CONSECRATED PARENTS.
SOMEWHERE in or about his seventeenth year, my father passed through a
crisis of religious experience; and from that day he openly and very
decidedly followed the Lord Jesus. His parents had belonged to one of
the older branches of what is now called the United Presbyterian Church;
but my father, having made an independent study of the Scotch Worthies,
the Cloud of Witnesses, the Testimonies, and the Confession of Faith,
resolved to cast in his lot with the oldest of all the Scotch Churches,
the Reformed Presbyterian, as most nearly representing the Covenanters
and the attainments of both the first and second Reformations in
Scotland. This choice he deliberately made, and sincerely and
intelligently adhered to; and was able at all times to give strong and
clear reasons from Bible and from history for the principles he upheld.
Besides this, there was one other mark and fruit of his early religious
decision, which looks even fairer through all these years. Family
Worship had heretofore been held only on Sabbath Day in his father's
house; but the young Christian, entering into conference with his
sympathizing mother, managed to get the household persuaded that there
ought to be daily morning and evening prayer and reading of the Bible
and holy singing. This the more readily, as he himself agreed to take
part regularly in the same, and so relieve the old warrior of what might
have proved for him too arduous spiritual toils! And so began in his
seventeenth year that blessed custom of Family Prayer, morning and
evening, which my father practised probably without one single avoidable
omission till he lay on his deathbed, seventy-seven years of age; when
ever to the last day of his life, a portion of Scripture was read, and
his voice was heard softly joining in the Psalm, and his lips breathed
the morning and evening Prayer,--falling in sweet benediction on the
heads of all his children, far away many of them over all the earth, but
all meeting him there at the Throne of Grace.
Our place of worship was the Reformed Presbyterian Church at Dumfries,
under the ministry, during most of these days, of Rev. John McDermid--a
genuine, solemn, lovable Covenanter, who cherished towards my father a
warm respect, that deepened into apostolic affection when the yellow
hair turned snow-white and both of them grew patriarchal in their years.
The Minister, indeed, was translated to a Glasgow charge; but that
rather exalted than suspended their mutual love. Dumfries was four miles
fully from our Torthorwald home; but the tradition is that during all
these forty years my father was only thrice prevented from attending the
worship of God--once by snow, so deep that he was baffled and had to
return; once by ice on the road, so dangerous that he was forced to
crawl back up the Roucan Brae on his hands and knees, after having
descended it so far with many falls; and once by the terrible outbreak
of cholera at Dumfries.
Each of us, from very early days, considered it no penalty, but a great
joy, to go with our father to the church; the four miles were a treat to
our young spirits, the company by the way was a fresh incitement, and
occasionally some of the wonders of city-life rewarded our eager eyes. A
few other pious men and women, of the best Evangelical type, went from
the same parish to one or other favorite Minister at Dumfries; and when
these God-fearing peasants "forgathered" in the way to or from the House
of God, we youngsters had sometimes rare glimpses of what Christian talk
may be and ought to be.
We had, too, special Bible Readings on the Lord's Day evening,--mother
and children and visitors reading in turns, with fresh and interesting
question, answer, and exposition, all tending to impress us with the
infinite grace of a God of love and mercy in the great gift of His dear
Son Jesus, our Saviour. The Shorter Catechism was gone through
regularly, each answering the question asked, till the whole had been
explained, and its foundation in Scripture shown by the proof-texts
adduced. It has been an amazing thing to me, occasionally to meet with
men who blamed this "catechizing" for giving them a distaste to
religion; every one in all our circle thinks and feels exactly the
opposite. It laid the solid rock-foundations of our religious life.
After-years have given to these questions and their answers a deeper or
a modified meaning, but none of us has ever once even dreamed of wishing
that we had been otherwise trained. Of course, if the parents are not
devout, sincere, and affectionate,--if the whole affair on both sides is
taskwork, or worse, hypocritical and false,--results must be very
different indeed!
Oh, I can remember those happy Sabbath evenings; no blinds down, and
shutters up, to keep out the sun from us, as some scandalously affirm;
but a holy, happy, entirely human day, for a Christian father, mother
and children to spend. Others must write and say what they will, and as
they feel; but so must I. There were eleven of us brought up in a home
like that; and never one of the eleven, boy or girl, man or woman, has
been heard, or ever will be heard, saying that Sabbath was dull and
wearisome for us, or suggesting that we have heard of or seen any way
more likely than that for making the Day of the Lord bright and blessed
alike for parents and for children. But God help the homes where these
things are done by force and not by love!
As I must, however, leave the story of my father's life--much more
worthy, in many ways, of being written than my own--I may here mention
that his long and upright life made him a great favorite in all
religious circles far and near within the neighborhood, that at
sick-beds and at funerals he was constantly sent for and much
appreciated, and that this appreciation greatly increased, instead of
diminishing, when years whitened his long, flowing locks, and gave him
an apostolic beauty; till finally, for the last twelve years or so of
his life, he became by appointment a sort of Rural Missionary for the
four nearest parishes, and spent his autumn in literally sowing the good
seed of the Kingdom as a Colporteur of the Tract and Book Society of
Scotland. His success in this work, for a rural locality, was beyond all
belief. Within a radius of five miles he was known in every home,
welcomed by the children, respected by the servants, longed for eagerly
by the sick and aged. He gloried in showing off the beautiful Bibles and
other precious books, which he sold in amazing numbers. He sang sweet
Psalms beside the sick, and prayed like the voice of God at their dying
beds. He went cheerily from farm to farm, from cot to cot; and when he
wearied on the moorland roads, he refreshed his soul by reciting aloud
one of Ralph Erskine's "Sonnets," or crooning to the birds one of
David's Psalms. His happy partner, our beloved mother, died in 1865, and
he himself in 1868, having reached his seventy-seventh year, an
altogether beautiful and noble episode of human existence having been
enacted, amid the humblest surroundings of a Scottish peasant's home,
through the influence of their united love by the grace of God; and in
this world, or in any world, all their children will rise up at mention
of their names and call them blessed!