KIRK, SCHOOL, AND FREEDOM
A visit to St. Andrews, the home of golf and of ancient and modern
Scottish culture, compels thought. I have met Scotsmen who thought and
devoutly believed that there was nothing among all the lands of earth
equal to Scotland, and in Scotland nothing greater than the Kirk. Yet
this stout insistence has come not alone from believers in “the old
gospel,” so called, but with equal vehemence and cool conviction from
men saturated with the philosophy of common sense, even from those
fearing not to be called “freethinkers.” The real Scotland, like the
true United States described in Whittier’s verse, seems to fear neither
“the puny sceptic’s hands” nor “the bigot’s blinded rule.” At least,
her history teaches this.
The first heralds of the new dawn, whose advent awakened Scotland from
her mediæval slumber of intellect, were the Lollards of Kyle, who
were among our own spiritual ancestors. They made a great excitement
in western Scotland in the early part of the fifteenth century. Their
coming was as refreshing as when a window is opened in a stuffy room,
letting in God’s fresh air. The articles of which the Lollards were
accused, as Knox found them stated in the Register of Glasgow, make
us love these people, for their faith and belief were very much like
what is held by the mass of the people who live and think in northern
Europe and in the United States of America to-day. Some things to which
they held are still retained by Christians who are as wide apart as are
Quakers and Catholics.
Those who cut down the forest are often surprised at the new and
different timber which springs up from the soil. After John Knox, David
Hume! But if the Puritans and reformers had not been intolerant, they
would not have been men of their own age. It is to the glory of these
narrow-minded but high-souled men that they believed in education. They
could not well conceive that any other belief was as good as their own.
Yet theirs was not the spirit of Mahomet, who gave choice of acceptance
of sword or creed; for these men, who had a conviction themselves of
the truth, demanded from others the same knowledge, by experience and
enlightenment, of these doctrines which they believed. Hence they were
earnest for both elementary training and the higher erudition.
If living to-day, the spiritual pioneers and reformers would no doubt
be surprised at the visible harvest. Yet it was their opening of dark
places to the light, through the cultivation of the mental soil, that
made the intellectual landscape which we see to-day. The Indians call
the plantain the “white man’s footstep,” because they note that the
cutting-down of the dark forests and opening the soil to the sunlight
have given the weeds also their opportunity; so that, far more
numerously than in the twilight of the woods, or even in the little
clearings for the corn and pumpkins, the highways and fields are to-day
populous with what we call “weeds.” Yet how vastly greater is the crop
of what makes food for man! This is the story, also, of intellectual
culture in every age and land. Perhaps it always will be thus. The
best of all practical philosophy on this subject is that taught by the
greatest of teachers--“let both grow together.” Persecutors, bigots,
and tyrants have acted in a different spirit, with appalling results.
The Reformation was more of a success in Scotland than in England,
even as men are of more value than edifices of brick and stone, and
the people of more value than courts. It culminated, in the lower part
of the island, in the divine right of kings and the celestial origin
of the Established Church, for Elizabeth was advised by Spain and was
strong enough to prevent any open change. But north of the Tweed the
people were more generally educated and elevated to a higher place.
Hence, in Scotland there was no such tempest raised as there was in the
next century, in England, when one king was decapitated and another
sent out of the kingdom. Scotland saved herself from stupid kings and a
multitude of horrors by previously giving her people the rudiments of
knowledge. We in America have never had, from English writers, either
fair play or full truth about the Scots, nor is the Scotsman’s part
in the making of the United States generally appreciated. The Scotch
Puritans not only exercised a marked and lasting influence upon their
brethren in England, but upon those beyond sea. Next to the Hollanders,
who taught us Americans pretty much all we know of Federal Government,
was the influence of Scotsmen in the development of the American nation.
The Normans gave to England her universities, her cathedrals, and her
legal system, but Scotland never shared in the benefits of the Norman
invasion as did England. One may almost say that in place of the nobler
and creative side of the Norman genius was Presbyterianism; that is,
representative and responsible government in the Church, the actual
rule being by lay elders chosen by the congregation. Much of this
republicanism in things religious was the work of one man, the greatest
in a country prolific of great men as Scotland has been. John Knox’s
power was resistless, because he trusted in God and in the common man.
It is astonishing how much alike William the Silent, John Knox, and
Abraham Lincoln were in putting confidence in the plain people. William
of Orange, the great moderate man of the sixteenth century, found
that kings and princes were as reeds to lean upon, nobles were selfish
and factious, but that the common people, when you put confidence in
them, could be trusted. John Knox walked in the footsteps of William of
Orange. Lincoln followed Knox.
Yet Knox was not the founder of the Scottish Reformation, which had
begun before he had left the old Church; he was its nurse, not its
parent. At first the Reformation in Scotland, as in some parts of
Europe, was a political, not a religious movement. In the beginning
the Scotch nobles hoped to be enriched from the Church lands, as their
peers in England had been; but among the Scottish people there were
gradually formed circles in which education of mind and heart went on.
Apart from the court and nobles, the people wanted a change for the
better. This general intelligence among “the commonalty” had already
so undermined the structure of the old political Church in Scotland
that when Knox blew his bugle blast, this semi-political edifice came
tumbling down.
In two hundred years Scotland made more progress than any other
country in the world. Her people, in proportion to their numbers,
have probably done more for the general advancement of the race than
those of any other modern nation. Yet the foundation of Scotland’s
prosperity was laid by John Knox and his successors. Hamerton, who
wrote that charming book, “A Painter’s Camp in the Highlands,” said
in one of his works that, in proportion to their small numbers, the
Scots are the most distinguished little people since the days of the
ancient Athenians, and the most educated of the modern races. “All the
industrial arts are at home in Glasgow, all the fine arts in Edinburgh,
and as for literature it is everywhere.”
Twice the Scots signally nullified the ambition of kings. Edward I,
whom the English count one of their greatest kings, conquered Wales
and made it a permanent part of the British Empire. He thought he had
done the same thing with Scotland, but there he met a different foe,
and twenty years later, Scottish valor at Bannockburn gave Scotland her
independence forever. How strange that this same reign saw the death
of Roger Bacon, the culmination of Christian architecture, and the
expulsion of Jews from England!
When King James came to London, in 1604, he found himself in such a
totally different atmosphere that he tried to use the power of England
behind him to force the rule of the bishops, in place of elders, upon
his Scottish subjects. In England the Church lords told King James,
when discussing religious matters, that he was inspired of God. Those
who have read the disgustingly fulsome praise of King James, made in
their preface by the translators of the English Bible in 1611, can
see that they believed in the divine right of kings. On the contrary,
in 1596, Andrew Melville, the preacher, in a public audience, called
James VI “God’s silly vassal.” Said he to him, “I tell you, sir, there
are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland. There is Christ Jesus the
King, and his kingdom the Kirk, whose subject James VI is, and of whose
kingdom, not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a member. And they
whom Christ hath called to watch over his Kirk and govern his spiritual
kingdom have sufficient power and authority to do so both together and
severally.”
The Scottish commons, as Froude says, are the sons of their religion,
and they are so because that religion taught the equality of man.
The literature of the subject of the relation of the king to the
people, which now holds its place triumphantly in England, shows that
this theory, regnant in the twentieth century, originated and was
elaborated in Scotland. The idea that the royal government arises
from popular electoral choice, and that for a king to break his part
of the contract makes him forfeit his right and justifies war against
him,--which has always been the American idea,--was first wrought out
in Scotland. The true theory of the relations between a king and his
subjects first appeared in a book published in Edinburgh, in 1580. It
was written by George Buchanan, and was the same that was burned by
Englishmen at Oxford in 1683.
It was not until 1594 that Hooker, in his “Ecclesiastical Polity,”
developed the idea of a social compact, which later was expanded by
John Locke, who was so much read by our fathers. Yet even before
Buchanan, French writers had discussed the rights and duties of kings
on the same democratic lines, and William of Orange, in his “Apology”
of 1570, had lengthily exploited the idea and demonstrated in his life
the right to take up arms against princes who abused their trust. The
“Apology” was but the preface to the Dutch Declaration of Independence
in July, 1581--the political ancestor of ours of 1776.
One who would find out and appraise with exactness the influence
of Scotland upon English thought, previous to the eighteenth
century,--that is, during the period of the colonization of New
England, before the Commonwealth, and later, when American institutions
were taking definite form,--will not find much to the point in English
books or documents. That Scottish writers and preachers were most
influential with English Puritans--the same who settled America--cannot
be gainsaid.
Neither can it be denied that Puritanism took on some dark and unlovely
forms. Yet we must remember that the work of Claverhouse and the
massacres of Scottish Christians by Englishmen were taking place
within a few score miles of these very people who first left England,
to find a permanent home beyond the Atlantic. These English Puritans
got their idea of the equality of man and that sense of human dignity,
which lies at the foundation of civil liberty, in large measure from
the Scots, who had already shown their hatred of oppression and their
contempt for differences of rank founded only on the accident of birth.
From such a soil of history and feeling sprang Burns’s inimitable poem,
“A man’s a man for a’ that,”--the consummate white flower of the poetry
of humanity. It is barely possible that such a poem might have been
written in England in the eighteenth century, but, as a matter of fact,
it rose out of the heart of a Scotsman. In England the lesson of the
equality of man has not, even yet, been fully learned. In America, it
is the very foundation on which our Government rests. Abraham Lincoln’s
Gettysburg Speech is the answering and antiphonic call to the song of
Burns. In fact, we cannot understand how any true history of the United
States can be written which neglects the study of Scotland’s history.
The Scottish people called those prelates appointed by the London
Government, who collected the revenues of their sees and turned them
over to their patrons, “tulchan” bishops. These prelates got their
nickname in Scotland from calfskins, stuffed with straw to make them
look like cow’s babies, with which the dairymen deceived refractory
cattle,--mothers that refused to give down their milk. In 1578, the
General Assembly resolved that bishops should be called by their own
names and not by their titles or sees, and that no vacant see should be
filled until the next December. In 1580, the whole system was abolished
when the General Assembly, meeting at Dundee, resolved that the office
of bishop was a mere human invention unwarranted by the Word of God.
The custom of British peers signing only their surnames, or by peerage
designations, though no older than the times of the Stuart kings, has
been imitated by the prelates even on hotel registers. This fashion of
using geographical affiliations with their surnames only had an amusing
illustration while we were in Scotland. A certain American bishop from
our neighborhood, travelling through Europe, subscribed himself, let us
say, as “Theophilus of Peoria.” By accident, this worthy man of God was
followed around by a clergyman of Scottish descent, who was not loath,
for the sake of a good joke, to imitate the example of so noble a son
of the Church. He made his sign manual, let us say, as “Bartholomew of
Pony Hollow.”
Happily in these our days the Scots and English, though so different
in old and fundamental ideas, have come to work hand in hand together
in civil government. Even within the fold of salvation, they dwell
in Christian charity, ever agreeing to differ--the Episcopalian in
Scotland being a “Dissenter” and the Scotch Presbyterian in England the
same, each being in his own country a “Churchman,” while the average
American is amused at the whole proceeding. With what a hearty roar of
merriment a party of us Bostonians, when we saw it, bought, for the
fun of the thing, a photograph, of cabinet size, found in the London
shop windows, of our neighbor, friend, and fellow Christian, the “Lord”
Bishop Phillips Brooks, of Yankee land and Hub fame and beloved by
all men. Think of an American shepherd of God’s heritage “lording” it
over the flock! Yet we forgave the English printer, who probably never
noticed his own joke, or knew how funny he had made himself to Yankees.
A survey of Scottish religious history, such as Melrose, Iona, and
St. Andrews suggest, shows that in the first working-out of the
human spirit, as it reacted upon form and symbol and developed in
submission to discipline and the law of unity, the Scottish churches,
of necessity, followed the rule of Rome. The flowering of the human
spirit, in the hewn stone of church and abbey, took on forms of beauty
akin to those in the south, yet with Gothic luxuriance. The marble
blossomed in air as from the native rock, and the artist’s chisel made
gardens of beauty. Wonderful and alluring was the reality of the
mediæval landscape, gemmed with richest architecture and wealthy in
sacred edifices made beautiful with color, carving, gems, and the gifts
of the devout, the travelled, and the wealthy. The graceful edifices,
the abbeys and monasteries, the parish churches, the tithe-barns, the
castles and bishops’ seats, made even this far northland a region
of charm and romance. Within these sacred walls, what impressive
chants and processions, incense and lights, and all that resplendent
paraphernalia of robed and costumed ministers of religion, which,
whether in pagan or Christian lands, do so appeal to the senses in
spectacular worship!
All this mediæval, dramatic variety, so strongly set in contrast to
the simplicity of worship to-day, did, in a certain sense, correspond
to the contemporaneous glory of civil and military splendor of feudal
days. Then the pageant of the titled knight, in shining steel upon
his proud steed, leading his clansmen in their brilliant tartans,
with claymore and target,--with a rich background of the visible
splendor of castles, lords and ladies, in that feudal life which
Scott has idealized, glorified, yes, even transfigured in his poetry
and romances,--was matched by outward ecclesiastical magnificence;
both systems making irresistible appeal to the senses and both being
equally far removed from the primitive simplicity of the Master and his
disciples.
In a word, Christianity in Scotland wore the garments of the
civilization of the age during which it took on its material forms,
changing its outward habiliments as its growing spirit entered more
deeply into the old, unchangeable truth. In the case of certain young
nations, having characteristics that respond to what is first offered
them, and in which native traits can make subtle harmony with the
imported religion, history marks out but one course--the standards of
religion and civilization usually run in parallel lines.