented to the parish of Torryburn, in the Presbytery of Dunfermline, and has since been Free Church minister of that parish. I have mentioned Dr. Glennie as a professor; let me now record my impressions of him as a minister. His sermons, like his lectures, were very prosing and dull, but what was specially noticeable was his cold and bitter Moderatism, the more so as, at first, he was strongly suspected to have cherished leanings towards principles and views of a very opposite character. He began his ministerial course as the minister of Greyfriar's, or College Church, and his services there were, at first, very faithful and acceptable. But when he was, like the scribe, not far from the kingdom of heaven, the leading Moderates in Edinburgh made such a determined and simultaneous assault upon him for his evangelical tendencies, as not only to cure him effectually of these morbid sensibilities, but to engender in his heart the most implacable hatred of all evangelicalism, or whatsoever tended thereunto. Some years after I left Aberdeen, Dr. Glennie resigned his charge of the West Church, and confined himself entirely to the duties of the Professorship, which he held till his death in 1845. Mr. John Murray, of Trinity Chapel, was one of my earliest acquaintances of the clerical order after I became minister of the Gaelic chapel. He was a truly pious man, a sound divine, and a most respectable scholar, and when he began his ministerial labours in Aberdeen he was highly esteemed by the serious, and was evidently owned and honoured by God. His preaching, plain, faithful, and truly scriptural, was made effectual in bringing many to feel the power of the truth. Mr. Murray's faithfulness drew upon him the reproach and scorn of unbelievers. As an example of this, I was credibly informed that, shortly before I came to Aberdeen, the agent of an English commercial establishment, dealing chiefly in the article of sulphur or brimstone, came to Aberdeen for orders. Apparently he did not confine his applications to grocers and others dealing in that article, but visited individual families for the purpose of taking orders. Passing through the Shiprow, a street leading directly to Trinity manse, where Mr. Murray resided, the agent called on several individuals on his way. Some of them refused the article for their own use, but told him that there was a gentleman of the name of Murray, residing at the end of the street in a house enclosed with an iron railing, who dealt very largely in the article. Thither the unconscious agent wended his way, knocked at Mr. Murray's door, and being admitted, stated the reason of his coming, and assured him that the article in which he dealt so largely would be furnished by his firm on reasonable terms and of the best quality. Mr. Murray was naturally of a keen and rather combative disposition, but he at once saw from whose quiver the bolt had been selected, so, giving a grave explanation to the agent, he civilly dismissed him. Mr. Murray's irascibility of temper and indolence in the pastoral office tended to circumscribe his sphere of usefulness, and were obstacles in the way of his attaining to that place among his brethren in the ministry to which he was otherwise so justly entitled. He was ever zealous, however, in promoting the cause of God throughout the land, and of the numerous societies for such purposes in Aberdeen he was a most efficient member. During my residence in that city Mr. Murray entered into the married state with his present excellent wife. Miss Margaret Brown was the eldest daughter of Bailie, afterwards Provost, A. Brown, bookseller in Broad Street, Aberdeen. Mr. Murray was a native of the parish of Insch. His father had been a respectable farmer there, but was dead long before I knew his son. He had a brother residing with him, Mr. Andrew Murray, a young man of decided piety and a student of divinity. He was afterwards licensed to preach and ordained a minister in the Helvetic Church, where he is at present. In 1825, on the demise of Mr. Doig, Mr. Murray became the senior minister of St. Nicolas' church, the designation then of that church and parish. He was, when first settled there, the colleague of Dr. Ross, who survived Mr. Doig about a year or so, and after his death, Mr. Foote became Mr. Murray's colleague in the East Church. Some years thereafter the collegiate charges of the East and West Churches were dissolved, and the whole city was divided into parishes, each minister being a member of Presbytery, and holding his own session. In consequence of this arrangement Mr. Murray became the minister of the North Church and parish. The church itself is a fine building, in the Grecian style, with a tower and steeple, and is situated at the south-east end of North Street at its junction with King Street. In that church he continued to labour until the Disruption. He is at present one of the Fathers of the Free Church of Scotland. 2: Dr. Daniel Dewar was then in the zenith of his popularity. He had succeeded Prof. Scott in the Moral Philosophy Chair at King's College, and Dr. Glennie in the Greyfriar's Church, some years before I came to Aberdeen. He resided at the College in the old town, and preached every Sabbath in Greyfriar's Church. His sermons were highly finished pieces of composition; they had, moreover, a sprinkling of evangelicalism, and these qualities combined recommended them to a certain class of hearers then very common in Aberdeen. They were those who desired to find in the sermon what would gratify their taste by its style, and soothe their feelings by its flavouring of pious sentiment, but to whom anything pointed or rousing would be most offensive. To such hearers Dr. Dewar was highly acceptable as a preacher. A slight personal account of him may not be uninteresting. He was a native of Argyllshire, and was born in the humblest circumstances. His father was a blind fiddler, who earned his bread by travelling through the country and playing at weddings, etc. He was attended by his son Daniel for the purpose of being the bearer of the fiddle-case, and his father's guide. Some wealthy individual took notice of the musician's son, and thought he could discover, under the guise of his poverty, the germs of future greatness; and so, at his own private expense, sent him to a public school. From this circumstance Dr. Dewar could date his subsequent rise in the world. He joined the Independents, or perhaps was of this sect as a member of his father's family. After he left school he studied, with a view to become one of their preachers, at their Academy at Homerton in England, under the tutorship of Dr. Pye Smith, then at the head of that seminary. There his training seems to have consisted principally in studying English composition. Whether at his first outset in life he was engaged as an Independent preacher, I am not certain, but it is probable that he was, as it has been the custom of that sect from the time of Oliver Cromwell to suffer any one of their adherents, whatever their circumstances or education might be, to step into their pulpits, and edify a congregation by their pourings forth. But Mr. Dewar soon found out that the Independent connection, however numerous in England, presented but a very limited sphere of action in the north, and he therefore joined the Church of Scotland. Passing through all his preparatory studies at Edinburgh University and Hall, he was licensed to preach, and became pastor of a small congregation in Argyllshire. The first time I ever saw him was in the pulpit of the old Gaelic Chapel in Edinburgh, where he preached in Gaelic with considerable hesitation. He had come to Edinburgh for the purpose of preparing one of his first works for the press. On the decease of Mr. Kirkland of Trinity Chapel, he was a candidate for that charge, but was unsuccessful; he was appointed to the Moral Philosophy Chair subsequent to his becoming minister of Greyfriar's. I was, whilst he remained there, on a very friendly footing with him. He was at the time greatly ahead of us all in the zeal and ability with which he pleaded the cause of truth at the public meetings of every religious society with which the city of Aberdeen then so much abounded. For that was the very age of religious societies. No public meeting could be conducted without Dr. Dewar. No sermon could he preached for any religious or charitable object but by him only. Not any new scheme could be formed, nor recent society established, without his countenance. In consequence of the Plurality Act of Assembly he experienced so much annoyance from the majority of the Senatus of King's College for holding both livings, the charge of Greyfriar's and the Professorship, that he sought interest for, and procured his appointment to, the Tron Church in Glasgow. Thither he removed towards the close of the first half-year of my residence in Aberdeen, from whence he returned, on the death of Principal Brown, to succeed him in that office. But in all his changes of place and circumstances, and in his dealings with mankind, his principles and character preserved the same aspect. He sat in a vehicle drawn by two horses, Ambition being the name of the one and Avarice that of the other. Dr. Thomson, minister of Footdee, was one of my intimate friends. He was a medical man as well as a minister. His stipend was very considerable, and he contrived to at least triple its amount by his medical practice. His church was a very small one, occupying the Panic site as that on which the present large and elegant structure is erected in the centre of the churchyard. Dr. Thomson was a well-meaning man, and maintained uniform consistency for ministerial character and great zeal in promoting the success of every religious society having the cause of truth or benevolence as its objects. But he was secular in spirit, and while his views of the things unseen were vague and superficial, his mental grasp of this world's wisdom was proportionately tenacious. He was very hospitable, and I was frequently and kindly entertained in his house. Although his charge at Footdee was a distinct and separate parish, yet, previous to the division of the city into parishes, it was only on the footing of a Chapel of Ease. He died in 1838. He was succeeded by Mr. Spence. Among all my clerical friends, during my ministry at Aberdeen, none left such a vivid impression upon my mind as Dr. James Kidd, who was both professor of Oriental Languages at Marischal College and minister of Gilcomston Chapel of Ease. Dr. Kidd was a native of Ireland, and so also was his most amiable and pious wife. From his own lips, in my not unfrequent private conferences with him, I learned the following particulars respecting his early history. He was born of humble parents at Lough Brickland, County Down, on the 6th Nov. 1761. He was the youngest of three sons, and in consequence of the death of his father he and his family removed to County Antrim, to reside at Broughshane, the place of his mother's nativity. He spoke of his mother in the most affectionate terms, as he recalled the days of his childhood; and of her maternal care and early instructions, not only in secular knowledge, but also in religious instruction by the aid of the Shorter Catechism and prayer. "She made me then read to her a chapter of the New Testament daily," he said, "and verse by verse commit it to memory, in all which the grand and prominent object to whom she never failed to direct me from almost every verse I read was Christ-what he said or did, and what he suffered. Yes, Sir, the last pulse of my old heart will cease to beat when I cease to forget my mother." It was, he said, in the Presbyterian meetinghouse of Broughshane that he first received and ever afterwards cherished the idea and subsequent hope of preaching the gospel. He proceeded, "I first learned the rudiments of Latin from a friend whom I loved as Jonathan did the son of Jesse." "But death, Sir, robbed me of him, and in my poverty of money and of friends, I was again cast upon Providence, and put to my shifts. A kind friend sent me again to school, where I was an enthusiast for literature and science. I afterwards set up a school at Elginy at an age when, instead of being a master, I ought to have been a scholar. But, with the profits of my teaching and hard economy, I scraped together so much of pounds, shillings and pence as enabled me to put a finish to my rudimental education in Belfast, under a Mr. Mason, one of the most popular teachers of English in the north of Ireland." "Then I went to Kildownie, where I laboured for four years as a teacher. It was there that I first became acquainted with my wife, then Miss Boyd. After our union, having made a little money by the most persevering industry, in April 1784, I embarked with my wife on board the ‘Irish Volunteer’ from Larne to Philadelphia. Without any acquaintance of influence, or a single letter of introduction, I was compelled to work my own way. By the recommendation of a friend, I first undertook the tuition of a family near Egg Harbour in the State of New Jersey. Next I became preceptor in the family of a Mr. Ewing of Pennsylvania, and went back again to Philadelphia as assistant teacher in the school of my friend Mr. Little. By his persuasion I afterwards opened a classical academy in Philadelphia, in which I was completely successful. Some of the leading characters in America were my pupils, and afterwards acknowledged that their future distinction took rise, first of all, from the instructions and bias which their minds had in youth received at my academy and under my guidance. I then became a student in the College of Pennsylvania." Mr. Kidd purchased a Hebrew bible of a bookseller in Philadelphia with the money which he had with difficulty put together to purchase a suit of clothes, of which he stood not a little in need. He became then, and continued, an enthusiast for oriental literature; so much so, that he was on the eve of setting out to travel in the East, in order the more fully to perfect himself in oriental languages. But his whole soul was wrapped up in the desire to preach the gospel in Scotland, and, therefore, he embarked for that country, furnished by his friend Dr. Rush, with letters of introduction to the eminent literary persons in Edinburgh whose acquaintance he had made while studying medicine there. In Edinburgh Mr. Kidd studied philosophy and the languages, and afterwards attended the Divinity Hall. In the meantime, and under the auspices of Rabbi -Robertson, he set up as a teacher of oriental languages; and was so successful that, when the chair of this department at Marischal College became vacant by the death of Dr. Donaldson, he was strongly recommended by several leading persons in the church and in the literary world to the patron, Sir Alexander Ramsay of Balmain, in consequence of which he was appointed in October 1793. After attending four years at the Divinity Halls of Old and New Aberdeen, under Doctors Campbell and Gerald, sen., be was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Aberdeen. His first ministerial appointment was that of evening lecturer in Trinity Chapel, then lately erected. But in the year 1800, the Gilcomston Chapel of Ease becoming vacant, he was elected by an immense majority of those qualified to vote, and in that charge he continued to labour till the day of his death. Dr. Kidd preached to overflowing audiences three times every Sabbath. When circumstances permitted I was often, on Sabbath evenings, a much edified and not seldom a much amused auditor. His preaching was eloquent, powerful and scriptural. His mind appeared to be deeply imbued with the truth, and exercised in it. His sermons were evidently prepared; the fluency and eloquence with which he delivered them were quite natural to him, and his views of the subject he discussed were calculated to lead his hearers to serious reflection. Not only in private, but even in the pulpit, Dr. Kidd indulged in those eccentricities which have been generally associated with his name. I have seen him act a part in the pulpit as would have disqualified any man, holding the office of a minister, from ever entering it afterwards, himself only excepted. For example, lecturing on the book of Daniel, when he came to describe the sudden and appalling appearance of the handwriting on the wall, as well as its paralysing effects upon the guilty Belshazzar, Dr. Kidd was not content with merely describing the scene in so many words, but, to impress the minds of his congregation still more with all the strong points of the case, he considered it necessary to act the scene before their eyes. Accordingly, after giving a very natural and powerful picture of Belshazzar's terror, to the utter amazement of his auditors, he became the identical Belshazzar himself. He began to tremble from head to foot, he raised his hands and his eyes in parallel lines to the roof of the church, knocked his knees vigorously together, and ultimately dropped down, gradually and gracefully, on the pulpit floor. After remaining there just long enough to allow his astounded hearers to recover their breath, the doctor got up again and concluded his lecture. Now, I will not allow myself to think that all this was mere affectation or love of effect. I can only account for it by ascribing it entirely to his eccentricity, which was essentially that of an Irishman who, feeling his eccentricities once on the move, cannot calculate himself, nor call any one else for him, to what extent they may carry him away before they subside. The worthy doctor was much annoyed by drowsy hearers. There was one man, clothed with a red waistcoat among other of his vestments, who had got seated directly under his eye. The man began first to nod, his head giving thereby clear enough indications that, if not fairly asleep, he was on the verge of being so. Waken that man, exclaimed the preacher. The man was pinched, and wakened accordingly by his neighbour. But he awoke only to fall asleep again. ` I say, waken that red-breasted sinner there, shouted the doctor, and a second time the sleeper was roused from his slumbers by his neighbouring and more wakeful fellow-worshippers. But it would not do. In a twinkling, he was fast asleep a third time, and the worthy pastor's patience being therewith fairly exhausted, he grasped a small pocket bible lying at his hand on the pulpit cushion, and sending it at the sleeper, with unerring aim, he hit him on the side of the head. , sir, said he, if you will not hear the Word of God, you shall feel it. There certainly was not another man or minister in the kingdom who might have ventured on so striking a reproof. For the Highlanders Dr. Kidd entertained a strong attachment. During sacramental occasions in the Gaelic Chapel he and his people always attended the lectures on the evenings of Thursday and Sabbath. One Sabbath evening during my time the doctor and his people, with many others, had come to the chapel doors a little before six, and found them shut. The crowd was immense, and the crush to get in was likely to be serious, as the numbers outside were increasing. Dr. Kidd, in an authoritative voice, demanded why the doors were not opened and, receiving no answer, called out, If they are not opened instantly, break them open. - This utterance, unseemly on any occasion but much more so on the peaceful evening of a communion Sabbath, was in very bad taste, and savoured, indeed, not a little of the atmosphere of an Irish row. The Highland elders felt most indignant at the doctor's conduct, and a deputation of their number waited upon him to remonstrate with him on the subject. He apologised by saying that, being a native of Ireland, he was suddenly seized with an Irish fit, but that he had no sooner uttered the words in question than he had repented of his rashness, and felt that he had spoken unadvisedly. The peace was thus soon made up between him and the Highland host, but he told me afterwards that their appearance in a body at his house, and their stern pertinacious faces, made him feel rather uneasy. Of two of them, he added, I had an instinctive terror. I was afraid of Alexander Murray's prayers, and equally so of Alexander MacDonald's fists. The allusion evidently was to a pugilistic encounter of MacDonald's with a drunken nephew. Poor Saunders, he used to say, `was sorely tried; it was really too much for flesh and blood. There was a pitched battle between Saunder's Highland blood and Saunder's godliness, and the Highland blood won the day. A stalwart Highlander may be as godly and praying a man as you could wish, but plant your fist on his face, and he can't for the life of him choose but give as good a blow in return. Download 1.26 Mb. Share with your friends:
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