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BALFOUR, DR. ROBERT. – This
distinguished minister of the Church of Scotland, was born in Edinburgh,
in April, 1740. He was early trained by his pious parents to the knowledge
and practice of Christianity. He received his education at Edinburgh, and
when only in the twelfth year of his age, came under decidedly religious
impressions, which, joined to the natural amiability of his disposition,
his promising talents, and diligence and success in his studies, gave a
peculiar interest to his youthful character. When a mere youth, he became
a member of a society which met for religious conversation and prayer. The
devotional tendncy of his mind, thus early acquired, was a prominent
feature of his character through life. Of his college career no record has
been preserved; but that he soon gave indications of the talent which
afterwards raised him to eminence, may be inferred from his having secured
the friendship of Dr. Erskine, Lady Glenorchy, and other distinguished
Christians of that day, who formed a high estimate of his abilities, and
entertained sanguine expectations of his success as a preacher. In 1774,
he was ordained to the ministry of the gospel in the small rural charge of
Lecropt, near Stirling. Here he laboured with much acceptance and
usefulness for five years, not inattentive meanwhile to his personal
improvement, and in his pulpit duties giving no doubtful presages of the
professional distinction and influence to which he was destined to rise.
In June, 1779, he was translated to the Outer High Church of Glasgow, then
vacant by the removal of Mr. Randal (afterwards Dr. Davidson) to
Edinburgh.
At the time of Dr.
Balfour’s settlement in Glasgow, evangelical religion was at a low ebb in
the Established Church throughout Scotland, and a blighting Moderatism was
in the ascendant. Dr. Balfour, from the outset of his ministry, warmly
espoused the evangelical cause, which he recommended alike by the power of
his preaching, and by the active benevolence and consistency of his life.
His ministry in Glasgow gave a fresh impulse to the revival and diffusion
of pure and undefiled religion in the west of Scotland. Christian missions
were then in their infancy, and in Scotland met with much opposition from
the dominant party in the Established Church. In the General Assembly of
1796, missionary enterprise to the heathen was denounced as corrupting the
innocence and happiness of savage life, and missionary societies as
"highly dangerous in their tendency to the good order of society" in this
country. It was on this memorable, occasion that Dr. Erskine, then in his
seventy-fifth year, vindicated the scriptural claims and obligations of
missions to the heathen, in a speech which has become famous for its
exordium—"Moderator, rax me that Bible!" Dr. Balfour was one of the
founders of the Glasgow Missionary Society, which was established in 1796,
a few months after the institution of the London Missionary Society. He
preached a striking sermon at the commencement of the Society, which was
one of the few discourses he ventured on publishing; and one of his last
public acts, twenty-two years afterwards, was to sign a circular letter as
its president. The following passage from the discourse just mentioned,
bears testimony to the earnest interest he felt in the missionary cause,
and affords an example of a style of appeal, which, with the aid of his
melodious voice, keen eye, and graceful and fervid elocution, must have
proved singularly animating. After describing the true missionary spirit
and character, he proceeded—"We invite and press all of this description
to come forward full of the Holy Ghost and of faith. We cannot, we will
not tempt you with worldly prospects—if you are right-hearted men
according to your profession, you will not seek great things for
yourselves—you must not think of an easy life—you must labour hard—you
must encounter difficulties, opposition, and dangers; for these, however,
you are not unprovided. * * * We will follow you with our prayers, and
with every blessing in our power to bestow. But what is of infinitely
greater moment and advantage to you is, that the Lord Jesus, whose
religion you are to teach, will be with you, and that he is greater than
all who can be against you. Depending, then, on Him alone for your own
salvation, and for the salvation of the heathen, seeking not your own
pleasure, profit, or honour, but that he may be glorified in and by you,
and by sinners converted from the error of their way, be not afraid—be
strong and of good courage. To all who thus devote themselves to his
service, we most heartily bid God speed. Fly, ye angels of grace, from
pole to pole, and from the rivers to the ends of the earth, bearing to all
men the glad tidings of the everlasting gospel; stop not in this bold
flight of philanthropy, till you convey to the simple sons of the isles
the knowledge of the true God and eternal life—till you arrest the
wanderings of the roving savage with the wonders of redeeming grace—till
you dart the beams of celestial light and love into the dark habitations
of ignorance and cruelty— till you convert the barbarous cannibal to
humanity, to Christian gentleness and goodness. Hasten to the shores of
long-injured Africa, not to seize and sell the bodies of men, but to save
their perishing souls. Follow the miserable captives to their several sad
destinations of slavery, with the inviting proclamation of spiritual
liberty, while you inculcate the strictest duty to their masters. Speed
your way to India, to repay her gold with the unsearchable riches of
Christ. Meet all the high pretensions of the Brahmin religion and
literature, and all their fatal delusions and cruel impositions, with the
overpowering evidence of the Christian as a divine revelation—with the
full luminous display of evangelical truth and holiness. Cease not, till
you see the whole earth filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the
waters cover the channel of the sea."
Dr. Balfour was "an
eloquent man, and mighty in the Scriptures." But his was not an eloquence
which sought its reward in popular applause. It flowed spontaneously from
a heart deeply imbued with love to the Saviour and to the souls of men.
Earnest preaching made earnest listening, and whilst his reputation in the
pulpit continued unimpaired to the close of his life, the fruits of his
ministry were abundant, and his influence extended far beyond the limits
of his own congregation. His preaching was clear and comprehensive;
textual, luminous, and pointed; exhibiting a remarkable intimacy with the
varieties of Christian experience, and a profound knowledge of human
nature; animated with a warm and persuasive earnestness; faithful and
close in applying the truth; and exhibiting an exuberant flow of
appropriate and powerful expression. All his pulpit addresses bore the
impress of the cross; he preached Christ and the doctrines of salvation by
free grace with simplicity and godly sincerity. "Those who have listened
to him," wrote his attached friend, the late Dr. Wardlaw, "in his happy
moments of warm and passioned elevation, have heard him pour forth the
fulness of an affectionate spirit; warning, alarming, inviting,
persuading, beseeching; his whole soul thrown into his countenance; and,
in his penetrating eye, the fire of ardent zeal gleaming through the tears
of benignity and love." His preaching engagements were frequent, and he
was always ready.to afford his services on every call of public
usefulness. He was not in the habit of writing his discourses at full
length, but his preparations for the pulpit were never relaxed. Although
not displaying the plodding habits of the scholar, he kept up his
knowledge of general literature, and cultivated an acquaintance with the
works of the best authors in his own profession. His morning hours were
consecrated to study and devotion. He possessed the power of readily
commanding his thoughts in the intervals of daily occupation, and was in
the habit, to use his own expression, of "carrying about" with him the
subjects on which he intended to preach. His stores of thought and
illustration were ample and exuberant, and being gifted with a ready
utterance, he could on every occasion express himself with ease and
propriety. Without the appearance of much labour, therefore, he was able
to appear in the pulpit with a felicity and success to which men of
inferior minds find it impossible to attain after the most laborious
efforts. He seldom engaged in controversy, and did not often obtrude
himself upon the notice of church courts, for the business of which,
however, he showed no want of aptitude His modesty and humility prevented
him from issuing more than a few of his more public and elaborate
productions through the press. An anecdote is related of him, which
illustrates his disinclination to publish, as well as the readiness with
which he could draw in an emergency upon the resources of his richly
stored mind. On one occasion, after having preached with much acceptance
on the divinity of Christ, he was waited upon by a young man, who, on his
own part and that of two companions, preferred an urgent request that he
would print his discourse, assigning as a reason that it had
completely relieved their minds of doubts which they had been led to
entertain on this momentous doctrine, and that it was fitted to
have the same effect upon the minds of others similarly situated. On the
Doctor expressing his aversion to appear in print, his visitor entreated
the favour of a perusal of the manuscript. In this he was equally
unsuccessful, for it then appeared that the Doctor, on proceeding
to the church, had found himself—from some unwonted and inexplicable
cause— utterly incapable of recalling the train of thought which had
occupied his mind in preparing for the pulpit, and at the last moment he
was under the necessity of choosing a new text, from which he delivered
the unpremeditated discourse that had produced such a salutary impression
upon the minds of his three youthful hearers.
The ministrations of Dr
Balfour were not confined to the pulpit, he laboured assiduously from
house to house, and proved himself a "son of consolation" in chambers of
sickness and death. His philanthropy and public spirit led him also to
take an active interest in every object for the relief and comfort of
suffering humanity. His comprehensive Christian charity embraced all of
every name in whom he recognized the image of his Lord and Master.
Although himself conscientiously attached to the Established Church, he
exemplified a generous and cordial liberality towards those who dissented
from her communion. Christians of every persuasion united in esteeming and
loving him and his praise was in all the churches. When called up to the
metropolis in 1798, to preach before the London Missionaiy Society, he
gave expression to views of Christian catholicity and union, which the
organizations of later times have scarcely yet realized—"Why," said he,
"may not every Christian society, and all denominations of Christian
society, anticipate in their experience and relative situations, and
exemplify to the world that happy state of things which we believe shall
take place at the time appointed of the Father, and shall continue in the
world for a thousand years! Though we cannot agree in all our views of
divine truth, and therefore must have our separate churches to
maintain our several distinct professions of Christian tenets, I have
often thought that we might, with an equally good conscience, meet
ocasionally, not only to converse, and pray, and sing praise, but to eat
together the Lord’s Supper, in testimony of the faith and profession of
fundamental principles wherein we are more closely united than we are by
other things removed from one another. * * * O thrice blessed day! God of
love, thy kingdom come! Prince of peace, let thy rest be visible and
glorious! O! gracious Divine Spirit, fly like the peaceful dove over the
field of universal nature, to produce, preserve, promote, and
perfect the reign of kindness and of happiness, till misery be banished
from the earth, murmurs be silenced, love and gratitude be excited,
charity and generosity triumph, and all things which are on earth be
reconciled to God, and to the whole world of the intelligent and moral
creation."
His attachment to his
congregation, which embraced many godly persons, was evinced on the
occasion of his receiving an offer to be presented to Lady Glenorchy’s
chapel in Edinburgh, which he declined, although in a worldly point of
view it possessed considerable advantages over his charge in Glasgow. He
was alike frank, friendly, and accessible to all classes of his people,
and had always a kind word for the poor. He showed great tact in dealing
with the humbler members of his flock, who sometimes came to the good man
with unreasonable complaints. When the old-fashioned practice of the
precentor reading line by line of the psalm was discontinued, an ancient
dame presented herself to the minister, to express her concern at the
innovation, at the same time gently reproaching him for departing from a
good old custom of our pious forefathers—a custom, be it remembered, which
had been introduced at a time when few persons in a congregation were able
to read. "Oh, Janet," replied the doctor, in a tone of kindly
remonstrance, "I read the psalm, and you sing it; what’s the use of coming
over it a third time?" "Ou sir," was the ready answer, "I juist like to
gust my gab wi’t!" In process of time "repeating tunes" were introduced in
the precentor’s desk, and Janet hastened forthwith to the minister, to
lodge her complaint against the profane innovation. "What’s the matter wi
ye now?" inquired the doctor, as he welcomed the worthy old dame into his
presence. "The sang tunes, wi’ their o’ercomes brocht into the worship of
the sanctuary," quoth she; "it’s juist usin’ vain repetitions, as the
heathens do." "Oh dear no, Janet," slyly interposed the doctor, "we juist
like to gust our gabs wi’t"
Dr. Balfour married, in
November, 1774, Isabella Stark, daughter of Mr. Stark, collector of excise
at Kirkaldy. She died in October, 1781. In June, 1787, he married
Catherine M’Gilchrist, daughter of Mr. Archibald M’Gilchrist, town-clerk
of the city of Glasgow. She died in May, 1817. These were not the only
instances of domestic bereavement which he experienced in the course of
his life. He preached on the day after the celebration of the Lord’s
Supper at Dumbarton, in July, 1786, with an earnestness and solemnity more
fervid and impressive than ordinary, as if his mind were under a powerful
impulse. On his way home he received information of the death of a beloved
and only son, in circumstances fitted deeply to wound his heart. Henry, a
fine spirited boy, had been left by his father, then a widower, during an
absence of some days, under the charge of Mr. and Mrs. Denniston of West
Thorn, and was accidentally drowned in the Clyde. After recovering from
the first paroxysm of grief occasioned by the heart-rending intelligence,
Dr. Balfour hastened to tender his sympathy to his deeply afflicted
friends, whose kindness had been permitted to prove the innocent cause of
involving him and his family in this calamity. This he did, in the first
instance, in a letter of touching pathos and beauty, which afterwards
found its way to the public, and was embodied in a little volume of
"Letters addressed to Christians in Affliction," published in 1817. The
death of his son Archibald took place many years previously, on the day
when he preached the sermon by appointment of the Glasgow Missionary
Society. His own death was sudden. On the 13th of October, 1818, Dr.
Balfour appeared to be in his usual health and spirits. In the course of
the day he became unwell while walking out with a friend, and made an
effort to return home. But his illness increasing, he was assisted into a
friend’s house in George Street, from which it was deemed imprudent to
attempt to remove him. The symptoms were found to be those of apoplexy. He
continued in a state of insensibility till the evening of the next day,
the 14th, when he expired. He died in the seventy-first year of his age
and forty-fifth year of his ministry. Of his whole family, only two
daughters survived him: by his first marriage, Isabella, married to John
Duncan Esq., merchant, Glasgow, son of his old friend, the Rev. Mr. Duncan
of Alva; and Margaret, by his second marriage. We cannot better conclude
our brief sketch of the life of this estimable man and eminent minister,
than by the following tribute to his memory by Dr. Chalmers, who, when
settled in Glasgow, ever found a true friend in Dr. Baffour, one perfectly
free from all professional jealousy, and who rejoiced at the progress and
success of that great man’s peculiar parochial labours:—
"The pulpit is not the
place for panegyric, but surely it is the place for demonstrating the
power of Christianity, and pointing the eye of hearers to its actual
operation; and without laying open the solitude of his religious
exercises, without attempting to penetrate into the recesses of that
spirituality which, on the foundation of a living faith, shed the
excellence of virtue over the whole of his character, without breaking in
upon the hours of his communion with his God, or marking the progress and
the preparation of his inner man for that heaven to which he has been
called,—were I called upon to specify the Christian grace which stood most
visibly and most attractively out in the person of the departed, I would
say that it was a cordiality of love, which, amid all the perversities and
all the disappointments of human opposition, was utterly unextinguishable;
that over every friend who differed from him in opinion he was sure to
gain that most illustrious of all triumphs, the triumph of a charity which
no resistance could quell; that from the fulness of his renewed heart
there streamed a kindliness of regard, which, whatever the collision of
sentiment, or whatever the merits of the contest, always won for him the
most Christian and the most honourable of all victories. And thus it was
that the same spirit which bore him untainted through the scenes of public
controversy, did, when seated in the bosom of his family, or when moving
through the circle of his extended acquaintanceship, break out in one
increasing overflow of good-will on all around him; so that, perhaps,
there is not a man living who, when he comes to die, will be so numerously
followed to the grave by our best of all mourners—the mourners of wounded
affection, the mourners of the heart, the mourners who weep and are in
heaviness under the feeling of a private, and a peculiar, and a personal
bereavement." |
