I MIGHT wish to retain
for ever the mixed elements of youth and manhood that belong to middle
age,—to the season between twenty and forty,—but I never could seriously
desire to have been eternally a boy. A boy is a fruitful thing for a
thoughtful spectator to contemplate, but a somewhat barren and a very
imperfect thing to be. However, I was quite happy in my boyhood in the
measure that happiness belongs to that age, and have not a single
memorial sorrow to recall. At school I got my lessons carefully, kept at
the top of my class, or quite close to it, and enjoyed peg-tops,
marbles, "Robbers and Rangers," and other sports in their season, with
that healthy gusto that belongs to all normally constituted British
boys. I got my lessons carefully, but I cannot say that this proceeded
from any particular love either of books or lessons. I imagine it was
merely from the natural energy of my character, with an ambitious
impulse that did not like to be last, where there was a fair chance of
being first. I was put into a little world—the school— where action was
the law, and it was contrary to my nature to be lazy or to be last. I
was called upon to act for honour and glory with my equals, and I did my
best with decision. That was the whole secret of my school activity.
So wrote the Professor when
his hair was white, and, to some extent, his retrospective estimate of the
ten years' old schoolboy may have weight with us. But already feathery-
winged seeds of this and that great influence had floated within reach of
his receptive nature, and had found lodgment there, to sink deep and to grow
strong. Within the gable of a house just below the schoolroom in
Netherkirkgate was a statue of William Wallace. John looked out on it
daily—looked up to it as he came and went from school. The Scottish hero and
his story grew into his heart, the biggest lesson he received at Merson's
Academy. It was the nucleus from which radiated all his interest in Scotland
and her history. Wallace led easily to Bruce; and his knowledge of both was
stimulated by his excursions with Mr Blackie, who took the boy with him on
his holidays to fish near Kintore or at Pitmedden, in the Don, the Deveron,
or the Urie. The memory of Bruce clung to castle and cottage in these
districts, and Mr Blackie found eager audience for his tales of the national
champions. To he where Bruce had been, to look on Wallace day after day,
brought both quite close to John's imagination, which, indeed, they filled
for a time. Scotland began to be a holy land for him. Books which told of
her trials and resistance grew valuable, and we find him, as the years
passed, liking books better, and in his leisure hours poring over Walter
Scott's matchless stories, many of which had come out, and over Robert
Burns's glorious lyrics. The latter he first learned from his father. Mr
Blackie's many gifts included a rich and musical voice; he sang the old
Scottish ballads dear to our fathers, and every beautiful song by Robert
Burns which had found a native setting. Scottish song and Scottish story
took possession of the boy's heart before he left Merson's Academy.
When this happened he was
twelve years old. Mr Merson taught well, and John's equipment of Latin
enabled him to win a small bursary on his entry at Marischal College, which
he resigned in favour of a poorer student. But the grammar- schools and
private academies of that time considered the elements of Greek as no part
of their curriculum, and schoolboys crowded the classes of the University,
whose professors were expected to do mere usher's work for some eighty or
ninety students, whose age and acquirements made the title a mockery.
John was overpowered by the
transition from a class of twelve to a class of ninety. It was easy to make
head against the smaller number in the little Academy, where the capacity of
each boy could be quickly gauged; but the resources of ninety were less
obvious, and amongst them were many well-furnished scholars from the Burgh
Grammar-School, famous for its teaching of Latin, and naturally better
qualified to give its pupils the self-assertion needed for contest with
numbers. For three years he went to the College, learning his lessons at
home carefully, but without any ambitious dream of excelling the rest of his
class-mates.
Greek, indeed, was scarcely
taught in a manner to excite ambition; it was plodding work, and the boy
plodded conscientiously and modestly. The Natural Philosophy class, taught
attractively by Dr Knight, stimulated his interest and his courage more
effectively, and in the last year of his course he took the third prize for
mechanics and mathematics. This was due to the teaching, not to any native
inclination towards these studies; but he scarcely knew as yet what
interested him most, and he was glad to learn what was best taught.
For in Aberdeen during the
first quarter of this century the teaching was barren enough. Enthusiasm was
banished from both chair and pulpit. The professors were learned but
pompous; the preachers were Moderates, and turned out formal homilies, which
passed over listless congregations like gusts of an arid wind over a
withered plain -"clats o' cauld parritch," in homely contemporary phrase.
Aberdeen was chilled to its centre by Moderatism; it dulled every faculty
except those in the service of a dignified self-interest, which the
Moderates studiously proclaimed to be common-sense. The boy's three years'
curriculum left not a memory behind except this of gaining a. prize in
mechanics and mathematics.
At home the mother's place
was supplied by her sister Marion, and to her kindly care both Mr Blackie
and the children owed much. Of the ten children only six had
survived—Christina, John, Marion, James, Alexander, and Helen, the last a
baby when Mrs Blackie died. Mr Blackie had hardly emerged from the shadow of
his loss. He was more solitary than before,. and spent his leisure in his
study, where he read, and pored over drawers of plaster-of-Paris casts which
came from abroad. He fitted up a tiny furnace in his room, and here he fused
his metal and turned out clever replicas of his favourite medallions, which
he presented to his friends. John's presence was always welcome to him, and
the other children were glad when the favourite was at home, as the father
was brighter then and more accessible.
He decided that John should
be bred to the law, and found an opening for him in a friend's office in
Aberdeen, and in 1824 he began his apprenticeship. It lasted only a few
months, and of this short experience we have little record. In a letter to
his sister Christina, who was now at an Edinburgh school and spent her
holidays with the Tweedside cousins, he says: "I am now made a lawyer
totally. I like the occupation pretty well, and might like it very well, if
I could be sure of getting off at two o'clock." But lawyers' work presents
no complaisant pliability to young apprentices whose minds teem with other
interests. To please his father, John would have gone steadily through his
probation, had not a change of the most engrossing character come over his
whole attitude towards life. This was effected by two events, which struck
forcibly at his sensitive apprehension and roused the most vivid and serious
realisation. The first was the death of his little brother Alexander, who
had been ailing for some time. Four little brothers and sisters had been
taken before this, but his reflective powers had not till now reached the
stage when the full significance of death could excite and occupy them. His
kindness to the little ones was a household word; he was never known to be
cross in the nursery or irritable with one of the children. Sandy was seven
years old, and had been a favourite of the big brother of fifteen, and now
the large place filled by the household pet was vacant, and it chilled his
astonished heart, worsted in death's onslaught.. In this loss his affections
realised the terrific power of death; another event roused his mind to face
the fact and ascertain his own relation towards it.
His father had several
friends, wont to spend an evening hour or two in his study, to which John
was now admitted on equal terms. Amongst these was a young advocate, a tall
and energetic man, full of vitality, brimming over with good spirits and
laughter. He went into the country on some business connected with his
profession, slept at a little inn in damp sheets, took a chill, and died of
rapid consumption, disappearing from his accustomed place with a suddenness
which startled John as if a miracle had taken place before his eyes. The man
had been the very embodiment of overflowing health. There had been no
natural mounting up to full maturity and gradual decadence to death. In the
bloom and vigour of early manhood death smote him and laid him low. That old
men should die seemed plain enough; that weakly children should fade from
life was grievous, but not mysterious; but that, after all the preparation
which which youth must undergo to fit the man for life—that, so fitted and
equipped, on the very threshold of usefulness and experience, death might
leap from an ambuscade and lay him low—that pulled him up from all
easy-going acceptance of what today and to-morrow had to offer, since the
third day might find him face to face with the same dread experience.
His training hitherto had
provided him with no foundation of actual creed on which he might have built
some jerry philosophy wherein to hide his consciousness of "the terror that
walketh by day." His father was not what is called a religious man; his
mother, about whose memory there lingers some sweet perfume of piety, was
gone; his aunt was very doctrinal, but a Moderate. The boy had to do the
work himself, and had to discover for himself what death was and what life,
and in what degree the life that now is stands towards the life that is to
come. He became absorbed in his task. There could be no knowledge so
important as this, none indeed of any importance except this, and so every
other interest fell away. Some religious books adorned the circular table in
the parlour of state. They were such as respectability deemed suitable for
the parlour-table, and, except the hand which dusted them, nothing
interfered with their recognised functions. Boston's 'Fourfold State,' the
'Pilgrim's Progress,' Blair's 'Sermons,' were part of this parlour
furniture, and John seized the staid volumes, and pored over them at every
leisure moment. Shakespeare, Scott., and Burns were set aside, and grew to
his anxious young eyes mere fascinating fiends bent on luring him from the
one thing needful - his soul's salvation. The things of this world became
literally mere shadows to him, if not sins. He had begun to take dancing
lessons, that he might bear his part at the little social gatherings to
which he was invited. He left them off, declined all invitations, refused to
go to the theatre, abjured all lighter reading, questioned seriously the
need of graver reading, and came to the conclusion that since this world and
the things thereof must pass away, it was folly to be occupied with any of
its concerns. So even Rollin's 'Ancient History' was discarded as profane
study. No Bernard nor Bruno could have set the respective claims of this
life and the other in sterner antithesis. For through and through the
Calvinistic teaching runs the bitter strain of ingratitude for this
wonderful and blessed life on earth, for its wealth of good and perfect
gifts which come to us from the eternal Father. And this bitterness and
blindness are a direct inheritance from the monks of the middle ages, when
the times were often evil and hid the working of God's providence.
Had he lived before John
Knox, he would have settled the problem for himself, as did Bernard and
Bruno; but at a time when there was no shuffling off the mundane coil, he
could only hope to get himself saved with fear and trembling by bending
every faculty towards the contemplation of eternity and its claims. The
lawyer's office became intolerable. Sordid motives and dull handling of
money were the sum of its inspiration and activity, and he entreated his
father to remove him from an atmosphere so noxious to a soul in travail.
We can imagine the surprise
with which the clever, kindly father would contemplate a son of his so
abnormally affected, and it speaks volumes for his affection that he made no
demur, but consented at once that he should study for the ministry, and
enter himself as a student at the Edinburgh University, there to complete
his course in Arts before beginning his Divinity. No doubt that, with his
sanguine temperament, Mr Blackie foresaw a fine career for his gifted son:
his ready utterance, his attainments in natural philosophy, augured well for
his success. At that time, too, there were but four constitutional ministers
for the forty thousand inhabitants of Aberdeen, and these were pluralists,
most of them combining a chair in the University with a pulpit in the town.
The calling had its picked places, and John was sure to mount the ladder
which led to them.
Perhaps, too, Mr Blackie was
now better able to spare his son, for this year he had married again, and
his second resembled his first wife in many important qualities, more
particularly in cheerfulness and kindliness. She was a Mrs Patteson, the
widow of an officer in the army, and the daughter of a Mr Miller, a West
Indian merchant, who lived in Glasgow. Her mother had been James Watt's
daughter, and this influence in her home training had inspired her with a
great admiration of talent, whether literary or scientific. She became at
once attached to the clever Blackie children, and from the first singled out
John for special affection. Not a dissentient voice was raised against her
entrance into the family circle, and so great were her tact and amiability
that "Aunt Manie" stayed on, an essential member of the family, consulted on
all important points by both Mr Blackie and his wife, and as influential as
either with regard to the children. Her step-children were soon as eager for
the new mother's affection and approval as if they had been her own. She
added certain personal tastes to the heterogeneous "fads" of the household.
She collected old china, and had a cabinet for specimens, which bore the
proud name of "The Museum."
Early in 1825 John went to
Edinburgh, where he was boarded with a family of Tweedside cousins who had
settled in Hart Street. They were a widowed Mrs Blackie with two sons, the
elder of whom was engaged in journalistic work. Besides these relations,
whose home he shared, his father's sister lived in Edinburgh, and made him
welcome whenever he cared to go to her home in Lynedoch Place. She had
married a Mr Gibson, W.S., with whose family John Gibson Lockhart had some
relationship, and her two sons were one a little older and the other a
little younger than John Blackie, so that the cousins became readily friends
and companions.
John was in his sixteenth
year when he applied himself to Greek, Logic, and Moral Philosophy,
completing the course in Arts. Dr Ritchie occupied the chair of Logic, which
Sir William Hamilton was afterwards to raise to European fame; and "glorious
John Wilson "-"Christopher North ."—expounded the principles of Moral
Philosophy.
Of the young student's Greek
we hear nothing. He was probably still stumbling along the dreary approach
to its well-guarded treasures. But we learn that the storms of anxiety which
swept over his mind paralysed its free play in the other classes. Despair
had seized him, because he felt no firm conviction that he had passed from
darkness into light. Some book, presuming to explain all the counsel of God,
had fallen into his hands, "insisting, as an indispensable point of
Christian experience, that a man should be able to point out a moment in his
life when he passed into a new state, as strongly and strikingly as a child
does when it emerges from the darkness of the womb into the proud light of
the living and winsome world." Of course the worthy Calvinist, so eager to
help his fellows into a ditch, forgot that in the human birth the being most
concerned is quite unconscious of the change, and that to many the spiritual
life comes likewise without observation. For a long time John Blackie was
plunged into mental agony because he could not point his finger to a date
and say, "On this day and at this hour I was born again." It is remarkable
that he took these perverted glosses for the Gospel. So tremblingly did he
seek the narrow way that he turned down every by-path lest he should miss
it., and only when one after another led him into the wilderness did he turn
back to where he started, to find at last that the lamp of God's Word alone
can light the feet along the way of His commandments.
His cousin Archy Gibson was
made the confidant of all the turns in this labyrinth. John Blackie seized
upon him, and demanded that he too should cast aside every concern which
interfered with this the only concern, and Archy was whirled into the vortex
of his fervour. The two lads talked together, prayed together, and finally
sketched out a course of Bible reading to be carried out simultaneously,
whether together or separate. Their reading bade them seek light in service,
and it is touching to learn that John, submissive to every mandate, began
patiently to visit the sick and miserable in some of the darkest dens of
Edinburgh. In and out of the wynds and closes, toiling up to attics in the
Cowgate, diving into cellars in the Grassmarket, he spent every leisure
hour, seeking God's purpose in regard to him. He was obedient, but not
assured; fear and trembling possessed him, but salvation seemed still far
off. His scanty allowance of pocket-money was devoted to the sick and dying,
and beside their beds he knelt and prayed, and read the Bible. This was
religious work; and, engaged in this, he awaited the happy moment of his
spiritual birth.
But he lagged behind in his
classes, and if some temporary relaxation of his mind permitted him to work
for his professors, the interval of relief was soon resented as a diabolic
interference with his "soul-concern."
Dr Ritchie interested him in
spite of himself, and in his first year at the Logic class he wrote an essay
on "Conception" which the Professor rated highly. At the close of his second
session, when the inner turmoil had begun to abate, he took the third prize
in Logic. His experiences at the Moral Philosophy class were more dramatic.
That he was not altogether careless of John Wilson's lectures is evidenced
by the fact that in a letter to his sister Christina, now at home and eager
to enter into his studies and to make them her own, he drew up an excellent
abstract of the Professor's teaching, suggesting books for her use, if she
cared to pursue the subject. But in this very letter he admits that his work
at College seemed to him to be fleeting and shadowy compared with his search
for the sure foundation on which to build the structure of his life.
During an interval of
intellectual ambition he wrote an essay for Professor Wilson which gained
high approbation. When the Professor returned it he said heartily, "A
remarkably clever essay, a very clever essay indeed," and for a short time
this tribute pleased him; but the very pleasure became a source of pain, and
he shirked every opportunity of reviving it. When the session was over, and
he went into the Professor's room to ask for his certificate, Christopher
North, looking at him fully with his keen blue eyes and leonine grandeur of
expression, said, "What has been the matter, Mr Blackie? There is something
here that I cannot understand. You gave me in an excellent essay, one of the
best I have received this session, and I fully expected to have you on my
prize-list; but you have given me only one, and you know my rule." The poor
boy burst into tears. How could he tell the truth to that Homeric hero, who
would shout with incredulous laughter at the tale? He took his certificate
with drooping head, and walked away. The kindly Professor had made the most
of that one essay on the card, which remains to this day in record of a time
of honest anguish.
In his letters to Mr Blackie
he avoids all mention of the subject which so engrossed his time, although
he expresses regret for his inadequate work at College. His letters are full
of details about the wide circle of cousins and half-cousins with whom he
came into contact, and who seemed to be getting themselves steadily married
or buried. Passages concerning new clothes for either celebration occur,
bearing witness to Mr Blackie's care for his son's personal appearance, and
to the son's desire to stock his wardrobe scantily, and to be trammelled
with no supernumerary coats and hats.
His student life in Edinburgh
ended with the summer session of 1826, and Mr Blackie came to visit the
cousins and to take John home by the steamer from Leith to Aberdeen. He
found his son much changed; a settled gravity subdued the wonted frolicsome
spirit; he no longer filled the house with shouting. His sisters could not
at first accustom themselves to this sedateness, but his interest in all
their higher pursuits was greater than ever, and his brotherly tenderness
and helpfulness reconciled them to his entreaties that they should busy
themselves most with the life to come. It is difficult to discover how far
he influenced them. Christina and Marion were clever girls, and they were at
that stage of feminine development which sets high store on intellectual
success. His prestige must have suffered from the undistinguished sessions
in Edinburgh, but both loved him, and record that he was the kindest of
brothers.
He was more successful with
his brother James, a boy about fourteen years old, unusually handsome, with
dark and dreamy eyes, and features moulded like a Greek's—so much, at least,
we may judge from a portrait painted a few years later by Spanish Phillip.
James consented to be taught and stimulated, and the earnest missionary
brother read the Bible with him morning and evening, and rejoiced to find
response in his sensitive heart.
But even already the tempest
within was wearing itself out. It had done its perfect work, and that was to
lead after many years to larger, truer views of the purposes of God. Already
it had called him, with no uncertain sound, to stand aside from every folly
which can betray the soul to the destroyer, and he tells us—
They had not the
slightest attraction for me. I was not happy; I was not wise; but I did
not go astray after vanities. I grew up in the atmosphere of purity,
which was a rich compensation for all the thorny theology which my
morbid subjectiveness and my Calvinistic discipline had imported into
it. All my spiritual troubles were, as I afterwards found, only a
process of fermentation, out of which the clear and mellow wine was to
be worked. With all its sorrows, a youth spent in Calvinistic
seriousness is in every way preferable to one spent in frivolity.
When he returned to Aberdeen
he found Aunt Manie away, gone to see her relatives in Hamilton. He
undertook to send her a chronicle of home news, which she cherished proudly
as an archive. This letter illustrates his tendency to subjectiveness. He
begins, with a brave effort at self-suppression, to tell her the family
doings. These included a visit to a menagerie of wild beasts, to which Mr
Blackie had taken his children, poor Marion being left at home to expiate
some girlish prank. The account of this visit comes early in the record, and
then, alas! for Aunt Manie thirsty for homelier gossip, these wild beasts
suggest a lengthy homily, divided into four parts, upon the advantages to be
derived from the study of zoology. Two closely written pages, out of the
three which form the letter, are filled with weighty observations on this
subject, and the honour of the thing had to compensate for their dulness.
When the holidays were over
he enrolled himself as a regular student of theology at the University of
Aberdeen, as there he could take his full course and remain an inmate of his
father's house.
The two professors who
chiefly influenced his studies were Dr William Laurence Brown, Principal of
the University and occupant of the Divinity Chair at Marischal College, and
Dr Duncan Mearns, Professor of Divinity at King's College.
Both of these men were strong
Moderates, hostile to the growing Evangelicalism which possessed a number of
the younger students, and of which Thomas Chalmers was a powerful exponent.
With this Evangelicalism John Blackie scarcely came into contact. His
father's friends were Moderates, as were all the professors of note in the
University. The only Evangelical preacher who visited the house was a man of
small attainments and of sleepy manners, held of little account by Mr
Blackie, and not likely to attract his son. Such of his fellow-students as
were fervent against Moderatism, carried their arguments about with them
more like weapons of offence than prevailing influences, and were seldom
intellectually impressive. All that was sober, judicious, scholarly,
dignified, was on the side of Moderatism; the Evangelicals were indiscreet,
undisciplined, hot-headed, and it was not yet surmised that because they
were hot - hearted too, it would be given to them to rouse the sluggard
Church of Scotland from torpor to life.
But from these very Moderates
John Blackie received enduring lessons, and he records them with full
gratitude.
Principal Brown, whose
twofold function it was to inculcate Divinity and to improve the Latinity of
his class, succeeded at all events in the latter half of his undertaking.
Influenced by Holland, where he had held the post of Professor at Utrecht,
he was perhaps the most accomplished Latinist in Aberdeen, where scholarship
ranked high. It was as easy for him to think and speak in Latin as in
English. It is true that in neither language did his thoughts display much
depth, for he was more concerned with the phrasing than with the sentiment;
but the ease with which he criticised the essays and discourses of the
students in flowing Latin, stimulated them to follow his example, and by
constant reading and composing to enlarge and practise their vocabulary. To
John Blackie particularly the Professor's powers acted as a useful spur, and
he determined to follow every method suggested till he should secure a like
facility. Once more the house in Marischal Street began to echo to his
voice. High-sounding quotations from Cicero, transposed and paraphrased,
bore witness to his diligence, and orations in imitation of his favourite
author were delivered in the retirement of his room, against a bedpost
grovelling in sedition or a wardrobe which revelled in impious luxury and
crime. He recognised at once the importance of a method which Dr Brown had
imported from learned Holland, and he soon acquired enough of fluency to
enable him to risk a critical adventure, which won for him not only the
Professor's applause, but a somewhat notable position amongst Latinists at
the University.
Every student had to prepare
and deliver a theological discourse in Latin, and this had to be prepared
without assistance. Before his public criticism of each discourse, Dr Brown
was in the habit of asking the members of his class to offer such critical
remarks as occurred to them. Unbroken silence had always followed this
challenge, and it had become a mere formality. But one memorable day young
Blackie rose in answer to its delivery, and began to criticise the foregoing
discourse in English. The Professor brought his fist down with emphasis on
the desk: "At hoc non fas est, domine; que Latine scripta ea et Latine
judicanda sunt." The student expected this, and turned deftly into some well
- worded sentences, no doubt in sounding Ciceronian triplets. The Professor
was delighted, and John Blackie's position as a Latinist was made. But he
was not contented with this success, and continued to think, speak, and
compose in Latin until it presented no further difficulty. That this is the
right method of acquiring every language, whether living or dead, was borne
in upon him from the precept and example of Principal Brown, and it has
still to be recorded how steadily he maintained its importance throughout
his life.
But the Divinity Professor
rendered him further service. His course of lectures was on the body of
Patristic lore, and embraced a review of heathenism and its teaching,
between which and that of the Fathers a sharp line of demarcation was drawn
to define the contrast. Perhaps the subject lent itself to the oratorical
displays in which Dr Brown delighted, and swelling words veiled inadequate
thought. One of his students has given it on record that in four years of
lectures he never once heard the name of Jesus Christ; but then he was an
Evangelical, and clearly expected too much. John Blackie was eager to learn,
and so he learned enough, no doubt, to set him reading and thinking for
himself.
He attended the Divinity
lectures in King's College by Dr Duncan Mearns, as well as those by the
Principal, and this course was weightier both in matter and manner than the
other. Dr Mearns was a man of great ability and of extensive reading. He was
thoroughly versed in his subject, and was besides capable of treating it
with entire conscientiousness. But his severe and pompous manner, the
distance which he maintained between his dignified self and the raw youth
whom he loftily instructed, made kindly discipleship impossible, and when
young Blackie from time to time ventured to ask for further light, he was
publicly and ruthlessly snubbed. Dr Mearns was a leader in the Moderate
party, and as such he descended into the arena of controversy, and published
an invective against Evangelicalism as represented by Thomas Chalmers. It
pleased his party mightily. Even John Blackie approved of its arguments, for
in those days the new interpretation seemed to vulgarise salvation, which
the respectable felt to be their monopoly. Respectability lay heavy as lead
upon the Church of Scotland, and pedantry was piled upon respectability. And
yet it was from a Moderate, that John Blackie got his best and most lasting
lesson.
He was still occupied with
his religious life, although its mental fermentation had subsided to a
somewhat dull and moody self-absorption. Still he sought help from this and
that writer's interpretation of the Gospel, and laying hands upon a
ponderous tome, Boston's 'Body of Divinity,' he proposed to himself to solve
the question with the help of the famous divine of Ettrick. One of his
father's friends was Dr Patrick Forbes, minister of the parish of Old Machar,
and Professor of Humanity and Chemistry at King's College. Moderate although
he was, a certain warmth and impulsiveness characterised him, altogether
foreign to his pompous fellows. It was a pleasant walk to his manse, and
John went now and again to see him, and to convey some message from Mr
Blackie. One day he found him in his study, Horace on one hand, the Hebrew
Scriptures on the other, seated at a high desk, the walls round him lined
with huge quartos and folios bound in vellum,—works classical, scientific,
horticultural, and polemical. John had come on an errand of his own, to ask
the Doctor about his course of theological reading, and particularly to
discover his opinion of Boston's 'Body of Divinity.' His outspoken adviser
made short work of Boston:-
What have you to do with
books of divinity by Boston or any other? Are you a Christian? What
should a Christian read before his Bible? Do you know Greek? Whence
should a student of theology fetch his divinity in preference to the
Greek Testament?
The word was opportune and
final. The scales fell from John Blackie's eyes.
There was [he says] both
sense and gospel here. I immediately flung aside my 'Body of Divinity,'
and forthwith got my Greek Testament interleaved, and commenced a course
of Scripture study without the slightest reference to the Westminster
Confession or any other systematised essay of Christian doctrine.
He was now face to face with
divine teaching, which guides each mind by different processes to realise
the same great truths, and from that day the well - thumbed Testament lay
ready to hand in his coat-pocket.
Take your knowledge of
the case from the evidence of the original witnesses, from them directly
and from them only in the first place; you will then be in a condition
to profit by the observations and opinions of other men, which, without
such a previous course of independent training, could only confound and
cripple you. This was what my Gamaliel taught me.
To Dr Forbes he owed many
pregnant lessons, and towards him his attitude was always docile. A
friendship sprang up between him and the sons of Old Machar manse, and this
gave him frequent opportunities of seeking and receiving the fresh,
suggestive, imperious dicta which the Doctor, half genially, half defiantly,
hurled at him about every topic of the day. The Professor's chemical
researches had given him more than ordinary insight into the working of the
divine energy, and he taught his young friend to recognise it in every
process by which the world is maintained and renewed. "Wherever life is,"
said the Doctor, "God is." The sentence solved much for his disciple. It
illuminated a whole horizon dense with cloud, a curtain which had seemed to
him providentially disposed, and to be accepted with dumb endurance. And now
he found that without an effort on his part the cloud was dissolved and gone
- that God was its interpreter, no grim deity who loved to limit and perplex
His creatures, but the omnipresent Wisdom. It was a release from bondage to
freedom. In middle life he wrote:-
This absolute and only
possible truth I found afterwards in Plato, but it did not appear to me
a whit more evident, touched by the imaginative genius of the great
Greek idealist, than when it came forth in full panoply from the hard
head of the Aberdeen Doctor. Resting upon this postulate, I have since
then always looked on Materialism and Atheism as two forms of
speculative nonsense, and a firm faith in God was made clear to me as
the one keystone which makes thought coherent and the world
intelligible.
Many years passed before lie
realised his full debt to Dr Forbes. He was still under the impression that
a learned Moderate might give him a lift oil question of speculation, but he
would have scorned to seek his advice on a question of inward and personal
religion. It took a long time to teach him that the impulses which develop
our spiritual life are as surely correlated as the physical force which is
heat, or light, or motion, as conditions decide its form.
Always teachable, although
always eclectic, he found here and there the lessons which he needed,
gathering them out of the open hand of Providence. Thus Dr Forsyth, the
minister of Belhelvie, taught him to use his eyes. He was another of Mr
Blackie's friends who took an interest in John, and he helped him insensibly
out of the preoccupations which at this time gave a touch of moodiness to
his manner. Dr Forsyth was a student of nature like Dr Forbes, physics and
botany occupied his leisure, and the young science of geology claimed his
walks about the district, hammer in hand. The flora of Belhelvie hedgerows
and fields, the material of Beihelvie dykes—with such homely plants and
stones he made his walks a page in God's great Missal, and taught the young
friend, who sometimes shared them, to decipher for himself the characters
which conveyed His Wisdom, inscribed in stern relief, or wreathed with
delicate beauty. |
