A Year in Europe

by Walter W. Moore

One of the raciest men I met at Glasgow, on that occasion, was the Rev. John McNeill. I had the good fortune, with some other friends, to travel in the same compartment with him the day we went to Lord Overtoun's Garden Party. Noticing the river through the car window, he began to speak of the filth of the Clyde below Glasgow, and then naturally enough of the Chicago river, which is probably the filthiest ditch on this planet, and quoted the remark he had made while there, that Peter could have walked on the Chicago river without faith. This led him to speak of exaggerations in general, one especially in which a local Scotch orator indulged when offering the congratulations of his community to the owner of three or four small coasting vessels when he was about launching another one. After "disporting himself in the empyrean," as Dr. Alexander used to say of such sky-scrapers, this bailie wound up with the statement that "the sails of your ships whiten the universal seas." The local minister was the next speaker, but after such a burst of eloquence as the foregoing, his remarks were, of course, very tame, so much so that the bailie who had covered himself with glory turned to another bailie sitting next to him, and said, "Bailie, mon, some o' them that have never been to college can make a better speech than them that have been through the hale corrycolium!"

Another example of unconscious Scotch humor, related, I think, in Lockhart's Life of Scott, was that of the pastor of the small islands of Cumbrae, near the mouth of the Clyde, who was accustomed to pray that the Lord would "bless Great Cumbrae and Little Cumbrae and the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland." Still another was that of the simple Highlanders on the estates of the great Presbyterian nobleman, the Duke of Argyll, who when the Duke's son, the Marquis of Lorne, married the daughter of Queen Victoria, said, "The Queen must be a great woman if her daughter could marry the son of McCallum More."

The City of Glasgow.

"Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the word." From time immemorial that has been the motto of this stately city, now the second in size in Great Britain, numbering some nine hundred thousand souls. It should, therefore, be no surprise that there are two hundred and seventy-five Presbyterian churches here. "Glasgow is the largest Presbyterian city in the world, whether it be measured by the number of churches, of communicants, or of aggressive work done in the cause of Christ." It was in Glasgow that the first missionary society, to send the gospel to the heathen world, was formed in Scotland. Glasgow was also the principal scene of the great home mission enterprise of Dr. Chalmers. Thus, as Prof. Lindsay says, Glasgow has taken the lead in the two greatest characteristics of modern evangelical Presbyterianism—missions to the heathen, and to the lapsed and drifting population at home. Besides what is raised by the churches of the city, Glasgow spends annually more than seven hundred thousand dollars in the support of various charitable institutions. For instance, over nine hundred orphan children are cared for in the "homes," all the money for buildings and daily bread being sent in, in answer to prayer. Eighty-eight services are held on Sabbath forenoons for non-churchgoing lads and girls, superintended by two thousand monitors and workers. The Boys' Brigade took its rise in Glasgow. There are ten thousand young men enrolled as members of the Young Men's Christian Association. These bare statements will give some idea of the religious activities of this great Presbyterian city, and of its suitableness as a rallying centre, in 1896, for the three hundred representatives of that vast army of more than twenty million people of God, who, in every nation under heaven, march under the blue banner, constituting the largest Protestant Church in the world.

Glasgow is, moreover, an ancient seat of learning, and a great centre of commerce. For five hundred years its University has shed light over Scotland, and other countries as well. As for primary education, the official report says, "it is a rare thing now to find a child in the city, over ten or eleven years of age, who cannot read and write. Its art galleries, museums, music, lectures, its magnificent municipal buildings erected at a cost of two million six hundred thousand dollars, its sanitary arrangements, under the influence of which the rate of mortality is steadily decreasing, its water system, which, at a cost of seventeen million five hundred dollars, has brought an abundant supply of pure water from Loch Katrine through thirty-five miles of mountainous country—all are worthy of the second city of the kingdom. And, as everybody knows, Glasgow is the place where "the stately ocean greyhounds" are built. Fifty-five million dollars have been expended in "turning what was once a little salmon stream into one of the greatest navigable highways of the world." In 1768, the Clyde, at low water, was one foot deep, where now it is twenty-four feet. What is it that has given this venerable Presbyterian city this proud position, next to London? "Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the word."

The Old Cathedral.

It is said that the word "Glasgow" comes from "Glescu," gray mist. It deserved its name when we arrived there on the 30th of August, 1902, and it continued to deserve it throughout our stay. The fog was so heavy and dense that one felt almost as if it could be sawn into slabs.

I can testify further that the city deserved its name also on the 17th of June, 1896, when the delegates to the Sixth General Council of the Reformed Churches Throughout the World Holding the Presbyterian System, gathered in the Barony Church, and marched through a cold rain, across the wide paved square, to the ancient cathedral, where the opening sermon was to be preached. This majestic building, now more than seven hundred years old, is thus described by Sir Walter Scott in the nineteenth chapter of Rob Roy, "The pile is of a gloomy and massive, rather than of an elegant, style of Gothic architecture; but its peculiar character is so strongly preserved, and so well suited with the accompaniments which surround it, that the impression of the first view was solemn and awful in the extreme." As Andrew Fairservice said to the hero of that stirring story, whom Scott represents as addressed by Rob Roy from behind one of the pillars in the crypt, "It's a brave kirk—nane o' yer whigmalieries and curliewurlies and opensteek hems about it—a solid, weel-jointed mason-wark, that will stand as long as the world, keep hands and gunpowder aff it." And, indeed, it looks as if it would. On the crest of the hill, in the adjacent necropolis, stands a splendid Doric column surmounted by a statue of John Knox.

The Most Eminent Citizen of Glasgow.

The Preëminence of Scotland in Theology, Philosophy, and Medicine has long been recognized the world over. But it may not be known to all of my readers that the most eminent scientist now living is also a resident of this country, a citizen of Glasgow—Lord Kelvin.