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So much space has been devoted to the labours
and opinions of Dr Guthrie, that little room is left for a consideration of
his writings. This, however, is less to be regretted, seeing that there are
very few in the religious world unacquainted with his works, which have
found a prominent place in English literature. As an author, he blossomed
somewhat late. His more notable works were written after he had attained his
fiftieth year. It was not until then that he permitted himself to enjoy any
measure of the otium cum dignitate, without which literary labours can
scarcely be carried on with either pleasure or profit. In addition to his
"Pleas for Ragged Schools," "Plea for Drunkards," and "The City: its Sins
and Sorrows," all of which have already been referred to in a preceding
chapter, Dr Guthrie has written "The Gospel in Ezekiel," (Edin., 1856),
"Discourses from Colossians," (Edin., 1858), "Speaking to the Heart," (Edin.,
1802), "The Way to Life," (Edin., 1862), "Man and the Gospel," (Edin.,
1865), "On the Parables," (London, 1866), and a great variety of
miscellaneous and able articles for the Sunday Magazine and other
publications. Without attempting to analyse his works in detail, we may say
generally that they are all permeated by earnest sympathy with the truths of
the gospel, that they exhibit a mastery of doctrinal distinction and
evangelical truth—that they are eminently practical and devout—and that they
are characterized by a liberality and toleration which might be thought by
the narrow-minded to border on latitudinarianism.
There is little of the letter that killeth, but
much of the spirit that giveth life, but perhaps the most distinguishing
characteristic of his writings, is their wonderful fertility, beauty, and
felicity of illustration. Similes and images occur on almost every page; and
these are not the more remarkable for their exquisite beauty, than for their
appropriateness, and being the fruit of his own observation and experience
as a traveller, as a philanthropist, and as a minister of the gospel. In
illustrations borrowed from the sea he is particularly felicitous. But sea,
air, wind, and indeed all the forces and features of external nature, are
alike amenable to his keen and glowing imagination. His "Gospel in Ezekiel"
has been described as "the most remarkable volume of sermons that has
appeared since Chalmers' Astronomical Discourses, for general popularity and
sustained fluency of composition." It would be difficult to give a better
idea of his style than the following extract from this work conveys:—
"One day the door of Egypt's palace is thrown
open, and Joseph—a model of beautiful manhood, mind in his eagle eye,
strength in his form, majesty in his manner, and on his countenance that
lofty look which bespeaks high virtue and integrity—enters, accompanied by
his father. The old man's step was slow and feeble; the old man's eyes were
dim with age; a few thin silver locks mingled with the snowy beard that
flowed down his breast, as he came forward leaning on Joseph's arm, and
bending beneath the weight of years. Struck by the contrast, and moved to
respect by the patriarch's venerable aspect, Pharaoh accosted him with the
question—'How old art thou?' Age naturally awakens our respect. 'Thou shalt
rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man.' That
beautiful and divine command touches a chord in every heart, and sounds in
harmony with the best feelings of our nature; and so a Greek historian tells
how in the pure and most virtuous days of the republic, if an old man
entered the crowded Assembly, all ranks rose to give room and place to him.
Age throws such a character of dignity even over inanimate objects, that the
spectator regards them with a sort of awe and veneration. We have stood
before the hoary and ivy-mantled ruin of a bygone age with deeper feelings
of respect than ever touched us in the marble halls and amid the gilded
grandeur of modern palaces; nor did the proudest tree which lifted its
umbrageous head and towering form to the skies ever affect us with such
strange emotions as an old, withered wasted trunk that, though hollowed by
time into a gnarled shell, still showed some green signs of life. Nor, as we
lingered beneath the shade of that ancient yew, could we look on such an old
tenant of the earth without feelings of veneration, when we thought how it
had been bathed by the sun which shone upon the cross of Calvary, and had
stood white with hoar-frost that Christmas night on which angels sing the
birth of our Saviour King. It is a curious thing to stand alone beside a
swathed, dark, dusty mummy, which some traveller has brought from its tomb
on the banks of the Nile, and to mark with wonder how the gold leaf still
glitters on the nails of the tapering fingers, and the raven hair still
clings to the mouldering skull, and how, with the arms peacefully folded on
the breast, and the limbs stretched out to their full extent, humanity still
retains much of its original form. But when we think how many centuries have
marched over that dead one's head—that in this womanly figure, with the
metal mirror still beside her, in which she once admired her departed
charms, we see, perhaps, the wife of Joseph, perhaps the royal maid who,
coming to give her beauty to the pure embraces of the Nile, received the
infant Moses in her kind protecting arms—-our wonder changes into a sort of
awe. Age, indeed, heightens the grandeur of the grandest objects. The. bald,
hoar mountains rise in dignity, the voice of ocean sounds more sublime on
her stormy shores, and the starry heavens sparkle with brighter splendour,
when we think how old they are—how long it is since that ocean began to
roll, or those lamps of night to shine. Yet these—the first star that ever
shone, nay, the first angel that ever sang—are but things of yesterday
beside this manger, where, couched in straw and wrapped in swaddling
clothes, a new-born babe is sleeping. 'Before Abraham was,' or these were,
'I am,' says Jesus. His mother's maker, and his mother's child, he formed
the living womb that gave him birth, and, ten thousand ages before that, the
dead rock that gave him burial. A child, yet Almighty God,—a son, yet the
everlasting Father,—his history carries us back into eternity; and the
dignities which he left, those glories which he veiled, how should they lead
us to adore his transcendant love, and to kneel the lower at his cross to
cry—Jesus! thy love to me is wonderful, passing the love of women; my soul
doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour."
Or take the following equally suberb blend of
imagery and every-day experience:—"Ere autumn has tinted the woodlands, or
the corn fields are falling to the reaper's song, or hoary hill tops, like
grey hairs on an aged head, give warning of winter's approach, I have seen
the swallow's brood pruning their feathers, and putting their long wings to
the proof and though they might return to their nests in the, window-eaves,
or alight again on the house-tops, they darted away in the direction of
sunny lands. Thus they showed that they were birds bound for a foreign
clime, and that the period of their migration from the scene of their birth
was nigh at hand. Grace also has its prognostics. They are infallible as
those of nature. So, when the soul, filled with longings to be gone, is
often darting away to glory, and, soaring upwards, rises on the wings of
faith, till this great world, from her sublime elevation, looks a little
thing, God's people know that they have the earnest of the Spirit. These are
the pledges of heaven—a sure sign that their 'redemption draweth nigh.' Such
devout feelings afford the most blessed evidence that, with Christ by the
helm, and 'the wind,' that 'bloweth where it listeth,' in our swelling
sails, we are drawing nigh to the land that is afar off; even as the reeds,
and leaves, and fruits that float upon the briny waves, as the birds of
strange and gorgeous plumage that fly round his ship and alight upon its
yards, as the sweet scented odours which the wind wafts out to sea, assure
the weary mariner that ere long he shall drop his anchor, and end his voyage
in the desired haven.
Such passages might be multiplied to any extent,
as they abound in every sermon. They are beautiful in themselves; and still
more so, when seen in the framework of their context, and read in the light
of the truth they are intended to illustrate. We give the following as fair
samples of hundreds more:—"With the Sabbath hills around us, far from the
dust and din, the splendour and squalor of the city, we have sat on a rocky
bank, to wonder at the varied and rich profusion with which God has clothed
the scene. Nature, like Joseph, was dressed in a coat of many colours
—lichens, grey, black, and yellow, clad the rock; the glossy ivy, like a
child of ambition, had planted its foot on the crag, and, hanging on by a
hundred arms, had climbed to its stormy summit; mosses, of hues surpassing
all the colours of the loom, spread an elastic carpet round the gushing
fountain; the wild thyme lent a bed to the weary, and its perfume to the
air; heaths opened their blushing bosoms to the bee; the primrose, like
modesty shrinking from observation, looked out from its leafy shade; at the
foot of the weathered stone the fern raised its plumes, and on its summit
the foxglove rang his beautiful bells; while the birch bent to kiss the
stream, as it ran away laughing to hide itself in the lake below, or
stretched out her arms to embrace the mountain-ash and evergreen pine. By a
very slight exercise of fancy, in such a scene one could see Nature, engaged
in her adorations, and hear her singing, 'The earth is full of the glory of
God.' 'How manifold are thy works, Lord God Almighty! in wisdom thou hast
made them all.'" "When in a sultry summer day the sky gets overcast, and
angry clouds gather thick upon its brow, and bush and brake are silent, and,
the very cattle, like human beings, draw close together, standing dumb in
their untasted pastures, and while there is no ripple on the lake, nor leaf
stirring on the tree, all nature seems struck with awe, and stands in
trembling expectation, then, when the explosion comes, and a blinding stream
of fire leaps from the cloud, and, as if heaven's riven vault were tumbling
down upon our head, the thunders crash, peal, roar along the sky, he has
neither poetry nor piety, nor sense, who does not reverently bow his head
and assent to the words of David, 'The voice of the Lord is full of
majesty.'"
"The voice of every storm that, like an angry
child, weeps and crys itself asleep—the voice of every shower that has been
followed by sunshine—the hoarse voice of ocean breaking in impotent rage
against its ancient bounds—the voice of the seasons as they have marched to
the music of the spheres of unbroken succession over the earth—the scream of
the satyr in Babylon's empty halls—the sons; of the fisherman, who spreads
his net on the rocks, and shoots it through the waters where Tyre once sat
in the pride of an ocean queen—the fierce shout of the Bedouin as he careers
in freedom over his desert sands—the wail and weeping of the wandering Jew
B|er the ruins of Zion—in all those. I hear the echo of this voice of God,
'I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it.' These words are written on every
Hebrew forehead. The Jew bartering his beads with naked savages—bearding the
Turk in the capital of Mohammedan power—braving in his furs the rigour of
Russian winters—overreaching in China the inhabitants of the. Celestial
Empire—in Golconda buying diamonds—in our metropolis of the commercial world
standing highest among her merchant princes—the Hebrew everywhere, and yet
everywhere without a country; with a religion, but without a temple; with
wealth, but without honour; with ancient pedigree, but without ancestral
possessions; with no land to fight for, nor altars to defend, nor
patrimonial fields to cultivate; with children, and yet no clod sitting
under the trees that his grandsire planted; but all floating about over the
world like scattered fragments of a wreck upon the bosom of the ocean—he is
a living evidence, that what the Lord hath spoken, the Lord will do.
"True to his threatenings, Almighty God will be
true to all his promises; and to both we can apply the words of Balaam—'Rise
up, Balak, and hear; hearken unto me, thou son of Zippor: God is not a man
that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent. Hath he said,
and shall not do it, hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?'"
"What, for instance, were the most tempting
banquet to one without appetite, sick, loathing the very sight and smell of
food? To a man stone-deaf, what the boldest blast of trumpet, the roll of
drums stirring the soldier's soul to deeds of daring valour, or the finest
music that ever fell on charmed ear, and seemed to hear the spirit on its
waves of sound up to the gates of heaven? Or what, to one stone-blind, a
scene to which beauty has lent its charms, and sublimity its grandeur,—the
valley clad in a many coloured robe of flowers; the gleaming lake, the
flashing cascade, the foaming torrent, the dark climbing forest, the brave
trees that cling to the frowning crags, the rocky pinnacles, and, high over
all, hoary winter looking down on summer from her throne on the Alps'
untrodden snows? Just what heaven would be to man with his ruined nature,
his low passions, and his dark guilty conscience. Incapable of appreciating
its holy beauties, of enjoying its holy happiness, he would find nothing
there to delight his senses. How he would wonder in what its pleasures lay;
and, supposing him once there, were there a place of safety out of it, how
ho would long to be away, and keep his eye on the gate to watch its opening,
and escape as from a doleful prison!"
Few men occupying the same position and rank in
life, have been greater travellers in their day than Dr Guthrie. Travelling
and angling were his two great resources for health and recreation. The
latter predilection he was able to gratify at pleasure, through the kindness
of Lord Dalhousie and other influential friends. As for his travels, they
extended to nearly every part of the United Kingdom and the Continent. With
the length and breadth of Scotland he was as familiar as with his own
parlour. The "wilds of Kincardineshire, the grim solitude of Glentilt and
Loch Lea, the shores of Angus, the wooded gorges of the burn, the fat, fair
valley of the Home o' the Mearns,' and many other Norland regions that are
a terra incognita to the majority of travellers, were quite within his ken.
As for the Continent, towards the close of his life, he made it a practice
to go there nearly every winter. He was frequently appointed by the Free
Church as a deputation to foreign churches. He attended the Waldensian Synod
at Turin in this capacity. A few years before his death he was appointed to
visit the American churches; but after having taken passage on hoard an
Atlantic steamer, he became unwell, and abandoned the voyage, to the regret
of the church both in Scotland and in America. Many reminiscences of his
travels have appeared in the Sunday Magazine, where they have been read with
great interest. In 1872, he printed a volume for circulation among his own
family and friends, containing recollections of a tour through Italy two
years before. Arrangements had been made for his visiting Rome in the winter
of 1872-73, with a view of relieving the Rev. Dr Lewis, minister of the
Presbyterian Church in the "Eternal City," but dangerous illness overtook
him. and rendered the journey impossible. |
