When my father was in Broughton Place Church, we had a doorkeeper
called _Jeems_, and a formidable little man and doorkeeper he was; of
unknown age and name, for he existed to us, and indeed still exists to
me--though he has been in his grave these sixteen years--as _Jeems_,
absolute and _per se_, no more needing a surname than did or do
Abraham or Isaac, Samson or Nebuchadnezzar. We young people of the
congregation believed that he was out in the '45, and had his drum
shot through and quenched at Culloden; and as for any indication on
his huge and grey visage, of his ever having been young, he might
safely have been _Bottom_ the Weaver in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_,
or that excellent, ingenious, and "wise-hearted" Bezaleel, the son of
Uri, whom _Jeems_ regarded as one of the greatest of men and of
weavers, and whose "ten curtains of fine twined linen, and blue, and
purple, and scarlet, each of them with fifty loops on the edge of the
selvedge in the coupling, with their fifty taches of gold," he, in
confidential moments, gave it to be understood were the sacred
triumphs of his craft; for, as you may infer, my friend was a man of
the treddles and the shuttle, as well as the more renowned grandson of
Hur.
_Jeems's_ face was so extensive, and met you so formidably and at
once, that it mainly composed his whole; and such a face! Sydney Smith
used to say of a certain quarrelsome man, "His very face is a breach
of the peace." Had he seen our friend's, he would have said he was the
imperative mood on two (very small) legs, out on business in a blue
greatcoat. It was in the nose and the keen small eye that his strength
lay. Such a nose of power, so undeniable, I never saw, except in what
was said to be a bust from the antique, of Rhadamanthus, the
well-known Justice-Clerk of the Pagan Court of Session! Indeed, when I
was in the Rector's class, and watched _Jeems_ turning interlopers out
of the church seats, by merely presenting before them this tremendous
organ, it struck me that if Rhadamanthus had still been here, and out
of employment, he would have taken kindly to _Jeems's_ work,--and that
possibly he was that potentate in a U. P. disguise.
Nature having fashioned the huge face, and laid out much material and
idea upon it, had finished off the rest of _Jeems_ somewhat scrimply,
as if she had run out of means; his legs especially were of the
shortest, and, as his usual dress was a very long blue greatcoat, made
for a much taller man, its tails resting upon the ground, and its
large hind buttons in a totally preposterous position, gave him the
look of being planted, or rather after the manner of Milton's beasts
at the creation, in the act of emerging painfully from his mother
earth.
Now, you may think this was a very ludicrous old object. If you had
seen him, you would not have said so; and not only was he a man of
weight and authority,--he was likewise a genuine, indeed a deeply
spiritual Christian, well read in his Bible, in his own heart, and in
human nature and life, knowing both its warp and woof; more peremptory
in making himself obey his Master, than in getting himself obeyed, and
this is saying a good deal; and, like all complete men, he had a
genuine love and gift of humour,[42] kindly and uncouth, lurking in
those small, deep-set grey eyes, shrewd and keen, which, like two
sharpest of shooters, enfiladed that massive and redoubtable bulwark,
the nose.
[Footnote 42: On one occasion a descendant of Nabal having put a crown
piece into "the plate" instead of a penny, and staring at its white
and precious face, asked to have it back, and was refused--"In once,
in for ever." "A weel, a weel," grunted he, "I'll get credit for it in
heaven." "Na, na," said _Jeems_, "ye'll get credit only for the
penny!"]
One day two strangers made themselves over to _Jeems_ to be furnished
with seats. Motioning them to follow, he walked majestically to the
farthest in corner, where he had decreed they should sit. The couple
found seats near the door, and stepped into them, leaving _Jeems_ to
march through the passages alone, the whole congregation watching him
with some relish and alarm. He gets to his destination, opens the
door, and stands aside; nobody appears. He looks sharply round, and
then gives a look of general wrath "at lairge." No one doubted his
victory. His nose and eye fell, or seemed to fall, on the two
culprits, and pulled them out instantly, hurrying them to their
appointed place; _Jeems_ snibbed them slowly in, and gave them a
parting look they were not likely to misunderstand or forget.
At that time the crowds and the imperfect ventilation made fainting a
common occurrence in Broughton Place, especially among "_thae young
hizzies_," as _Jeems_ called the servant girls. He generally came to
me, "the young Doctor," on these occasions with a look of great
relish. I had indoctrinated him in the philosophy of _syncopes_,
especially as to the propriety of laying the "_hizzies_" quite flat on
the floor of the lobby, with the head as low as the rest of the body;
and as many of these cases were owing to what _Jeems_ called "that
bitter yerkin" of their boddices, he and I had much satisfaction in
relieving them, and giving them a moral lesson, by cutting their
stay-laces, which ran before the knife, and cracked "like a
bowstring," as my coadjutor said. One day a young lady was our care.
She was lying out, and slowly coming to. _Jeems_, with that huge
terrific visage, came round to me with his open _gully_ in his hand,
whispering, "Wull oo ripp 'er up noo?" It happened not to be a case
for ripping up. The gully was a great sanitary institution, and made a
decided inroad upon the _yerking_ system--_Jeems_ having, thanks to
this and Dr. Coombe, every year fewer opportunities of displaying and
enjoying its powers.
He was sober in other things besides drink, could be generous on
occasion, but was careful of his siller; sensitive to fierceness
("we're uncommon _zeelyous_ the day," was a favourite phrase when any
church matter was stirring) for the honour of his church and minister,
and to his too often worthless neighbours a perpetual moral protest
and lesson--a living epistle. He dwelt at the head of big Lochend's
Close in the Canongate, at the top of a long stair--ninety-six steps,
as I well know--where he had dwelt, all by himself, for
five-and-thirty years, and where, in the midst of all sorts of
flittings and changes, not a day opened or closed without the
well-known sound of _Jeems_ at his prayers,--his "exercise,"--at "the
Books." His clear, fearless, honest voice in psalm and chapter, and
strong prayer, came sounding through that wide "_land_," like that of
one crying in the wilderness.
_Jeems_ and I got great friends; he called me John, as if he was my
grandfather; and though as plain in speech as in feature, he was never
rude. I owe him much in many ways. His absolute downrightness and
_yaefauldness_; his energetic, unflinching fulfilment of his work; his
rugged, sudden tenderness; his look of sturdy age, as the thick
silver-white hair lay on his serious and weatherworn face, like
moonlight on a stout old tower; his quaint Old Testament exegetics,
his lonely and contented life, his simple godliness,--it was no small
privilege to see much of all this.
But I must stop. I forget that you didn't know him; that he is not
your _Jeems_. If it had been so, you would not soon have wearied of
telling or of being told of the life and conversation of this "fell
body." He was not communicative about his early life. He would
sometimes speak to me about "_her_," as if I knew who and where she
was, and always with a gentleness and solemnity unlike his usual gruff
ways. I found out that he had been married when young, and that "she"
(he never named her) and their child died on the same day,--the day of
its birth. The only indication of married life in his room, was an old
and strong cradle, which he had cut down so as to rock no more, and
which he made the depository of his books--a queer collection.
I have said that he had what he called, with a grave smile, _family_
worship, morning and evening, never failing. He not only sang his
psalm, but gave out or chanted _the line_ in great style; and on
seeing me one morning surprised at this, he said, "Ye see John, _oo_,"
meaning himself and his wife, "began that way." He had a firm, true
voice, and a genuine though roughish gift of singing, and being
methodical in all things, he did what I never heard of in any one
else,--he had seven fixed tunes, one of which he sang on its own set
day. Sabbath morning it was _French_, which he went through with great
_birr_. Monday, _Scarborough_, which, he said, was like my father
cantering. Tuesday, _Coleshill_, that soft exquisite air,--monotonous
and melancholy, soothing and vague, like the sea. This day, Tuesday,
was the day of the week on which his wife and child died, and he
always sang more verses then than on any other. Wednesday was _Irish_;
Thursday, _Old Hundred_; Friday, _Bangor_; and Saturday, _Blackburn_,
that humdrummest of tunes, "as long, and lank, and lean, as is the
ribbed sea-sand." He could not defend it, but had some secret reason
for sticking to it. As to the evenings, they were just the same tunes
in reversed order, only that on Tuesday night he sang _Coleshill_
again, thus dropping _Blackburn_ for evening work. The children could
tell the day of the week by _Jeems's_ tune, and would have been as
much astonished at hearing _Bangor_ on Monday, as at finding St.
Giles's half-way down the Canongate.
I frequently breakfasted with him. He made capital porridge, and I
wish I could get such butter-milk, or at least have such a relish for
it, as in those days. Jeems is away--gone over to the majority; and I
hope I may never forget to be grateful to the dear and queer old man.
I think I see and hear him saying his grace over our bickers with
their _brats_ on, then taking his two books out of the cradle and
reading, not without a certain homely majesty, the first verse of the
99th Psalm,
"Th' eternal Lord doth reign as king,
Let all the people quake;
He sits between the cherubims,
Let th' earth be mov'd and shake;"
then launching out into the noble depths of _Irish_. His chapters were
long, and his prayers short, very scriptural, but by no means
stereotyped, and wonderfully real, _immediate_, as if he was near Him
whom he addressed. Any one hearing the sound and not the words, would
say, "That man is speaking to some one who is with him--who is
present,"--as he often said to me, "There's nae glide dune, John, till
ye get to close _grups_."
Now, I dare say you are marvelling--_first_, Why I brought this grim,
old Rhadamanthus, Belzaleel, U. P. Naso of a doorkeeper up before you;
and _secondly_, How I am to get him down decorously in that ancient
blue greatcoat, and get at my own proper text.
And first of the _first_. I thought it would do you young men--the
hope of the world--no harm to let your affections go out toward this
dear, old-world specimen of homespun worth. And as to the _second_, I
am going to make it my excuse for what is to come. One day soon after
I knew him, when I thought he was in a soft, confidential mood, I
said: "_Jeems_, what kind of weaver are you?" "_I'm in the fancical
line_, maister John," said he somewhat stiffly; "I like its
_leecence_." So _exit Jeems_--_impiger, iracundus, acer--torvus
visu--placide quiescat_!
Now, my dear friends, I am in the _fancical_ line as well as _Jeems_,
and in virtue of my _leecence_, I begin my exegetical remarks on the
pursuit of truth. By the bye, I should have told Sir Henry that it was
truth, not knowledge, I was to be after. Now all knowledge should be
true, but it isn't; much of what is called knowledge is very little
worth even when true, and much of the best truth is not in a strict
sense knowable,--rather it is felt and believed.
Exegetical, you know, is the grand and fashionable word now-a-days for
explanatory; it means bringing out of a passage all that is in it, and
nothing more. For my part, being in _Jeems's_ line, I am not so
particular as to the nothing more. We _fancical_ men are much given to
make somethings of nothings; indeed, the noble Italians, call
imagination and poetic fancy _the little more_; its very function is
to embellish and intensify the actual and the common. Now you must not
laugh at me, or it, when I announce the passage from which I mean to
preach upon the pursuit of truth, and the possession of wisdom:--
"On Tintock tap there is a Mist,
And in the Mist there is a Kist,
And in the Kist there is a Cap;
Tak' up the Cap and sup the drap,
And set the Cap on Tintock tap."
And as to what Sir Henry[43] would call the context, we are saved all
trouble, there being none, the passage being self-contained, and as
destitute of relations as Melchisedec.
[Footnote 43: This was read to Sir Henry W. Moncreiff's Young Men's
Association, November 1862.]
_Tintock_, you all know, or should know, is a big porphyritic hill in
Lanarkshire, standing alone, and dominating like a king over the Upper
Ward. Then we all understand what a _mist_ is; and it is worth
remembering that as it is more difficult to penetrate, to illuminate,
and to see through mist than darkness, so it is easier to enlighten
and overcome ignorance, than error, confusion, and mental mist. Then a
_kist_ is Scotch for chest, and a _cap_ the same for _cup_, and _drap_
for drop. Well, then, I draw out of these queer old lines--
_First_, That to gain real knowledge, to get it at firsthand, you must
go up the Hill Difficulty--some Tintock, something you see from
afar--and you must _climb_; you must energize, as Sir William Hamilton
and Dr. Chalmers said and did; you must turn your back upon the plain,
and you must mainly go alone, and on your own legs. Two boys may start
together on going up Tinto, and meet at the top; but the journeys are
separate, each takes his own line.
_Secondly_, You start for your Tintock top with a given object, to get
into the mist and get the drop, and you do this chiefly because you
have the truth-hunting instinct; you long to know what is hidden
there, for there is a wild and urgent charm in the unknown; and you
want to realize for yourself what others, it may have been ages ago,
tell they have found there.
_Thirdly_, There is no road up; no omnibus to the top of Tinto; you
must zigzag it in your own way, and as I have already said, most part
of it alone.
_Fourthly_, This climbing, this exaltation, and buckling to of the
mind, of itself does you good;[44] it is capital exercise, and you
find out many a thing by the way. Your lungs play freely; your mouth
fills with the sweet waters of keen action; the hill tries your wind
and mettle, supples and hardens your joints and limbs; quickens and
rejoices, while it tests your heart.
[Footnote 44: "In this pursuit, whether we take or whether we lose our
game, the chase is certainly of service."--BURKE.]
_Fifthly_, You have many a fall, many a false step; you slip back, you
tumble into a _moss-hagg_; you stumble over the baffling stones; you
break your shins and lose your temper, and the finding of it makes you
keep it better the next time; you get more patient, and yet more
eager, and not unoften you come to a stand-still; run yourself up
against, or to the edge of, some impossible precipice, some insoluble
problem, and have to turn for your life; and you may find yourself
over head in a treacherous _wellee_, whose soft inviting cushion of
green has decoyed many a one before you.
_Sixthly_, You are for ever mistaking the top; thinking you are at it,
when, behold! there it is, as if farther off than ever, and you may
have to humble yourself in a hidden valley before reascending; and so
on you go, at times flinging yourself down on the elastic heather,
stretched panting with your face to the sky, or gazing far away
athwart the widening horizon.
_Seventhly_, As you get up, you may see how the world below lessens
and reveals itself, comes up to you as a whole, with its just
proportions and relations; how small the village you live in looks,
and the house in which you were born; how the plan of the place comes
out; there is the quiet churchyard, and a lamb is nibbling at that
infant's grave; there, close to the little church, your mother rests
till the great day; and there far off you may trace the river winding
through the plain, coming like human life, from darkness to
darkness,--from its source in some wild, upland solitude to its
eternity, the sea. But you have rested long enough, so, up and away!
take the hill once again! Every effort is a victory and joy--new skill
and power and relish--takes you farther from the world below, nearer
the clouds and heavens; and you may note that the more you move up
towards the pure blue depths of the sky--the more lucid and the more
unsearchable--the farther off, the more withdrawn into their own clear
infinity do they seem. Well, then, you get to the upper story, and you
find it less difficult, less steep than lower down; often so plain and
level that you can run off in an ecstasy to the crowning cairn, to the
sacred mist--within whose cloudy shrine rests the unknown secret; some
great truth of God and of your own soul; something that is not to be
gotten for gold down on the plain, but may be taken here; something
that no man can give or take away; something that you must work for
and learn yourself, and which, once yours, is safe beyond the chances
of time.
_Eighthly_, You enter that luminous cloud, stooping and as a little
child--as, indeed, all the best kingdoms are entered--and pressing on,
you come in the shadowy light to the long-dreamt-of ark,--the chest.
It is shut, it is locked; but if you are the man I take you to be, you
have the key, put it gently in, steadily, and home. But what is the
key? It is the love of truth; neither more nor less; no other key
opens it; no false one, however cunning, can pick that lock; no
assault of hammer, however stout, can force it open. But with its own
key a little child may open it, often does open it, it goes so
sweetly, so with a will. You lift the lid; you are all alone; the
cloud is round you with a sort of tender light of its own, shutting
out the outer world, filling you with an _eerie_ joy, as if alone and
yet not alone. You see the cup within, and in it the one crystalline,
unimaginable, inestimable drop; glowing and tremulous, as if alive.
You take up the cup, you sup the drop; it enters into, and becomes of
the essence of yourself; and so, in humble gratitude and love, "in
sober certainty of waking bliss," you gently replace the cup. It will
gather again,--it is for ever gathering; no man, woman, or child ever
opened that chest, and found no drop in the cup. It might not be the
very drop expected; it will serve their purpose none the worse, often
much the better.
And now, bending down, you shut the lid, which you hear locking itself
afresh against all but the sacred key. You leave the now hallowed
mist. You look out on the old familiar world again, which somehow
looks both new and old. You descend, making your observations over
again, throwing the light of the present on the past; and past and
present set against the boundless future. You hear coming up to you
the homely sounds--the sheepdog's bark, "the cock's shrill
clarion"--from the farm at the hill-foot; you hear the ring of the
blacksmith's _study_, you see the smoke of his forge; your mother's
grave has the long shadows of evening lying across it, the sunlight
falling on the letters of her name, and on the number of her years;
the lamb is asleep in the bield of the infant's grave. Speedily you
are at your own door. You enter with wearied feet, and thankful heart;
you shut the door, and you kneel down and pray to your Father in
heaven, the Father of lights, your reconciled Father, the God and
Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and our God and Father in
and through him. And as you lie down on your own delightful bed,
before you fall asleep, you think over again your ascent of the Hill
Difficulty,--its baffling heights, its reaches of dreary moorland, its
shifting gravel, its precipices, its quagmires, its little wells of
living waters near the top, and all its "dread magnificence;" its
calm, restful summit, the hush of silence there, the all-aloneness of
the place and hour; its peace, its sacredness, its divineness. You see
again the mist, the ark, the cup, the gleaming drop, and recalling the
sight of the world below, the earth and all its fulness, you say to
yourself,--
"These are thy glorious works, Parent of good,
Almighty, thine this universal frame,
Thus wondrous fair; Thyself how wondrous then!
Unspeakable, who sitt'st above these heavens."
And finding the burden too heavy even for these glorious lines, you
take refuge in the Psalms--
"Praise ye the Lord.
Praise ye the Lord from the heavens: praise him in the heights.
Praise him in the firmament of his power.
Praise ye him, all his angels: praise ye him, all his hosts.
Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light.
Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps;
Fire and hail; snow and vapour; stormy wind fulfilling his word:
Mountains, and all hills; fruitful trees, and all cedars;
Beasts, and all cattle; creeping things, and flying fowl:
Kings of the earth, and all people; princes and all judges of the
earth:
Both young men and maidens; old men and children:
Let them praise the name of the Lord:
For his name alone is excellent; his glory is above the earth and
heaven.
Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord.
Bless the Lord, O my soul!"
I need hardly draw the moral of this, our somewhat _fancical_
exercitation and exegesis. You can all make it out, such as it is. It
is the toil, and the joy, and the victory in the search of truth; not
the taking on trust, or learning by rote, not by heart, what other men
count or call true; but the vital appropriation, the assimilation of
truth to ourselves, and of ourselves to truth. All truth is of value,
but one truth differs from another in weight and in brightness, in
worth; and you need not me to tell you that spiritual and eternal
truth, the truth as it is in Jesus, is the best. And don't think that
your own hand has gotten you the victory, and that you had no unseen,
and it may be unfelt and unacknowledged hand guiding you up the hill.
Unless the Lord had been at and on your side, all your labour would
have been in vain, and worse. No two things are more inscrutable or
less uncertain than man's spontaneity and man's helplessness,--Freedom
and Grace as the two poles. It is His doing that you are led to the
right hill and the right road, for there are other Tintocks, with
other kists, and other drops. Work out, therefore, your own knowledge
with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you both to
will and to do, and to know of His good pleasure. There is no
explaining and there is no disbelieving this.
And now, before bidding you good-bye, did you ever think of the
spiritual meaning of the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of
fire by night, as connected with our knowledge and our ignorance, our
light and darkness, our gladness and our sorrow? The everyday use of
this divine alternation to the wandering children of Israel, is plain
enough. Darkness is best seen against light, and light against
darkness; and its use, in a deeper sense of keeping for ever before
them the immediate presence of God in the midst of them, is not less
plain; but I sometimes think, that we who also are still in the
wilderness, and coming up from our Egypt and its fleshpots, and on our
way let us hope, through God's grace, to the celestial Canaan, may
draw from these old-world signs and wonders, that, in the mid-day of
knowledge, with daylight all about us, there is, if one could but look
for it, that perpetual pillar of cloud--that sacred darkness which
haunts all human knowledge, often the most at its highest noon; that
"look that threatens the profane;" that something, and above all, that
sense of _Some One_,--that Holy One, who inhabits eternity and its
praises, who makes darkness His secret place, His pavilion round
about, darkness and thick clouds of the sky.
And again, that in the deepest, thickest night of doubt, of fear, of
sorrow, of despair; that then, and all the most then--if we will but
look in the right _airt_, and with the seeing eye and the
understanding heart--there may be seen that Pillar of fire, of light
and of heat, to guide and quicken and cheer; knowledge and love, that
everlasting love which we know to be the Lord's. And how much better
off are we than the chosen people; their pillars were on earth, divine
in their essence, but subject doubtless to earthly perturbations and
interferences; but our guiding light is in the heavens, towards which
we take earnest heed that we are journeying.
"Once on the raging seas I rode,
The storm was loud, the night was dark;
The ocean yawned, and rudely blowed
The wind that toss'd my foundering bark.
Deep horror then my vitals froze,
Death-struck, I ceased the tide to stem,
When suddenly a star arose,
It was the Star of Bethlehem!
It was my guide, my light, my all,
It bade my dark foreboding cease;
And through the storm and danger's thrall
It led me to the port in peace.
Now safely moored, my perils o'er,
I'll sing first in night's diadem,
For ever and for evermore
The Star, the Star of Bethlehem!"
_John Brown._