The proclamation was as a stunning blow on the forehead of the
Covenanters, and for the next two Sabbaths Mr Swinton was plainly in
prayer a weighed down and sorrowful-hearted man, but he said nothing in
his discourses that particularly affected the marrow of that sore and
solemn business. On the Friday night, however, before the last Lord's
day of that black October, he sent for my brother, who was one of his
elders, and told him that he had received a mandatory for conformity to
the proclamation, and to acknowledge the prelatic reprobation that the
King's government had introduced into the church; but that it was his
intention, strengthened of the Lord, to adhere to his vows and
covenants, even to the uttermost, and not to quit his flock, happen what
would.
"The beild of the kirk and the manse," said he, "being temporalities,
are aneath the power and regulation of the earthly monarch; but in the
things that pertain to the allegiance I owe to the King of Kings, I will
act, with His heartening, the part of a true and loyal vassal."
This determination being known throughout the parish, and the first of
November being the last day allowed for conforming, on the Sabbath
preceding we had a throng kirk and a solemneezed congregation. According
to their wonted custom, the men, before the hour of worship, assembled
in the kirk-yard, and there was much murmuring and marvelling among us,
that nobody in all the land would stand forth to renew the Covenant, as
was done in the year thirty-eight; and we looked around and beheld the
green graves of many friends that had died since the great day of the
covenanting, and we were ashamed of ourselves and of our time, and
mourned for the loss of the brave spirits which, in the darkness of His
mysterious wisdom, the Lord had taken away.
The weather, for the season, was bright and dry; and the withered leaf
still hung here and there on the tree, so that old and young, the infirm
and the tender, could come abroad; and many that had been bed-rid were
supported along by their relations to hear the word of Truth, for the
last time, preached in the house of God.
Mr Swinton came, followed by his wife and family. He was, by this time,
a man well stricken in years, but Mrs Swinton was of a younger
generation; and they had seven children,--Martha, the eldest, a fine
lassie, was not passing fourteen years of age. As they came slowly up
the kirk-stile, we all remarked that the godly man never lifted his eyes
from the ground, but came along perusing, as it were, the very earth for
consolation.
The private door which, at that epoch, led to the minister's seat and
the pulpit, was near to where the bell-rope hung on the outer wall, and
as the family went towards it, one of the elders stepped from the plate
at the main door to open it. But after Mrs Swinton and the children were
gone in, the minister, who always stopped till they had done so, instead
of then following, paused and looked up with a compassionate aspect, and
laying his hand on the shoulder of old Willy Shackle, who was ringing
the bell, he said,--
"Stop, my auld frien,--they that in this parish need a bell this day to
call them to the service of their Maker winna come on the summons o'
yours."
He then walked in; and the old man, greatly affected, mounted the stool,
and tied up the rope to the ring in the wall in his usual manner, that
it might be out of the reach of the school weans. "But," said he, as he
came down, "I needna fash; for after this day little care I wha rings
the bell; since it's to be consecrat to the wantonings o' prelacy, I wis
the tongue were out o' its mouth and its head cracket, rather than that
I should live to see't in the service of Baal and the hoor o' Babylon."
After all the congregation had taken their seats, Mr Swinton rose and
moved towards the front of the pulpit, and the silence in the church was
as the silence at the martyrdom of some holy martyr. He then opened THE
BOOK, and having given out the ninety-fourth psalm, we sang it with
weeping souls; and during the prayer that followed there was much
sobbing and lamentations, and an universal sorrow. His discourse was
from the fifth chapter of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, verse first, and
first clause of the verse; and with the tongue of a prophet, and the
voice of an apostle, he foretold, as things already written in the
chronicles of the kingdom, many of those sufferings which afterwards
came to pass. It was a sermon that settled into the bottom of the hearts
of all that heard it, and prepared us for the woes of the vial that was
then pouring out.
At the close of the discourse, when the precentor rose to read the
remembering prayer, old Ebenezer Muir, then upwards of fourscore and
thirteen, who had been brought into the church on a barrow by two of his
grandsons, and was, for reason of his deafness, in the bench with the
elders, gave him a paper, which, after rehearsing the names of those in
distress and sickness, he read, and it was "The persecuted kirk of
SCOTLAND."
"If I forget thee, O Jerusalem! let my right hand forget her cunning,"
cried Mr Swinton at the words, with an inspiration that made every heart
dirl; and surely never was such a prayer heard as that with which he
followed up the divine words.
Then we sang the hundred and fortieth psalm, at the conclusion of which
the minister came again to the front of the pulpit, and with a calm
voice, attuned to by ordinare solemnity, he pronounced the blessing;
then, suddenly turning himself, he looked down to his family and said,
"The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son
of man hath not where to lay his head." And he covered his face with
his hands, and sat down and wept.
Never shall I forget the sound which rose at that sight; it was not a
cry of woe, neither was it the howl of despair, nor the sob of sorrow,
nor the gurl of wrath, nor the moan of anguish, but a deep and dreadful
rustling of hearts and spirits, as if the angel of desolation, in
passing by, had shaken all his wings.
The kirk then began to skail; and when the minister and his family came
out into the kirk-yard, all the heads of families present, moved by some
sacred instinct from on high, followed them with one accord to the
manse, like friends at a burial, where we told them, that whatever the
Lord was pleased to allow to ourselves, a portion would be set apart for
His servant. I was the spokesman on that occasion, and verily do I think
that, as I said the words, a glorious light shone around me, and that I
felt a fanning of the inward life, as if the young cherubims were
present among us, and fluttering their wings with an exceeding great joy
at the piety of our kind intents.
So passed that memorable Sabbath in our parish; and here I may relate,
that we had the satisfaction and comfort to know, in a little time
thereafter, that the same Christian faithfulness with which Mr Swinton
adhered to his gospel-trusts and character, was maintained on that day
by more than three hundred other ministers, to the perpetual renown of
our national worth and covenanted cause. And therefore, though it was an
era of much sorrow and of many tears, it was thus, through the
mysterious ways of Providence, converted into a ground of confidence in
our religion, in so much that it may be truly said, out of the ruins and
the overthrow of the first presbyterian church the Lord built up among
us a stronghold and sanctuary for his truth and law.