Part 9

During this address several stalwart fighters were seen to nod to one another, and one went the length of slapping his leg, and already the moderator had acquired the respect of his turbulent congregation. The handsaw arose and proposed his candidate, and almost immediately attacked the other party. “Sit down, sir,” said the moderator, “you're out of order,” and after a brief stare of amazement and a measuring of the force against him, the handsaw gave a glance around and collapsed. A candidate was proposed from the other side, but his name was hardly mentioned before the mover commenced to refer to the handsaw. “You are out of order,” said the moderator; “not another word,” and, although the female leader of that side nodded to him to go on, he thought better, and also collapsed. Then an astute old strategist at the back, who had embroiled many a meeting, and who was sitting with a law book in his hand, proposed that they should delay the election until another meeting. “That motion,” said the moderator, “I shall not receive. We have not met to delay; we have met to vote.” Whereupon another Scot arose and stated that he had risen to a point of order, which is always the excuse by which the proceedings can be interrupted. “What,” he said, “I want to know is this: Is it regular to vote when there was no notice given that the voting was to take place?” “There was notice given,” said the moderator; “sit down in your place.” “Can I not object?” he said. “No,” he said, “you can't.” He looked around the meeting. “What,” he said, “is the use of being a Presbyterian if I am not allowed to object? I might as well be an Episcopalian.” The moderator, still standing, eyed him, and said: “Are you going to sit down or are you not?” “Do you order me to sit down in your private or in your public capacity?” said the recalcitrant. “As a man or as a moderator?” For nothing delights a Scot more than to make this contrast between public and private capacity, like the Scotch magistrate, who said, “In my public capacity I fine you five shillings for the assault; in my private capacity I would have done the same myself.” “As moderator,” said the minister, “I command you to take your place.” “I consent--I consent,” said the Scot, with infinite relish, like a man who had had a wrestling match and had been fairly beaten, and he leant back to a friend behind, saying, “Sall, he's a lad, the moderator,” for this is the way in which a man wins respect from Scots. In a moment he had risen again. “Moderator,” he said, “ye commanded me in yir official capacity to sit doon, and I obeyed, but”--and there was a silence through the church--“I'll no sit down for that woman,” indicating the elder's wife. “She would turn round and order me to sit down as if I had been her husband, but, moderator,” he said, “I thank the Almichty I'm not.”

Greatly cheered by this episode, the congregation proceeded to vote, the leaders taking objections to different voters, which were all overruled by the moderator, who was now going from strength to strength. And then at last a minister was elected by a large majority. “Now,” said the moderator, “you've had a fair fight and a year's argument, and there is not a privilege you have not used, and you have done a thousand things you had no right to do, and I appeal to the minority to agree with the majority, as Scots ought to do when they have had their rights.” Whereupon the handsaw arose and declared that he was never prouder of the Scotch Church than he had been during the last year, and that in all his life he had never spent a happier time. “We've had a grand argument and richt stand up fecht, and now,” he said, “I'm willing, for masel, and I speak for my friends, to accept the minister that's been elected, for I consider him to be a soond preacher and vary spiritual in the exercises. The fact is,” he added, “I would have been content with him at ony time, but it would have been a peety to have had an immediate election and to have missed this year. When he comes he'll have my hearty support, and I'm willing to agree that he should have a proper stipend, and that the manse be papered and painted and put in order for his coming.” As he sat down he could be heard over all the church saying to himself with immense satisfaction, “It's been a michty time, and the law's been well laid down this nicht.” The minister gave out the Psalm--

“How good a thing it is, and How becoming well, To gather such as brethren are In unity to dwell!”

Which was sung with immense spirit, and, after the benediction, every man whom the minister had ordered to sit down came up and shook hands with him, assuring him that they knew all the time that he was right, and that they respected him for his ability. They also entreated him to come and administer the sacrament before the new minister arrived, believing that a man who could rule with so firm a hand would be an acceptable preacher of the gospel.

XVI.--AN EXPERT IN HERESY

EVERY country has its own sports, and Scotland has golf, but golf only satisfies the lighter side of the Scots; the graver side of the Scot finds its exercise in the prosecution of a heretic. Nothing so delights this theological and argumentative people as a heresy hunt, and they have no more ill-will to a heretic than sportsmen have to a fox. It sometimes occurs to me that they dally with cases in order that they may be prolonged, and that the sportsmen may have a good run after the fox. I have even dared to think that they would be willing to preserve heretics as foxes are preserved in hunting counties in order that they might have a good time now and again. Every one throws himself into a heresy case, from the highest to the lowest, from the Duke in his castle to the shepherd on the hills, from the lawyer in his office to the railway guard in his van. They all read about it and form their opinion, and take sides and watch the event, and the issue of the case is a national incident. From the conflict of wits, in which the hardest heads have tried conclusions on the deepest subjects, the people return to business shrewder than ever, more confident and self-satisfied.

We had missed the connexion, and the North train had gone fifteen minutes ago, and how I was to reach the station of Pitrodie that night was a question beyond solution. The station master could give no help, and only suggested that I might sleep at the inn and take the morning train, but in that case I would have been too late for the funeral to which I was going. When he heard the nature of my errand he bestirred himself with much more zeal, for, although a Scot may not facilitate your journey for a marriage, which he regards as an event of very doubtful utility, and associated with little geniality, he is always ready to assist you to a funeral to which the heart of the Scotch people goes out with pathetic interest.

“Would you mind travelling in the guard's van of a luggage train and ye would be in fine time?”

On the contrary, I would be delighted, for I had never travelled in such circumstances, and the guard's van would be a pleasant variety upon a third-class carriage.

The guard received me with considerable cordiality and gave me his seat in the van, which was decorated with pictures of kirks and eminent divines. For a while he was engaged with various duties, shunting trucks and making up his train, but after we had started and were out upon the line he came and placed himself opposite.

“Now,” he said, “we've a run of twenty miles, and it's not likely we'll be interrupted, for the rails are clear at this time of night, and we're an express goods. I regard it,” he said, “as a providence that ye lost yer train, for if I'd been asked what I would like this very nicht I would ha said, 'Gie me a minister.'”

When I expressed my pleasure at his respect for the cloth, and my willingness to be of any service to him, he waved his hand as one does who has been misunderstood. “It's no,” he said, “releegious conversation that I'm wantin', although I'm willing enough to have that at a time, but there's a point in the Robertson-Smith heresy case that I would like to have cleared up to my satisfaction.”

A tall and grey-bearded man, about fifty years of age, with a keen eye and a shrewd face, he leant forward from his place, and, with the light of the lamp shining on his face, he began: “Now, ye see, the first article in the libel against Prof. Robertson-Smith has to do with the construction of the Book of Deuteronomy,” but I will not inflict what he said, for it took ten miles of the railway to open up his point. As we rattled along the birling of the heavy break van was like music to words of sonorous sound--“Pentateuch,” “Mosaic Authorship,” “Confession of Faith.”

For another ten miles we discussed the length and breadth of the eminent Hebrew scholar's views till we reached a crisis, which happened also to be a junction on the railway. “One minute,” he said, “and we maun stop, for we're coming to the junction.” The point we were at was the place of the Song of Solomon in the Old Testament. “Now, I contend,” he continued, “that it hes to be read spiritually, and I've given three reasons. I've three mair, but I maun shunt the trucks. I'll be back in ten minutes, and ye'll not forget that the discussion is no closed but just adjourned, and I've the richt to give the other three reasons before ye reply.” And then, after the three had been given and thirty more, we parted as the day was breaking. At Pitrodie station he crossed the platform with me, and shook hands till my bones were almost broken.

“It's been a very edifying nicht, and I'll gie fair consideration to all your arguments. Mind ye, I'm proud o' the Professor, for he's a michty scholar, and I wouldna like to see him put out o' the kirk, but I'm jalousing that he's a heretic.” I stood at a turn of the road and saw the train pass, and my friend waved his hand to me from the back of the van, but I could see him sadly shake his head. He was still jalousing (suspecting) that Prof. Robertson-Smith was a heretic.

XVII.--THE SCOT AT AN ARGUMENT

IT is difficult for one nation to perfectly understand another, and there is a certain quality of the Scots' intellect which is apt to try the patience of an Englishman. It is said that an Englishman was once so exasperated by the arguing by a Scot, who took the opposite side on every subject from the weather to politics, that at last he cried out in despair: “You will admit at least that two and two make four,” to which the delighted Scot replied with celerity, “I'll admit naething, but I'm willing to argue the proposition.” It is not recorded whether the Scot escaped alive, but it is hardly possible to believe that he was not assaulted. You may be the most conciliatory of people, and may even be cleansed from all positive opinions--one of those people who are said to be agreeable because they agree with everybody; and yet a thoroughbred Scot will in ten minutes or less have you into a tangle of prickly arguments, and hold you at his mercy, although afterwards you cannot remember how you were drawn from the main road into the bramble patch, and you are sure that the only result was the destruction of your peace of mind for an afternoon. But the Scot enjoyed himself immensely, and goes on with keen zest to ambush some other passenger. What evil spirit of logic has possessed this race? an English person cannot help complaining, and why should any person find his pleasure in wordy debate?

From his side of the Tweed and of human nature the Scot is puzzled and pained by the inconsequence and opportunism of the English mind. After a Scot, for instance, has proved to his Southern opponent that some institution is absolutely illogical, that it ought never to have existed, and ought at once to be abolished, and after the Scot pursuing his victorious way of pure reason, has almost persuaded himself that a thing so absurd never has existed, the Englishman, who has been very much bored by the elaborate argument, will ask with a monstrous callousness whether the institution does not work well, and put forward with brazen effrontery the plea that if an institution works well, it does not matter whether it be logical or not. Then it is that a Scot will look at an Englishman in mournful silence and wonder upon what principle he was created.

The traveller no sooner crosses the border from the genial and irresponsible South than he finds himself in a land where a nation forms one huge debating society, and there is a note of interrogation in the very accent of speech. When an English tourist asked his driver what was the reason of so many religious denominations in Scotland, and the driver, looking down upon a village with six different kirks, answered, “Juist bad temper, naething else,” he was indulging his cynicism and knew very well that he was misinforming the stranger.

While it is absolutely impossible to make plain to an average Englishman the difference between one kirk and another in Scotland, yet every one has its own logical basis, and indeed when one considers the subtlety and restlessness of the Scots intellect he wonders, not that there have been so many divisions, but that there have been so few in Scots religion. By preference a Scot discusses Theology, because it is the deepest subject and gives him the widest sphere for his dialectic powers, but in default of Theology he is ready to discuss anything else, from the Game Laws to the character of Mary, Queen of Scots. He is the guardian of correct speech and will not allow any inaccuracy to pass, and therefore you never know when in the hurry of life you may not be caught and rebuked. When I asked a porter in Stirling Station one afternoon at what hour the train for Aberfoyle left I made a mistake of which I speedily repented. _The_ train for Aberfoyle--I had assumed there was only one train that afternoon, for this beautiful but remote little place. Very good, that was then the position I had taken up and must defend. The porter licked his lips with anticipation of victory, for he held another view. “_The_ train for Aberfoyle,” he repeated triumphantly. “Whatna train div ye mean?”--then severely as one exposing a hasty assumption--“there's a train at 3.10, there's another at 3.60, there's another at 6.30” (or some such hours). He challenged me to reply or withdraw, and his voice was ringing with controversy. When I made an abject surrender he was not satisfied, but pursued me and gained another victory. “Very good,” I said, “then what train should I take?” He was now regarding me with something like contempt, an adversary whom it was hardly worth fighting with. That depended on circumstances he did not know and purposes which I had not told him. He could only pity me. “How can I tell,” he said, “what train ye should go by, ye can go by ony train that suits ye, but yir luggage, being booked through, will travel by the 3.10.” During our conversation my portmanteau which I had placed under his charge was twice removed from its barrow in the shifting of the luggage, and as my friend watched its goings (without interfering) he relaxed from his intellectual severity and allowed himself a jest suitable to my capacity. “That's a lively portmanteau o' yours. I'm judging that if ye set it on the road it would go Aberfoyle itsel'.” When we parted on a basis of free silver he still implied a reproach, “so ye did conclude to go by the 3.10, but” (showing how poor were my reasoning faculties even after I had used them) “ye would have been as soon by the 3.50.” For a sustained and satisfying bout of argument one must visit a Scot in his home and have an evening to spare. Was it not Carlyle's father who wrote to Tom that a man had come to the village with a fine ability for argument, and that he only wished his son were with them and then he would set Tom on one side of the table and this man on the other place, and “a proposeetion” between them, and hear them argue for the night? But one may get pleasant glimpses of the national sport on railway journeys and by the roadside. A farmer came into the carriage one summer afternoon, as I was travelling through Ayrshire, who had been attending market and had evidently dined. He had attended to the lighter affairs of life in the sale of stock and the buying of a reaping machine, and now he was ready for the more serious business of theological discussion. He examined me curiously but did not judge me worthy, and after one or two remarks on the weather with which I hastened to agree, he fell into a regretful silence as of one losing his time. Next station a minister entered, and the moment my fellow-passenger saw the white tie his eyes glistened, and in about three minutes they were actively engaged, the farmer and the Minister, discussing the doctrine of justification. The Minister, as in duty bound, took the side of justification by faith, and the farmer, simply I suppose to make debate and certainly with a noble disregard of personal interests--for he had evidently dined--took the side of works. Perhaps it may seem as if it was an unequal match between the Minister and the farmer, since the one was a professional scholar and the other a rustic amateur. But the difference was not so great as a stranger might imagine, for if a minister be as it were a theological specialist every man in Scotland is a general practitioner. And if the latter had his own difficulties in pronouncing words he was always right in the text he intended. They conducted their controversy with much ability till we came to the farmer's station, and then he left still arguing, and with my last glimpse of that admirable Scot he was steadying himself against a post at the extremity of the platform, and this was his final fling: “I grant ye Paul and the Romans, but I take my stand on James.” Wonderful country where the farmers, even after they have dined, take to theology as a pastime. What could that man not have done before he dined.

In earlier days, the far back days of youth, I knew a rustic whose square and thick-set figure was a picture of his sturdy and indomitable mind. He was slow of speech and slow also of mind, but what he knew he held with the grip of a vice and he would yield nothing in conversation. If you said it was raining (when it might be pouring) he would reply that it was showery. If you declared a field of com to be fine he said that he had seen “waur” (worse), and if you praised a sermon he granted that it wasna bad; and in referring to a minister distinguished throughout the land for his saintliness he volunteered the judgment that there was “naething positively veecious in him.” Many a time did I try, sometimes to browbeat him, and sometimes to beguile him into a positive statement and to get him to take up a position from which he could not withdraw. I was always beaten, and yet once I was within an ace of success. We had bought a horse on the strength of a good character from a dealer, and were learning the vanity of speech in all horse transactions, for there was nothing that beast did not do of the things no horse ought to do, and one morning after it had tried to get at James with its hind legs, and then tried to bring him down with its fore legs, had done its best to bite him, and also manoeuvred to crush him against a wall, I hazarded the suggestion that our new purchase was a vicious brute. He caught the note of assurance in my voice, and saw that he had been trapped; he cast an almost pathetic look at me as if I was inviting him to deny his national character and betray a historic part of unbroken resistance. He hesitated and looked for a way of escape while he skilfully warded off another attack, this time with the teeth, and his face brightened. “Na!” he replied, “I'll no admit that the horse is veecious, we maun hae more experience o' him afore we can pass sic a judgment, but”--and now he just escaped a playful tap from the horse's fore-leg--“I'm prepared to admit that this momin' he is a wee thingie liteegious.” And so victory was snatched from my hand, and I was again worsted.

If the endless arguing of the Scot be wearisome to strangers and one would guess is a burden to himself, yet it has its advantages. It has been a discipline for the Scots mind, and the endless disputations on doctrine and kirks as well as more trifling matters like history and politics has toughened the Scots brain and brought it to a fine edge. When I hear a successful Scot speak lightly of the Shorter Catechism, then I am amazed and tempted to despise him, for it was by that means that he was sent forth so acute and enterprising a man, and any fortune he has made he owes to its training. He has been trained to think and to reason, to separate what is true from what is false, to use the principles of speech and test the subtlest meaning of words, and therefore, if he be in business, he is a banker by preference, because that is the science of commerce, and if he be an artizan, he becomes an engineer because that is the most skilful trade, and as a doctor he is spread all over the world. Wherever hard thinking and a determined will tell in the world's work this self-reliant and uncompromising man is sure to succeed, and if his mind has not the geniality and flexibility of the English, if it secretly hates the English principle of compromise, and suspects the English standard of commonsense, if it be too unbending and even unreasonably logical, this only proves that no one nation, not even the Scots, can possess the whole earth.

XVIII.--UPON THE LECTURE PLATFORM

THERE are four places where a man may lecture, exclusive of the open air, which is reserved for political demonstrations and religious meetings, and I arrange the four in order of demerit. The worst is, beyond question, a church, because ecclesiastical architects have no regard for acoustics, and a lecturer is apt to crack his voice yelling into the corners of churches.

People come to a church, also, in a chastened mood, and sit as if they were listening to a sermon, so that the unhappy lecturer receives little encouragement of applause or laughter, and, if he happens to be himself a clergyman, is hindered from doing anything to enliven the audience. Besides, the minister of the church will feel it his duty to introduce the leading members of his congregation after the lecture, and a reception of this kind in the vestry is the last straw on a weary lecturer's back. He cannot, however, refuse because he is a fellow professional, and knows that his discourtesy may be set to the debit of the minister. Next in badness is a public hall, because it is so bare and cheerless, and on account of its size is difficult to fill with an audience, and still more difficult with the voice. Drill halls, especially, are heart-breaking places, because they are constructed for the voices of commanding officers shouting “right wheel,” “march,” “fire,” and such like martial exhortations.

There is also another objection to halls from the lecturer's standpoint, and that is the accessibility of the platform. Usually there are two sets of steps, which the audience consider have been constructed in order that they may come on the platform in a body and shake hands with the lecturer. If a lecturer be a human being, he is always glad to see two or three of his fellow-creatures, especially if they say something encouraging, but just because he is a human being and has spoken for an hour and a half, he is apt to lose heart when he sees half of his large audience, say seven hundred people, processing in his direction.

It is on such an occasion that he is full of gratitude to a manager who will come in with his travelling coat and march the lecturer out at the back door, as a man in haste to catch his train or on any other pretence.