Here is a strange episode of this troubled time. Patrick Walker in his record of the life and death of Mr. Donald Cargill tells of a sect called the sweet singers, “from their frequently meeting together and singing those tearful Psalms over the mournful case of the Church.” To many of the persecuted it seemed incredible that heaven should not declare in some terrible manner vengeance on a community that was guilty of the blood of the Saints, and as this little band sang and mused it seemed ever clearer to them that the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah must fall on the wicked city of Edinburgh. They needs must flee from the wrath to come, and so with one accord “they left their Houses, warm soft Beds, covered Tables, some of them their Husbands and Children weeping upon them to stay with them, some women taking the sucking Children in their arms” (to leave these behind were a counsel of perfection too high even for a saint!) “to Desert places to be free of all Snares and Sins and communion with others and mourn for their own sins, the Land’s Tyranny and Defections, and there be safe from the Land’s utter ruin and Desolations by Judgments. Some of them going to Pentland hills with a Resolution to sit there to see the smoke and utter ruin of the sinful, bloody City of Edinburgh.” The heavens made no sign; Edinburgh remained unconsumed. A troop of dragoons were sent to seize the sweet singers; the men were put in the Canongate Tolbooth, the women into the House of Correction where they were soundly scourged. Their zeal thus being quenched they were allowed to depart one by one, the matter settled. And so let us pass on to a less tragic and heroic, a more peaceful and prosaic time.
After the revolution reaction almost inevitably set in. Religious zeal—fanaticism if you will—died rapidly down, and there came in Edinburgh, of all places, the reign of the moderates, or as we should now say, broad churchmen, learned, witty, not zealous or passionate, “the just and tranquil age of Dr. Robertson.” Principal William Robertson was a type of his class. We come across him in the University, for he was Principal, and we meet him again as man of letters, for the currents of our narrative are of necessity cross-currents. Here the Robertson anecdotes are trivial. Young Cullen, son of the famous doctor, was the bane of the Principal’s life; he was an excellent mimic, could not merely imitate the reverend figure but could follow exactly his train of thought. In 1765, some debate or other occupied Robertson in the General Assembly; Cullen mimicked the doctor in a few remarks on the occasion to some assembled wits. Presently in walks the Principal and makes the very speech, a little astonished at the unaccountable hilarity which presently prevailed. Soon the orator smelt a rat. “I perceive somebody has been ploughing with my heifer before I came in,” so he rather neatly turned the matter off. Certain young Englishmen of good family were boarded with Robertson: one of them lay in bed recovering from a youthful escapade, when a familiar step approached, for that too could be imitated, and a familiar voice read the erring youth a solemn lecture on the iniquities of his walk, talk, and conversation. He promised amendment and addressed himself again to rest, when again the step approached. Again the reproving voice was heard. He pulled aside the curtain and protested that it was too bad to have the whole thing twice over—it was Robertson this time, however, and not Cullen. The Principal once went to the father of this remarkable young man for medical advice. He was duly prescribed for, and as he was leaving the doctor remarked that he had just been giving the same advice for the same complaint to his own son. “What,” said Robertson, “has the young rascal been imitating me here again?” The young rascal lived to sit on the bench as Lord Cullen, a grave and courteous but not particularly distinguished senator. The Principal was also minister of Old Greyfriars’. His colleague here was Dr. John Erskine. The evangelical school was not by any means dead in Scotland, and Erskine, a man of good family and connections, was a devoted adherent. It is pleasant to think that strong bonds of friendship united the colleagues whose habits of thought were so different. You remember the charming account of Erskine in Guy Mannering where the colonel goes to hear him preach one Sunday. He was noted for extraordinary absence of mind. Once he knocked up against a cow in the meadows; in a moment his hat was off his head and he humbly begged the lady’s pardon. The next she he came across was his own wife, “Get off, you brute!” was the result of a conceivable but ludicrous confusion of thought. His spouse observed that he invariably returned from church without his handkerchief; she suspected one of the old women who sat on the pulpit stairs that they might hear better, or from the oddity of the thing, or from some other reason, and the handkerchief was firmly sewed on. As the doctor mounted the stairs he felt a tug at his pocket. “No the day, honest woman, no the day,” said Erskine gently. Dr. Johnson was intimate with Robertson when he was in Edinburgh and was tempted to go and hear him preach. He refrained. “He could not give a sanction by his presence to a Presbyterian Assembly.”
Dr. Hugh Blair (1718-1800), Professor of Rhetoric in the University, was another of the eminent moderates. Dr. Johnson said: “I have read over Dr. Blair’s first sermon with more than approbation; to say it is good is to say too little.” The King and indeed everybody else agreed with Johnson, the after time did not, and surely no human being now-a-days reads the once famous Rhetoric and the once famous Sermons. Blair was vain about everything. Finical about his dress, he was quite a sight as he walked to service in the High Kirk. “His wig frizzed and powdered so nicely, his gown so scrupulously arranged on his shoulders, his hands so pure and clean, and everything about him in such exquisite taste and neatness.” Once he had his portrait painted; he desired a pleasing smile to mantle his expressive countenance, The model did his best and the artist did his best; the resulting paint was hideous. Blair destroyed the picture in a fit of passion. A new one followed, in which less sublime results were aimed at, and the achievement did not sink below the commonplace. An English visitor told him in company that his sermons were not popular amongst the southern divines: Blair’s piteous expression was reflected in the faces of those present. “Because,” said the stranger, who was plainly a master in compliment, “they are so well known that none dare preach them.” The flattered Doctor beamed with pleasure. Blair’s colleague was the Rev. Robert Walker, and it was said by the beadle that it took twenty-four of Walker’s hearers to equal one of Blair’s, but then the beadle was measuring everything by the heap on the plate. An old student of Blair’s with Aberdeen accent, boundless confidence and nothing else, asked to be allowed to preach for him on the depravity of man. Blair possibly thought that a rough discourse would throw into sharp contrast his polished orations; at any rate he consented, and the most cultured audience in Edinburgh were treated to this gem: “It is well known that a sou has a’ the puddins o’ a man except ane; and if that doesna proove that man is fa’an there’s naething will.”
Dr. Alexander Webster, on the other hand, was of the evangelical school, though an odd specimen, since he preached and prayed, drank and feasted, with the same whole-hearted fervour. The Edinburgh wits called him Doctor Magnum Bonum, and swore that he had drunk as much claret at the town’s expense as would float a 74-ton-gun ship. He died somewhat suddenly, and just before the end spent one night in prayer at the house of Lady Maxwell of Monreith, and on the next he supped in the tavern with some of his old companions who found him very pleasant. He was returning home one night in a very unsteady condition. “What would the kirk-session say if they saw you noo?” said a horrified acquaintance. “Deed, they wadna believe their een” was the gleeful and witty answer. This bibulous divine was the founder of the Widows Fund of the Church of Scotland, and you must accept him as a strange product of the strange conditions of strange old Edinburgh.
The material prosperity of the Church, such as it was, did not meet with universal favour. Lord Auchinleck, Boswell’s father, a zealous Presbyterian of the old stamp, declared that a poor clergy was ever a pure clergy. In former times, he said, they had timmer communion cups and silver ministers, but now we were getting silver cups and timmer ministers.
It is alleged of one of the city ministers, though I know not of what epoch, that he performed his pastoral ministrations in the most wholesale fashion. He would go to the foot of each crowded close in his district, raise his gloved right hand and pray unctuously if vaguely for “all the inhabitants of this close.”
Some divines honestly recognise their own imperfections. Dr. Robert Henry was minister of the Old Kirk: his colleague was Dr. James M‘Knight. Both were able and even distinguished men, but not as preachers. Dr. Henry wittily said, “fortunately they were incumbents of the same church, or there would be twa toom kirks instead of one.” One very wet Sunday M‘Knight arrived late and drenched. “Oh, I wish I was dry, I wish I was dry,” he exclaimed; and then after some perfunctory brushing, “Do you think I’m dry noo?” “Never mind, Doctor,” said the other consolingly, “when ye get to the pulpit you’ll be dry enough.”
As the last century rolled on the moderate cause weakened and the evangelical cause became stronger. The Rev. Sir Henry Moncreiff was one of the great figures of that movement. Referring to his power in the Assembly a country minister said: “It puts you in mind of Jupiter among the lesser Gods.” Another was Dr. Andrew Thomson, minister of St. George’s, who died in 1831. An easy-going divine once said to him that “he wondered he took so much time with his discourses; for himself, many’s the time he had written a sermon and killed a salmon before breakfast.” “Sir,” was the emphatic answer, “I had rather have eaten your salmon, than listened to your sermon.”
REV. SIR HENRY MONCRIEFF-WELLWOOD
From an Engraving after Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A.