Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland Part 10

V.

O Lord of light, disperse my baffling fears, Give me a look but for a moment's s.p.a.ce Upon the tranquil glory of Thy face, To serve as force to fight the chilling years.

Clouds hide Thee from me, and the bitter tears Run down my cheek in floods. Out of Thy grace Let my heart's chamber be a dwelling-place For Thee. Come for a little s.p.a.ce. Mine ears Strain for the hearing of a word divine Straight from Thy holy lips. No single task Can I at all accomplish or design Without the full a.s.surance that I ask This, namely, that my soul is one with Thee, And Thou dost work Thy purposes by me.

THE CHRISTIAN BRETHREN.

It would be well-spent labour if some sympathetic historian could find time to write a short account of the Plymouth Brethren, giving details of the origin, tenets, divisions, and influence of the sect. I am surprised that Mr. Barrie in his notable excursions into Scotch life and religion, has never portrayed such a fine specimen of the working-man turned theologian.

It must not be supposed that only the rich and the leisurely have what is called religious experiences and shadowed souls. The finest developments, doubtless, of the religious sense require time and money.

That leisurely groping after tendencies, that introspective a.n.a.lysis of the sins of omission and commission, that delightful perception of the falling away from righteousness of your brethren and sisters--all these choice sweets are, if they are to be adequately enjoyed, compatible only with a minimum of 300 a year. The religious sense and the musical are in many points alike. If you wish to develop an initially melodious soul, it means expense: you must go to professors, study counterpoint, practice many hours daily, and attend concerts of the most exclusive and expensive kind. Similarly with religion in its finest flower. You need slaves to cook and wash for you if you mean to ecstaticise and see beatific visions: you must get the most fas.h.i.+onable and picturesque specialists to come and feel your religious pulse, and you must on no account neglect the subscription lists. But only those rich enough to be hypochondriac can afford such luxuries. Now, in the toiling cla.s.ses there are often good ears for music, and exquisite responsiveness to religious sensations. What satisfies such natures and such wants must be cheap. The Plymouth Brethren (I ought rather to say _Christian_ Brethren), have no General a.s.sembly, little or no pedantry of a costly kind, and yet, I believe, they supply all the exhilaration of schisms, splits, counter-splits, and heresy-hunts. Every man his own General a.s.sembly! There may be a lack of the finer touches in such a system, but what is lacking in elegance is fully made up in clearness of view and rombustious vigour.

In many of the fis.h.i.+ng villages on the east coast of Scotland, there are large congregations of these worthy men raising their Ebenezers, and making a joyful noise on the first day of the week. I have a good deal of sympathy with their democratic and direct style of wors.h.i.+p. In Scotland, when a man gets converted, he feels constrained to _do something_, but very often there is little outlet for his energy in the calm routine of the fas.h.i.+onable churches--hence the necessity for bethels and mission-houses. At their revivals, let me add, one is in presence of that mysterious awakening to which every religion owes its birth.

In the autumn of 1906, I had an interesting talk with the minister of a seaside village on the sh.o.r.e of the Moray Firth, and was distressed to find that he was sorely hara.s.sed by the lively sect I have mentioned.

Every now and again a wandering evangelist comes along the coast, pitches a tent, and begins a series of gospel services. Those who are converted, neglect the church and all its ordinances, and begin preaching on their own account; nay, they even b.u.t.tonhole the minister and preach to _him_, accusing him of being an unjust steward, a hireling, and no shepherd, and so on. Such conduct creates a very painful situation. With a good deal of detail, the long-suffering clergyman gave me an account of a visit he had paid to an old woman recently converted. The narrative of her conversion as told by herself was quaint and touching: "They were a' gettin' it," she said, "and I wasna gettin' it. So I jist went to the door and steekit my e'en, and raised them to the lift, and _I got it_. Isn't that the way o't, auld man?" "Aye, aye, that's the way o't, auld wife," chimed in the husband.

The latter then took up the wondrous tale: "When she came in and tell't me she had got it, I went doon on my knees to thank the Lord jist at the fireside, and lo and behold, when I opened my e'en, I was at the street door. The Spirit had taken me there, unbeknown to me. So I lifted up my voice and called on G.o.d's people. And in five minutes the room and kitchen were filled wi' saved folk, a' singing hymns, because my auld wife had got it at last."

I also remember meeting an old thatcher of eminent talents who seemed to me to be on the straight road for Zion, for he fulfilled the Scriptural injunction to be fervent in spirit as well as not slothful in business.

James had at one time been precentor in one of the regular churches, but owing to some cantankerous criticism of his melody, he seceded to the Brethren, who fearlessly accepted his services gratis. James was specially lyrical on the roof, and it was a treat to hear him sing "_There is rest for the weary_," as he pushed the thatch into its long home:--

"There is rest for the weary, There is rest for the weary, There is rest for _you_" (with a forceful thrust).

I must not omit to mention (and with reverence be it spoken) that James had a reputation far and wide in the country-side, for the vigour and extreme unction of his grace before meat. Though giving a humble tenor to the initial phrases and using the tar-brush on himself, and the hungry company as putrid sinners unworthy even of the least of the mercies, he always contrived to rea.s.sure everyone by sunnily rounding off the matter with some rich and racy allusions to the gracious and ample promises of Holy Writ. One could have felt quite comfortable even in a slight excess of gluttony after such introductory words of blessing. You felt that the occasion had been met, that something like perfection had been attained. James was willing to admit shortcomings in thatching, or in any department of human activity, so long as his superiority in pre-prandial supplication was admitted. But it so happened that Fate, whose delight it is to imperil even the stablest reputations, sent his way a South-country Brother with a gift in prayer truly appalling. At a gathering at which James was present, this stranger was honoured by being asked to say grace. In the process, he soared to such heights of oratory and supplicatory fervour, that the uniform opinion of the guests, as evinced by looks, demeanour, and even congratulation, was that James had at last been beaten on his own ground. Supreme dejection settled on the thatcher, and neither bite nor sup could dislodge the settled melancholy of his soul. After long pondering with chin on chest in a corner of that pious throng, he had an idea. Sidling up to the matron of the house, he, with a terrible whisper of earnestness, addressed her in these words: "Mistress, before we gang hame, doon wi' a whang o' cheese and a farl o' cake--it'll no' cost ye much--and _I'll ha'e a tussle wi' him for't yet_." She gladly complied with his request. His excitement gave him inspiration, and over that cheese and oatcake, he delivered himself of such a grace as had never before proceeded from his lips. A murmur of involuntary admiration greeted the conclusion. James was comforted, and once more held his head erect.

To talk of the Evolution of Religion to men like James would be a complete waste of time. Such men regard themselves as the acme of the process: whatever modifications may supervene after their day will be deteriorations. It is quite impossible to persuade an enthusiast that he is a mere phenomenon of development, and not, actually and now, the roof and crown of things. Even if persuasion were possible, it would be a cruelty to disillusionise these happy wights,--men who, with such sublime confidence, can read their t.i.tle clear to mansions in the sky.

They have a complete key to the universe, and are as happy as if they had seen the whole vast circle of truth.

DRIMNIN IN MORVEN.

How many of my readers know where Drimnin is? If I should say, "In the parish of Morven," it is possible the majority of them would not be greatly edified, unless they had acquaintance with the saintly Macleod's _Reminiscences of a Highland Parish_. Well, Drimnin is on the mainland, nearly opposite the entrance to the haven of Tobermory. The _Chevalier_ nears into the coast when anyone wishes to land, and two boatmen, obeying a signal, pull out from sh.o.r.e into the open, and the pa.s.senger leaps, as gracefully as circ.u.mstances permit, into their arms--amid the cheers of those left on the steamer.

The clergyman of Morven ministers to a parish that has over a hundred miles of seaboard, and, strange to say, there have been only three inc.u.mbents in it during the last hundred and thirty years, himself being the third, with twenty-six years' ministry to his credit so far. These facts procured him an extraordinary reception in America, where he spent a holiday recently. The Americans, with whom change is the permanent element, looked with amazement on a minister who came from a parish with such a record. They thronged round his hotel to get shaking hands with him, while he blushed to think that homage was being paid to the longevity of his predecessors. It is no treat to be a lion in Maine.

The visitor to Drimnin should return to Oban by driving to Lochaline, where there is a pier. A mere glance up that inlet of Lochaline is sufficient to prove the unerring accuracy of Sir Walter's description: "Fair Lochaline's woodland sh.o.r.e." Scott had a marvellous eye for scenery, and having once seen a locality, could describe it better than a native could do who had lived in the neighbourhood from youth upwards.[19]

[19] I may here refer to a pleasant three hours spent in rowing on Lochaline in the company of Mr. Hugh Macintyre, an old gentleman full of Scott and well versed in the lore of the locality. He was a policeman in Glasgow for thirty-five years (latterly as guardian of the Kelvingrove Picture Gallery), and now, in the enjoyment of good health and a pension, spends his time reading and doing good in his native district. Mr.

Macintyre's earliest recollection is of his father being evicted from a small holding, at the head of the loch, in the "forties."

Tennyson and Palgrave were visitors at Ardtornish, as Mr. Lang tells us, but made no special impression on the natives, who styled them respectively _Tinman_ and _Pancake_.

CRAIGNISH.

At Craignish (two miles _or so_ from Ardfern, next pier to Luing on the way from Crinan to Oban) I was astonished to find what I think is unique in Scotland, an old clergyman, born in 1824, still, without any aid whatever, performing all the duties of a parish minister in one of the wildest parts of Argylls.h.i.+re. I refer to the Rev. Mr. M'Michael, who was chairman at the lecture. The old gentleman, who is remarkably hale in body and never melancholy at meal-time (as he slyly puts it), is p.r.o.ne to speak by preference of the events of "auld lang syne." He gave me a most vivid account of Professor John Wilson (whom, as I do not now live in Paisley, I may safely venture to call Paisley's _greatest_ son), who was one of his teachers, and who, as "Christopher North," wrote so many witty and solid articles that undeservedly perished in _Blackwood's Magazine_ at the beginning of last reign. I have rarely had such a treat as my talk with this hale-hearted octogenarian. His charming daughters keep house for him, and employ their leisure time weaving at a loom of their own. The sheep that graze on the glebe supply the wool, and the intermediate stages between the back of the sheep and the woollen overcoat on the back of the needy are all supervised by these dexterous daughters of the manse.

The coach to Craignish pa.s.ses through a bit of Scotland that, in the leafy month of June, must be glorious to behold. I pa.s.sed along in a fierce and chilling blizzard of sleet and snow. If a poet could keep warm, thought I, this would be the spot for him to get impressive scenes for his word-pictures. At one part, the road ziz-zags up a hill for three miles, alongside a furious burn, to a height of six hundred feet; from which eminence one sees, on the right, great bare crags and steep heights, and, on the left, an inlet of the Atlantic foaming wildly below. Ye gentlemen of the cloth, whose lot is cast in towns and who sit at home in ease, think of the trials of your rural brethren in their attempts to drive in winter through drifting snow to a presbytery meeting fourteen miles away![20]

[20] I could mention another rural parish, considerably further north, where, two winters ago, the roads were so badly blocked with snow that for five consecutive weeks no church services could be held! Both minister and congregation were overcome with grief.

A MODEL MINISTER.

Not far from the city of Aberdeen is a little village of seafaring folk, and the worthy minister, the Rev. Mr. Pollock, is guide, philosopher, and friend to the entire community. Up to his manse, which is a mile from the uneven and fishy streets, there is a constant _va-et-vient_ of paris.h.i.+oners. One old widow wishes him to write to her son at the Yarmouth fis.h.i.+ng, herself being ignorant of English spelling; this old man, painfully hobbling uphill on his stick, and muttering to himself as he goes, desires the faithful pastor to come and cheer a bed-ridden wife who is failing fast; that young fisher-la.s.s will blush as she tells that her young man is on the way home to claim her as his own, with the Church's aid. Mr. Pollock is the confidential repository of all their secrets: nothing in their lives is hidden from him; he knows all of comic and tragic in their lowly careers. Along with his wife, he visits every house in the place, and from intimate knowledge can tell you, nodding his head to this or that house as he walks along, the worth or worthlessness of every native of the village. His time is so fully taken up with pure religion and undefiled, that he has no time to waste on the Higher Criticism.

A tout for some wandering minstrels recently came over from Aberdeen, meaning to leave one of his red-and-yellow bills (announcing a performance) in each of the local shops. The minister saw him as he distributed the bills, and closely followed up on his trail. Mr. Pollock entered each shop and said to the shopkeeper: "Please let me see the bill you have there in the window." On getting it, he would scan it, and request to get keeping it. In no shop was he refused, so that by the time he got to the end of the village, he was carrying two dozen large concert placards, while the tout, merrily whistling, and all unconscious of the nullity of his labours, was on his way back to Aberdeen. "Lead us not into temptation," said the minister, as he thrust the garish announcements into his study stove. None of Mr. Pollock's flock were at the concert that night. Perhaps, if any had gone, little harm would have been done. The minister, however, thought they were better at home, or at the local prayer-meeting.

Mr. Pollock's predecessor was a thin, unemotional man--a geologist--who spent an important percentage of his time chipping rocks and looking for fossils. Owing to this mania, his flock were forgotten, and came to forget _him_. No wonder if the church attendance dwindled! _Ab uno disce omnes_, as Virgil says. One day this ordained geologist had agreed to baptize a child in a hamlet some miles away, and set forth to walk to the place in good time. Unhappily, by the roadside, there was a quarry, into which, by instinct, the minister glided, keen and eager-eyed. He stayed therein for four hours, and forgot all about the infant (squalling, no doubt, in special robe, and impatient for the christening), the waiting relatives, the inevitable decanter, and the thick cuts of indigestible bun. The minister, I say, trudged home with his treasure-trove of petrified ferns and foot-marked shale--a greater fossil than any under his own cases of gla.s.s. His memory was stirred by his wife's catechising, but it was too late to undo the mischief.

MINISTERIAL TRIALS IN OLDEN TIMES.

In modern times, ministers are badly paid, considering the expenses of their training and long education, but they are better paid than they used to be. In 1756, the minister of Ferintosh, a big, active man, with the object of adding something to his stipend, leased the meal-mill of Alcaig from the laird of Culloden. The combination of miller and minister did not please his paris.h.i.+oners. It never occurred to these clowns that the occupation of miller is singularly adapted for reflection: spiritual and bodily nourishment (thought of together) might well form a field of thought fertile in instructive metaphors; "the dark round of the dripping wheel," the work of separating husks and flour, the topics of dearth and abundance, might all come to have a homiletic value to a serious-minded teacher of religion. But a cry of scandal, directed not against themselves for underpaying their minister, but against that worthy man for being an _ordained miller_, arose in the parish. A member of the congregation was deputed to give a gentle hint to the minister that the two occupations were incompatible. The interview took place on the high road. "What news this morning, Thomas?"

said the minister. "Have you not heard of the fearful news?" said Thomas. "No, what is it?" "Well, everybody's saying," said Thomas, with a whisper of affected horror, "that _the minister's wife has taken up with the big miller of Alcaig_." The delicacy of this hint was such that the minister resigned his lease.

The trials of ministers long ago were truly great. Witches had to be reckoned with, as the aforementioned Ferintosh minister, who was their foe, knew to his cost. By their incantations they caused him to be afflicted with somnolency. As this sleepy fit usually came on in church between the first psalm and the prayer, it can be easily seen how awful were the reprisals of these Satanic hags.

AN ARTFUL DODGER.

The Rev. Mr. Rogers, minister of a parish in Fife, was, like many another worthy man, in sore financial straits at one period of his life.

He was a widower, and probably this fact accounts for his displenished exchequer. With supreme audacity he touched the bell of a rich old maiden lady, and on entering her boudoir he bluntly admitted his lack of funds, and said, "Give me 200 and I'll marry you." She gave him the money, and for months after never saw his face. Finally she wrote asking an interview. He came, and she tartly said, "Did you not say, Mr.

Rogers, that if I gave you 200, you would marry me?" "Certainly I did,"

said the cunning minister, "and _I'm ready to marry you whenever you produce your man: where is he_?" This anecdote shows the difficulty of being unambiguous when speaking English, and furnishes an argument for the adoption of French as the language of courts.h.i.+p as well as of diplomacy.

The same foxy ecclesiastic wished two things, both of which his heritors flatly refused: (a) a new manse, and (b) a site with a wide prospect. Finding them intractable, he professed humility, and craved merely a species of scaffolding to b.u.t.tress up one of the walls of the old manse. The heritors marvelled a little at the strange request, but, glad of being saved from the cost of a new building, authorised the buying of some st.u.r.dy joists to prop up a wall that the minister averred was off the plumb. No sooner was the b.u.t.tressing timber in position than Mr. Rogers appeared with a violent complaint in the Sheriff Court, declaring that the manse was like to fall about his ears, and that the heritors had palpably admitted the danger by erecting a scaffold. The Sheriff expressed strong disapproval of the heritors' stinginess, and ordered them to get a new manse built for the minister. Now as to the site! To spite Mr. Rogers, the heritors determined to deprive him of a good view, and directed the St. Andrews builder to erect the new manse down in the valley on a broad bank by a burnside. The master-builder placed pegs and marks in the ground at the prescribed place and returned to St. Andrews, telling his workmen to proceed next day to begin the work, and mentioning that they would know the site by marks he had placed there. At c.o.c.kcrow the minister was afoot, busy transferring the pegs to the summit of a lovely knoll. The tradesmen came out to the country, and looking for the site found it on the hill-top and began their work. After they had been a week or more on the walls, out from St. Andrews came the master to see how his men were progressing. He came near a complete collapse when he saw his men on the hill instead of in the valley. He spoke winged words to them, but it was too late. In such fas.h.i.+on did Mr. Rogers outwit his heritors. I regret that no literary relics of this acute divine are to be had. He seems to have been in his way a kind of Higher Critic judging from a remark he made on the Ark: "How did you manage," he said, as if addressing Noah in person, "how did you manage to keep the first plank of your boat from getting rotten before the last was nailed on, if you actually took 120 years to put the whole thing together?"

SOME ANECDOTES FROM GIGHA.

The late minister of Gigha, a small island community of 360 souls off the coast of Kintyre was a cleric of great humour and full of stories.

His church was the only one in the island, a fact of which he was proud.

At a communion service, a minister from the mainland, struck off a monumental phrase in one of his prayers. He said "Thou hast shown, O Lord, Thy confidence in Thy servant, the devout minister of Gigha, for lo! out of the plent.i.tude of Thy great mercy Thou has seen fit _to give him an island all to himself_." I have heard and do in part believe it, that the effect of such a supplication in Gaelic is overpoweringly strong.

This same minister "of the island," whose digestion I may say, was so perfect that he could triumphantly absorb strong tea and poached eggs as a regular midnight meal, told me one night over this collation, the story of a fisherman in one of the Western Islands, whose prayer before going to sea was of a singular character. He invariably addressed the Deity as _Sibshe_ (You) instead of the ordinary _Thusa_ (Thou). On one occasion, when the weather was squally and danger was antic.i.p.ated, he prayed thus: "O Lord G.o.d, my Beloved, if You would be so good as to take the care of Mary and Jessie, my daughters; but that She-Devil, my wife, the daughter of Peter Macpherson, I am indifferent about her: she will have another husband before I am eaten by the crabs!"

Here follows another well-known story from the same authority. A Lowlander, taking a week's sail on one of Macbrayne's cargo-boats stepped ash.o.r.e, on Sunday morning, at a remote insular port, to attend church, as was fit and proper. The text was the well-known verse "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?" The minister, strange to say, preached a long and painfully vivid sermon on _leprosy_.

The tourist waited, after sermon, in order to talk with the minister and quietly remonstrate with him. He said: "You gave us an excellent discourse to-day, but do you think it followed quite appropriately from the text: surely you are aware that a _leopard_ and a _leper_ are two different things." The minister, eying the tourist with a look of indignant scorn for a second, lifted up his voice and denounced him thus: "Out of my sight with you: I know what you are; you are one of these pestilent fellows called Higher Critics. Begone!"

In the Long Island, it is an article of fixed belief among the stricter Presbyterians that Catholics are outside any scheme of salvation.

Episcopalians, too, are regarded as being in an extremely dubious position. Any stick, however, is good enough to beat the partisans of the Pope. "Brethren," said a minister near Stornoway, "I have forgotten my sermon to-day: but _I'll just say a word or two against the Catholics_." Such a philippic, he seemed to think, could never be out of season.

Denunciation has always been a favourite method of the religious bigot.

If the various sects of the Christian Church, could go on their way, ameliorating the world, and leaving each other in peace, the millennium would be within reasonable distance. I heard a U.F. say to a Wee Free: "Donald, you'll no' gang to Heaven, _because I'm bad_." The sentence is good enough for an epigram. Unfortunately, too many of our sectaries think it the prime virtue of their faith to run down their neighbours.

GROWING POPULARITY OF RUSKIN.