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WHAT, now, is the
conclusion of this whole survey?
In casting one's eye
upon a geographical globe, Scotland, away up toward the north pole,
looks like the most insignificant country in the world. Far removed
from the beaten highway of nations, it seems a mere speck of land, a
diminutive cape upon the outer edge of creation. But what an
influence has gone abroad from that once remote and inaccessible
corner of the earth, that ancient battle-ground of the Picts and the
Scots! What a light of history, of civilization, of liberty, has
shone forth with increasing brightness from that little Presbyterian
country!
What has produced
that strong influence, that clear light of modern civilization? It
would perhaps be unphilosophical to affirm dogmatically that
Presbyterianism alone has done it, for other agencies have had a
foothold and for ages have been at work there. It will be enough to
say what cannot in the light of history be well denied—that
Christianity has done it, and that, too, a Christianity of the
Presbyterian type. A Presbyterianized Christianity has made Scotland
what it is to-day—a land of Sabbaths, of Bibles and of education,
the very bulwark of Protestantism, the model of a free Church and a
free State, the home of an intelligent, thriving, happy people.
Still further, what
are the sons and the daughters of this thoroughly Presbyterianized
stock doing all around the globe to-day ? for there is a Scotland
abroad as well as at home. The race does not decay, though
transported to the ends of the earth, nor does its religion die. It
is found that the Presbyterianism which no fires of persecution
could ever burn from the bones of the fathers is a type of religion
so inwrought into the heart of their descendants that no exile from
home, however distant that exile may be, can drive it from their
memory. Wherever they go their Presbyterianism goes with them, and
flourishes alike amid Canadian snows and under tropical suns. With
it they are to-day laying the foundations of Christian empire in
Australia; with it they are advancing the standards of a Christian
civilization through the wilds of Africa; with it they are pushing
the streams of emigration and colonization through British America
and through India. Side by side with their Presbyterian neighbors
from the North of Ireland, they are to-day helping to extend and to
build up, even as their heroic fathers helped to found, republican
and Christian institutions, in every part of our own vast country,
from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
The Scotch and the
Scotch-Irish—par labile, fratntm—have been from the beginning
constituent factors in all our national greatness. They have
contributed not less to the general growth of the country at large
than to the growth of the Presbyterian Church within the country.
The Scotch and Irish Presbyterian has always been devoted to his
Church, but not less so to his country. By all his antecedents, and
the very principles of the religion in which he was born, he has
always been a patriotic citizen while being a true Churchman. There
is no more glorious chapter in American history than that which
tells how the heroic sons of Caledonia and Erin, after contributing
their toil to the first settlement of the country in many of the
thirteen colonies, gave themselves up to its service in the hour of
its peril and fought under Washington and Greene, Marion and Sumter,
Pickens and Anderson, through all the battles of the Revolution. Nor
did they falter under the varying fortunes of the war, from Saratoga
to King's Mountain, and from King's Mountain back to Yorktown, until
liberty and independence were won. Through all our history and over
all our institutions, civil and religious, social and educational,
the influence of Scotland and Ireland has been as potential as it
has been salutary. Nor can America ever forget that at the most
critical period of our history it was the Scottish statesman and
philosopher Witherspoon who in the halls of legislation stood side
by side with Hancock and Adams, Franklin and Jefferson, Rutledge and
Middleton, and signed that immortal document, the charter of our
national independence, which made him one of the fathers of our
country.
There is, in fact, no
stronger or more enduring type of national character in the world
than the Scottish; and when upon that native stock is engrafted what
is probably the strongest and most enduring religious system in the
world, that of Calvinistic Presbyterianism, the combination forms a
character which is wellnigh indestructible. It gives us a man who
will find his way or make one through the world, and wherever he
goes will leave his mark. Migrations and intermarriages will not
easily wear out such a type of character, and after generations the
hand of the "canny Scotsman" can still be traced in his work. And
where is the work or the human avocation in which the Scotch have
not excelled? Some go to foreign shores, and, though landing without
a dollar, they soon find an opening in trade or handicraft, and in
the end build up great mercantile houses to be carried on by sons or
grandsons after they are gone. Some have or develop a taste for
agriculture, and by thrifty economy add acre to acre until their
wide domains of the "choicest of the wheat and the corn and the
vine" surpass anything ever dreamed of in the home-land. Some build
up great manufacturing establishments and some aspire to the high
seats of political power, becoming judges on the bench or
legislators in Congress or governors of our State commonwealths.
Some in our own country have risen from small beginnings until they
became great grain-merchants or successful bankers and
railroad-builders, controlling millions of dollars. Some, leaving
their native land in early youth, have established permanent
banking-houses, like that of John and Thomas Coutts in London, an
institution now a hundred years old, whose present proprietor, Lady
Burdett Coutts, does honor to her name and Scottish ancestry by
spreading her magnificent benefactions around the globe.
Many Scotchmen at
home and their descendants in other lands have risen to the highest
distinction as medical practitioners or writers on medical science,
as illustrated in the great names of Abercrombie, Cullen, John and
William Hunter and Sir Charles Bell. As college presidents, and as
writers on philosophical, educational and theological subjects, the
eminent names of John Witherspoon of the earlier times, and that of
James McCosh of the later, may be instanced as fitting
representatives of Scottish influence in our own country. In recent
popular literature it is sufficient to mention George Macdonald and
Thomas Carlyle, Scotchmen by birth and education, whose widely-read
writings have made their names as household words in innumerable
habitations of the English-speaking world. Probably no man of our
generation has acquired a wider literary fame and more deeply
impressed his thoughts upon all current literature than this grim
North Briton Carlyle, a man whose idiosyncrasies of style and
character would be intolerable but for the brilliant originality of
his genius. He had the dye of a Scotchman deep within him, nor could
his long life in London nor all his German learning wear it out.
In the United States
it would not be easy to find any important town or any great city
where enterprising Scotchmen and Scotch-Irishmen have not made their
influence felt in one way or another. The extent to which these
elements have entered into all social, commercial, professional and
political life in the United States would be apparent to any one
reading any large list of the names of our prominent men and
families. This is especially striking in the recorded minutes of our
larger ecclesiastical bodies. Scarcely less conspicuous are such
names in any list of the men who have attained eminence in the
United States in the medical profession, in law, in statesmanship
and as educators. Amongst those who have attained to the Presidency
of the United States several belonged to this stock—as Jackson,
Polk, Buchanan and Grant—whilst a review of the lists of senators,
governors of States, judges and other high officials in the civil
service and distinguished officials in the army and navy will show
many names manifestly of the same parentage. Wherever found—whether
among the original immigrants or their descendants—these names
indicate an element which has constituted the very bone and muscle
of the country. They have helped to form the working power and the
intelligence of the nation. Nor has the nation ever had within its
veins a truer and a nobler blood.
While enterprising
and far-seeing Scotchmen have been winning the peaceful victories of
wealth and fortune and contributing to the intellectual and moral
power of our own and other nations, where can a region of the earth
be found in which Scottish blood has not flowed to maintain the
honor of Britain and advance the cause of Protestant civilization?
"Have not the snows of Canada, the sands of Egypt, the fields of
Spain and India, all drank it in like water?" The distinguished name
of Sir John Moore, who fell in Spain heroically battling against the
ambitious designs of Napoleon, and the still more distinguished name
of his former commander, Sir Ralph Abercrombie, who fell in Egypt at
the head of his battalions, stand high on the rolls of British
military glory. But from their Scottish boyhood they had been
trained to the service which they thus sealed with a hero's death.
The Scottish soldiery, bravest of the brave, marched to victory or
to death in the long struggle against Napoleon, and contributed
their full share to win the final triumph at Waterloo. The hardy
Highland regiments led by Sir Colin Campbell took part in the
desperate battles of the Crimean war from Alma to Balaklava. When
the gallant Havelock, in India, at the Sepoy rebellion of 1857,
marched his little army to the relief of Lucknow, it was with the
veteran remnants of Scottish regiments and under the martial
inspiration of the Highland music that the welcome deliverer came.
As illustrating the
distinction which the descendants of Scotchmen, not less than
Scotch-men themselves, have won in foreign lands, one striking
example may be adduced. One of the ablest generals of France during
the wars of Napoleon, Marshal Macdonald, was the son of a famous
Scotch Highland family, whose father, with twenty other Macdonalds,
fought for Charles Edward the Pretender in 1745 in the field of
Culloden, and they kept him concealed for many weeks. The son,
endowed with superior military genius, entered the French service in
1784 and rapidly rose to the highest honors of war and of the state.
For distinguished services rendered on many hard-fought fields he
became a peer of France, duke of Tarentum, minister of state,
ambassador to foreign courts and grand chancellor of the Legion of
Honor. After conducting several important campaigns and desperate
marches, now victorious and now defeated by some of the greatest
captains in Europe, he was present in 1809 at the decisive battle of
Wagram, and by the emperor was created on the field a marshal of
France with the words, "For this victory I am principally indebted
to you and my artillery guards."
Some one—Bulwer,
perhaps—has said that "past and present are the wings on which,
harmoniously conjoined, moves the great spirit of human knowledge."
The same truth is aptly expressed by Tennyson in the oft-quoted
lines,
"Yet I doubt not
through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of
men are widened with the process of the suns.',
This is the true
philosophy of history. Its great spirit is the divine intelligence,
and its increasing purpose is the accomplishment of man's good and
God's glory. No good impulse, past or present, is ever lost. No real
contribution to knowledge and goodness, small or great, can fail to
help forward the general movement of the world. The individual has
his place, the nation its force, in the onward march of
civilization.
Our aim in this
monograph has been to show the place and illustrate the force of
Scotland in this movement of the ages. Both the present and the past
bear witness to her power and show the unmistakable footprints of
her presence at home and abroad. Her name is graven on many a
monument of the past and written with a pen of adamant on some of
the most enduring institutions of the present. Though "small among
the thousands of Israel," she is not forgotten before God. She has
won a position of usefulness and honor which cannot be readily
vacated until the whole mission is fulfilled and the high destiny
achieved. She has borne her part in the brunt of the world's battle
and done her best in the defence of the Lord's kingdom, and she is
still in the front rank of the advancing columns of Christian
civilization. She has contributed her full share to educate the race
of men. She has given her influence to speed its progress, to
augment its intelligence, to ennoble its virtue, to refine and
dignify its enjoyment. That influence in every land has been on the
side of truth, of right, of liberty, of industry and economy, of
Christianity, of all public and private, social and domestic,
improvement. That influence has constituted one of the most marked
and essential eIenments of modern civilization—so essential, indeed,
that we should regard an educated man as scarcely up to the highest
and widest culture from whose curriculum of studies had been
excluded all knowledge of the history, philosophy, science,
literature and Christianity of Scotland.
Much has been said in
our day about the coming man and the coming woman. Much fruitless
speculation also has been suggested as to the coming destiny of our
great republic. It is safest to bide our time and await the
developments of the future. We may rest assured that all real
progress, whether for the individual man or for the nation, will be
in the direction of the lines already traced in the experience of
the past and made clear in the light of the present. It is always
safe to travel such well-known lines, and new ones are often
dangerous. We know from all the past, as well as from the word of
God, that it is religion that makes the greatest character and the
greatest nation, for religion is the deepest sentiment of our
nature, and religion brings us the nearest to God and to truth.
Scotland stands as an ocular demonstration to the world of what
Christianity in its highest Presbyterian style can do for a people
and make out of a people. There can be no mistake as to what it has
done in Scotland, both in the development of the individual man and
in the development of the national character.
In this day of much
material science and of much skepticism, of much distrust as it
regards the plainest teachings of the Bible and much disposition to
set aside religion altogether, the great nations of the earth,
confident of their superior culture, may be in no humor to profit by
the experience or to follow the example of God-fearing and Christ-honoring
Scotland, and yet for lessons of true practical wisdom it is evident
that they might go farther and fare worse. It is evident that they
will not much improve in either morals or manners by going back, as
some of them seem inclined to do, to the old paganism of the classic
Greeks and Romans. It remains historically true that the world
already has widely felt and largely profited by the influence of
Scotland. For its wide extent to-day, and its place among civilized
nations, the British empire owes much to the potential influence of
Scotland.
Scotland's place in
history is well assured—as much so, perhaps, as that of any other
portion of the globe. Its own history forms an integral part of the
history of the world, just as its realm and its people now
constitute an integral portion of the British empire. That history
can never be reversed, nor can it ever be forgotten among civilized
men. Its influence has gone as an important factor into the general
advancement of human civilization. It is easy to see that the world
is immeasurably better to-day on account of that influence than it
could have been without it. The world would not be what it is to-day
had there been no Scotland, no Scottish history, no Scottish
civilization. The general course of civilization is the resultant of
many different forces, some of them exerting their unspent influence
from the distant nationalities of antiquity, and others coming in
successively from the nations and the races that figure in modern
history. Of the latter class there has been no equal territory on
the map of modern Europe that has for centuries exerted a more
pronounced and unmistakable influence, and at the same time a more
beneficial and far-reaching influence, on the progress of knowledge,
the progress of education, the progress of human liberty and
Christian civilization, than this little realm of Scotland.
The religious history
of Scotland illustrates the great truth that the Lord can work by
the few as well as by the many. He assuredly did so when he selected
the narrow confines of Palestine for the abode of his chosen people.
Here were unfolded the stupendous mysteries of man's redemption, and
here was enacted the greatest drama of human history in the
immolation of the Son of God. Here, too, were set in motion all the
great forces of our Christian civilization. Who can deny that in the
long struggle for Christian liberty, for the vindication of the
rights of conscience, for the maintenance of the pure gospel, the
open Bible and the true Church, God chose Scotland, even as he had
chosen Palestine, as the spot where the truth should be asserted,
the battle fought out and the victory at last won? It was not a mere
accident, nor was it without a great purpose, that Christianity,
originating in little Palestine, on the western verge of the Asiatic
continent, after being driven across all Europe by the usurpations
and the persecutions of more than ten centuries, should at last make
its final stand for liberty and God's eternal truth on the
rock-bound shores of Scotland---another little territory, not unlike
Palestine, though washed by a larger and rougher sea. Nor was the
later battle in Scotland less important in the principles at stake
and in the results of good for all mankind than had been the battle
of Scotland so long before. In each case the victory was decisive,
and it was for all time.
The lesson derived
from the whole history of Scotland is a most significant and
instructive one. It shows what an energetic and intelligent people
apparently shut out from the greater world, and restricted to a
narrow and somewhat sterile soil, can do for themselves, and not
only for themselves, but for other nations. The territory on which
this history was enacted is exceedingly Iimited, but for that very
reason it all the better serves to illustrate the great law of
Christianity—that communities, like individuals, must not live for
themselves alone They can never reach the highest destiny except by
sharing the common lot of humanity and contributing their full quota
both of toil and of influence to swell the stock of the universal
good. Not only must the light be kindled, but it must be diffused
from a thousand radiating centres, in order to fill the world. It is
mainly within the last two or three centuries—that is, since the
Scottish people ceased to fight one another and turned their whole
energies to the arts of peaceful and productive industry—that the
Scottish history has furnished for the world this impressive and
memorable example of what a small population on a narrow territory
can achieve for themselves and for the rest of mankind. It is in
this history, especially in its sublime transition from desolating
and destructive wars to the reign of peaceful and productive
industry, that we find the very idea and model of modern progress
and of true Christian civilization.
No one can deny the
immense development of wealth and comfort in Scotland during the
last two centuries. In no part of the world---except, perhaps,
America—has there been a more marked progress in all that goes to
make up the convenience and the enjoyment of life. On every hand the
intelligent traveler discerns in Scotland the indications of growth
and improvement. Now, the significant and undeniable fact in the
whole history of Scottish progress, from the beginning till now, is
that it has been Christian progress. There is no type of
civilization in the world which is more emphatically and intensely
Christian than that of Scotland. Agnostic philosophers and skeptics
may deny its excellence or deride it if they please, but the fact of
its existence and of its chief characteristic as a distinctly
Christian civilization is a matter of history beyond any man's
denial. The universally recognized traits of Scottish character, the
world over as well as in Scotland, stand out in proof that Scottish
civilization is, and always has been, intensely Christian. What are
the striking elements of that character as exemplified in all the
history? They are honesty, thrift, economy, industry, moderation,
patience under toil, endurance, perseverance, reliability,
self-reliance, integrity, individual independence and personal
courage. What has given to the Scot that character? What has endowed
him with those stern, rugged and indestructible virtues? His
religion, his Bible, his Christianity, his Protestantism, his
Presbyterianism.
Now, it is easy to
demonstrate that these sterling attributes of Christian virtue, so
boldly proclaimed by Christianity at the beginning, are precisely
those characteristics which, when they come to be fully incorporated
in the life of any community or nation, must in time work out those
great results of individual character, civil order, social comfort
and national wealth which we have seen produced in Scotland.
Christianity is the true light of the world. Christianity is the
true life of the nation not less than of the individual.
Christianity is the true civilizer of nations. Christianity
contemplates mankind as a great hive of active workers and producers
of wealth. Christianity not only enjoins all those great economic
and industrial virtues which must create wealth, and with it
comfort, but it frowns upon every vice and every evil passion and
every bad habit and every sinful indulgence which might squander and
destroy wealth. It is impossible that any Christian community, large
or small, should fully live up to the requirements of the gospel
without in time becoming rich, virtuous, intelligent and happy.
Doubtless there are
social disorders in Scotland as in all other Christian countries.
Ignorance, vice, crime, intemperance, drunkenness, with their sad
entailments of poverty, insanity and pauperism, are still found
there in the crowded cities, as they are in all great centres of
population, but they are the exception, not the rule, of social life
in Scotland. They exist there, not because the Scotch are
Sabbath-keeping Christian people, but in despite of Christianity.
Christianity there, as everywhere else, is at war with these evils,
and Christianity, if fully and universally accepted by the people,
would soon abolish the evils. To a great extent it has always
abolished them, and where it has not gained a complete victory it
has at least held the evils in check by the authority of law and the
voice of universal public opinion. In no land under heaven is law
more supreme and public sentiment more pronounced and inflexible in
its judgment than in Scotland. Christianity has done much for a
nation when its intelligent public sentiment, embodied in the
permanent forms of law is unalterably against evil and the
evil-doer. This victory of righteous law and Christian authority the
Bible has certainly gained in Scotland.
After every deduction
has been made for lawlessness and folly, it can still be said that
the gospel not only holds its own, but is making headway, in the
land of Knox. The Scot has gone abroad to the ends of the earth, but
he has not thereby drained the life-blood of the stock at home nor
dimmed the light that to-day shines in Christian beauty over his
native soil. The reign of law, both natural and revealed, is
recognized and respected in Scotland. Quietness and peace,
righteousness and truth, industry and economy, social order,
individual liberty and public justice, prevail among the people;
while the rights of property, the rights of conscience, the security
of human life, the sanctity of divine worship and the claims of the
Lord's day are everywhere respected. We know not when or where the
millennial reign of the Messiah shall begin; but if all the earth
to-day stood as near the cross as Scotland stands, with as true a
gospel, as pure a worship and as thorough a Christianity, we should
think that this long-expected reign of peace and good-will among men
might be near—even at the door.
THE END. |
