The enduring impressions left on the mind of William Nelson by his visit to the Holy Land found expression, in long subsequent years, in a well-known work, “The Land and the Book,” which in its final form embraced: 1. Palestine and Jerusalem; 2. Lebanon, Damascus, and Beyond the Jordan; and 3. Central Palestine and Phœnicia. The Rev. W. M. Thomson was commissioned to explore the sacred scenes of Bible story, with a view to the production of a work that should furnish for others somewhat of the vivid realizations that William Nelson had experienced in his own visit to the land
“Over whose acres walked those blessed feet
That eighteen hundred years ago were nailed
For our redemption to the bitter cross.”
The following extract from a letter written in July 1880 to his old schoolfellow, Dr. Simpson, refers to the volume as then in progress, and to the perils from which the manuscript had been so unexpectedly rescued:—
“We are not out yet with the new volume of ‘The Land and the Book,’ and I do not expect that it will be ready for publication before the middle of next month. It is a truly superb work, and it has been got up regardless of expense. It will, when completed, form three volumes. Strange to say, the manuscript of one of them, ‘Egypt, Mount Sinai, and the Desert,’ turned up the other day after we had given it up as having been destroyed at our great fire, with many other valuable manuscripts. But, fortunately, it was in one of the drawers of a writing-desk which had escaped the devouring flames, and the manuscript was discovered quite unexpectedly, after the author had for a long time been informed of the loss that had been sustained.”
CHAPTER VII.
CHURCH—MARRIAGE.
THE year 1843 is a memorable one in Scottish history. The controversy between the two parties into which the National Church was divided had been concentrated for years on the old question of patronage, or the right of the people to the free choice of their clergymen. Under the leadership of Dr. Chalmers, in co-operation with an able body of clergy and laymen, enactments were passed by the Church courts restoring to the people their rights in the choice of pastors. Influential patrons acquiesced in its operation, and the sanguine hope was entertained that a peaceful solution of the grievance which had long been a source of bitterness had at length been arrived at. But in the famous Auchterarder case the civil courts were appealed to; the action of the General Assembly, the supreme court of the Church, was overruled; and on the 18th of May 1843 four hundred and seventy-four ministers of the Church of Scotland voluntarily resigned their livings, and cast themselves on the liberality of their people. Ten years of conflict, marked with an ever-increasing intensity of feeling, and with all the inevitable fruits of embittered controversy, had ended in the disruption of the National Church. It was an event without a parallel since the ejection from their benefices of upwards of two thousand ministers of the English National Church in 1662 by the Act of Uniformity.
It is difficult for the present generation to fully estimate the feeling which the Disruption called forth, or the bitter antagonism which in many cases it engendered. The early training and all the strong personal convictions of William Nelson alike determined his sympathy with what claimed to be “The Free Church of Scotland.” The movement which led to this result had appeared to him, as to others, to furnish a practical solution of the difficulties which held his Covenanting fathers aloof from the National Church. The financial question was an important one, and long continued to be so; for not only churches but colleges had to be built, theological professorships to be endowed, poor congregations to be sustained, and the foreign mission field provided for. In all this work William Nelson was a generous co-operator; and to the close of his life he continued to respond with unstinted liberality to all the claims which it involved. His brother John, who became the esteemed pastor of the Free West Church of Greenock, was referred to after his premature death, in an eloquent tribute by Professor Blaikie, as “one whose natural gifts were of a high order, and whose early position as a student was most distinguished. He was known to be of far too independent a nature to fall into any line merely because it was traditional or conventionally proper. He had courage and capacity to strike out for himself; and he had spent much time in study in Germany at a time when few students went thither, and when such a course was regarded as somewhat suspicious.” The old Covenanting blood was in his veins; but he had hoped that the National Church was resuming its fidelity to the faith of his fathers, when the Disruption came, and he cast in his lot with the champions of freedom. Personal sympathy, therefore, as well as strong convictions, enlisted William Nelson on the side of the Free Church; but he never was a partisan. No trace of bitterness sullied the earnest zeal with which he promoted the cause that he had at heart. His convictions were clear, and his devotion to the Church unwavering; but this was never allowed to interfere with his personal relations to those who adhered to the Established Church, nor with his response to appeals made by them to his liberality. The testimony to this effect was freely given when his death recalled the incidents of earlier years. Among memoranda furnished to me by Mr. John Miller of Glasgow is the following note: “My sole companion in the railway carriage on my return to Glasgow, after attending Mr. Nelson’s funeral, was a stranger, a clergyman of the Established Church, who had travelled to Edinburgh on the same melancholy errand. In conversation I learned that Mr. Nelson and another to whom he referred had been friends of his from their earliest years. But at the Disruption they both became members of the Free Church. Thereupon, as the clergyman said, his unnamed friend took umbrage at him for remaining in the Established Church, and their friendship ceased. It is not easy now to understand the bitterness of feeling that existed at that time between those who took different views on the question of the relation between Church and State; but as regards Mr. Nelson, such was his breadth of mind and catholic spirit, it never made the slightest change on their friendship through all the intervening years, and he spoke of him ‘as the best of all good men he had known.’ ”
But his broad-minded charity was in no degree traceable to latitudinarian indifference. His convictions were strong, and when occasion required it, were maintained with firmness, and defended with incisive keenness of argument. And here it may be well to note a characteristic trait. Few men were ever more notably marked by transparent sincerity and truthfulness. If a truth told against his cause, it never occurred to him to withhold it. There was indeed an amusing simplicity in the manner in which he would disclose a fact seeming to reflect on his own party or on himself; or, when in company with persons disposed to arrogate to themselves rank or social position, he would recall some homely incident or experience of his own early life. But the same instinctive love of truth made him intolerant of cant, or of any evasion in reference to matters of faith. If he were perplexed with doubts, as he often was, in reference to the modern conflict between science and revelation, he would give abrupt utterance to them in the most orthodox circles; and if any attempt were made to evade or gloss over the difficulty, his blunt reassertion of the point at issue, in all its literal nakedness, was at times misunderstood and even bitterly resented. Sanctimonious hypocrisy, or anything savouring of insincerity in religion, was abhorrent to his nature, and provoked his keenest ridicule. For his sense of humour was great, and he would expose pretentious inconsistencies in their most ludicrous aspect, giving no little offence at times to clerical offenders. To this habit of giving expression of his convictions with all unguarded sincerity is, no doubt, to be ascribed the remark in a letter of one of his oldest Christian friends, when bearing testimony to the earnestness with which in his last illness “he gave proof that he had attained by God’s help to true faith in the Son of God, and was conscious of having definitely accepted him as his personal Saviour, and given himself over to him on the warrant of God’s own word of invitation.” The writer, a devoted clergyman of the Free Church, adds: “There was an entire absence of the old levity, which you will remember used sometimes almost to shock and sadden even his best friends.”
It was perhaps a want of tact,—a diplomatic element apt at times to verge on insincerity in which he was certainly deficient,—that led to his being so misjudged. But the same unconscious indifference to the prejudices of others could be seen when, among strangers at a public hotel or on the ocean, he would ask a blessing before dinner with the same earnest reverence as at his own table. The impression which his manner of saying grace produced on a stranger is thus expressed in a letter from an English lady, who, after his death, recalled the memories of more than one sojourn under his hospitable roof: “One always felt cheered in his presence by the glow of his great heart and that sweet genial kindness to all which was like sunshine in the room. I also greatly admired that dislike of any praise of himself which one always saw in him, and which is so rare.... I so well remember in the Philiphaugh drawing-room before dinner his kindly talk to us all, and his almost boyish fun: so interested in every one, and saying playful things to me about palmistry, etc. But when we went in to dinner, I was always struck with his unusual way of saying grace: the reverence that came over him, as if he were actually speaking to God, and as though from his heart he was simply grateful day by day for each gift of the heavenly Father. I can almost hear again as I write the rich deep tones of his voice as he asked the blessing, and prayed that God would graciously take away all our sins. I have never heard a clergyman, or any other person, who so impressed me with reverence and reality in saying grace as he did.” This feeling was by no means singular. In a letter from Professor T. Grainger Stewart, a similar reference occurs to “his mode of asking a blessing.” Alluding to his wife, Professor Stewart says: “We were both greatly impressed with the earnestness and reverence with which he spoke, and on our way home talked of it to one another.”
To one in whom the influences of early training had thus been confirmed by the personal convictions of later years, the responsibilities of his influence as a publisher were keenly realized. The system which he developed was based on the anticipated sale of large editions at low prices. Hence an important class of works issued by some eminent publishing houses in costly editions of from eight to twelve hundred copies lay entirely beyond the range of his publications. But the imprint of Thomas Nelson and Sons became ere long the guarantee for a pure, high-toned literature, admirably adapted for the special requirements of the school library and the home circle; and as success crowned the system of large and cheap editions, works of more permanent value were issued on the same plan.