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INTRODUCTION
TWO faces are in my
memory, and shall be as long as life lasts. The one is the face of
Alexander Duncan Grant, as he lay in death, satisfied. Yes,
satisfied—that is the word. As if, after life’s fever, having come to
the Great Repose, he had found it more than he had ever dreamed. For it
is written, “I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness.” The
other is the face of John Paterson Struthers, Grant’s choice friend,
seen the day Grant died. It is transfigured, shining—the face of one who
whole-heartedly, unselfishly, rejoices in his friend’s triumph : it is
the face of “the friend of the bridegroom.” The look, the prayers, the
words of Struthers in those days were shining indications of how a
Christian will face that sorest of earthly sorrows, when death rolls its
cold dark waters between his friend and him. For the friendship between
those two was of a superlative quality. It was intense and spiritual
like a flame. Their love for each other was very wonderful. They were
David and Jonathan, and called each other so; for when of a morning
Grant would spy from his window Struthers’s massive head appearing above
the shrubbery, “Here’s David,” he would say.
Grant died on 27th January 1914, falling dead in his garden, while
hastening from one duty to another. He was so remarkable a man, and so
beloved, that it was universally felt in the town of his service that
some account of how he lived and talked ought to be put in print. “I
hope,” wrote Struthers in his little paper, The Morning Watch, “God will
put it into some one’s heart to write a worthy book about him, that all
may know what manner of man he was.” And to write such a book, and make
it worthy, there was no one so fit as this inimitable Scotsman himself.
“Struthers on Grant” would have been, not only a joy to all who knew
these men, but a singularly sweet and touching book. It could not have
been otherwise than a permanent addition to our literature. And so,
under compulsion of the desire to commemorate his friend’s life and
gifts, he began to collect material—letters, stories, scraps of talk.
With others of his circle, I wrote out my reminiscences of Grant,
gathering them from my diaries and from the notes I had kept of our
talks together. With these, Struthers expressed himself as greatly
pleased, saying that they truly conveyed some idea of what Grant was;
and he read them to his friends and to his Bible class. Thus he
collected material, but he had not himself written a word, when
suddenly, like his friend, and within a few days of the first
anniversary of Grant’s death, he too passed the Frontier. In the midst
of his sermon in his church, while speaking of the love of God, the
All-embracing, he fell to the floor, and in a few hours had slipped
through the Goodbye Gate. It was as if Grant, satisfied with the swift
and easy manner of his own flitting, had desired the Father of our
Spirits to bring Struthers home the same way.
In the first number of The Morning Watch, which was issued after the
breaking out of war — the September number of 1914 — there had appeared
a drawing, here reproduced, with this comment from the editor’s pen on
the prayer “Lord, spare the green and take the ripe” which Richard
Cameron uttered among the whinnying swords at Ayrsmoss: “Does not the
prayer mean that we are willing God should take us away first, that they
who are not ready may have time to repent?” So Struthers prayed Richard
Cameron’s prayer, and God took him at his word. But when, on the
hillside above the town, we laid what was mortal of him that cold
January afternoon, the air about us throbbed to the cry of bugles and
the unceasing rattle of rifles, as men of the New Armies prepared
themselves for their Imperial Task. I thought then how war is a great
obliterator. I said to myself, “Pre-war men, and books about pre-war
events, are indifferent to-day. Men hear only the sinister voices of the
guns; so now that Struthers has gone, no one will tell what kind of man
Grant was, and of his beautiful life.” And then I thought how great a
pity it was, and, thinking so still, I have determined to essay
something with my pen, that his friends, who loved him, might have some
record of him, and that effect should, in some sort, be given to the
heart’s desire of Struthers.
But I cannot write of the one without writing also of the other. They
were so linked together in life, being, in Hebrew phrase, “men of the
knotted heart,” and they are so heavened together in our memories, that
they must needs walk together through these pages. And I must remember
what Struthers said to me, when we were talking of his writing about
Grant: “It must be as worthy and as true a book as I can make it, for I
have to meet him by and by, and tell him all about it.” Even so! I also,
in the Place where there are no graves, shall meet Struthers and Grant,
and therefore, as far as in me it be possible, I must make this book
Worthy and True.
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