An address given in 1995 by Rev John
J Murray on the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the opening of St John's Church. Edinburgh
We extend a warm welcome
to you all here this evening to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the
opening of this building. There is a
leaflet prepared for the occasion giving you information about the opening of
the building and the early days. As I address the subject of Thomas Guthrie,
preacher of the Gospel, ministering in a city of sin and sorrow, I am conscious
that I have not had the time to give adequate treatment to this great man, but
I do want to share some things with you this evening which I think will be of profit to us and I hope to make some
application to our own situation..
This building was opened
on 18th April 1845 and Dr Guthrie wrote: ‘The sun rose bright on Friday: We had an overflowing audience. The church
looked beautiful’ The Church was designed
to accommodate 1200 people. Of course
the interior has changed since those days but when it was built it was intended
to accommodate that number of people. It
is good to get a contemporary account of what was going on in this building in
the middle of last century. For
that account we go to Dr J W Alexander,
son of Dr Archibald Alexander, from
America who was visiting Edinburgh in 1857. He tells us about his visit to this
Church:
'At 2.00 pm I went to
Free St John’s, strangers, how truly I comprehend the term. I was admitted only after the first singing.
I found myself waiting in a basement with about 500 others. At length I was dragged through a narrow
passage and found myself in a very hot overcrowded house near the pulpit. Dr
Guthrie was praying. He preached from Isaiah 44:22, Return unto me for I have redeemed thee. It was fifty minutes but it passed like
nothing. I was instantly struck by his
strong likeness to Dr John H Rice. If
you remember him, you will picture the type of man he is, but then it is Dr
Rice with an impetuous freedom of motion, a play of
decibel and speaking features and an overflowing unction of passion and
compassion which would carry home even
one of my sermons. You can see what it
is, with his exuberant diction and poetic imagery, the best of all is that it
was honey from the comb, dropping, dropping,
in effusive gospel preaching. I cannot think Whitefield surpassed him in
this. You know while you listen to his
mighty voice broken with sorrow that he is overwhelmed with the love of the
Spirit. He is a colleague and preaches
only in the afternoons. As to manner it is his own, but in general like Duff’s
with as much motion but more significant and less grotesque but still
ungraceful. His English moreover is not
spoilt so much. The audience was wrapt and melting. It was just like his book,
all application and he rose to his height in the first sentence.'
Guthrie the Preacher
Now we may note certain things recorded for us there in that
account by Dr Alexander.
First of all, we see
the the mass appeal that Dr Guthrie had
as a preacher. 'Strangers and visitors are admitted only after the first
singing. I found myself waiting in a basement with about 500 others’. Perhaps
the basement was a little larger than it is today because you can hardly
imagine 500 people in the hall downstairs.
Dr Alexander goes on to say: ‘Dr Guthrie is the link between evangelical
religion and the aristocracy. People of
all sorts go, nobility come down from
London and stopping here cannot pass without hearing him. They are willing to pay
any sum for pews (those were the days of seat rents) in order to secure an
occasional hearing.’ Of course the
original St John’s in Victoria Street, which is still standing, had been built
to house local people from the densely
populated tenements of the old town, particularly in the Cowgate, and so
the church was intended for the poor people in the community. One says about
the congregation: ‘Looking around, while all were setting themselves you have
before you as mixed and motley a collection of human beings as ever assembled
within a church, peers and peasants, citizens and strangers, millionaires and
mechanics, the judge on the bench, the passers on the roadside, the high-born
dame, the serving maid of low degree, all in one close together.’ Cowgate folk mingled with such men as Hugh
Miller the Geologist, men of Letters and Sir James Young Simpson, the
discoverer of chloroform. And that was
Guthrie's congregation in those
days.
Secondly, as to the
manner of his preaching. Dr
Alexander speaks about that impetuous
freedom of motion, that overflowing unction of passion and compassion, that
exuberant diction and poetic imagery. It
is believed that after Thomas Chalmers,
Dr Guthrie was the most admired pulpit orator in the 19th century. He
was indeed, as someone has described him, ‘the pictorial preacher of the age’
Then, thirdly, there is
the matter of his preaching. ‘It was honey from the comb, dropping, dropping in
effusive gospel preaching, and I cannot think that Whitefield surpassed him in
this’. And that tells us of course that
Dr Guthrie was first and foremost a preacher of the everlasting gospel. He preached Christ and Him crucified. A Mr Dick, who was a parishioner in his first
charge, says: ‘I recollect the first text he preached from at Arbirlot. I was
too young to collect much of the sermon but I remember this, the name of Christ
seemed as it were ringing in my ears, it was the golden thread that bound all
his sermons together. He was a preacher
of Christ and him crucified.’
Then we have the
motivation: 'You know that while you listen to his mighty voice broken with
sorrow that he is overwhelmed with the love of the Spirit'. And I believe that was the secret to Dr
Guthrie’s life and ministry.. That is
what made him the preacher he was. He
preached with the earnest desire to do good to the souls of men and women. That is what led him to give his very best to
the humble farming folk in the district of Arbirlot, near Arbroath, which was
his first charge. That is what brought
him here to Edinburgh to work in the charge of Old Greyfriars and eventually to
see the formation of St John’s. That is what made him such an advocate of
Church extension, not only nationally but here locally in Edinburgh. That is what led him to the setting up of the
Ragged Schools and to the support of the temperance movement..
Early Ministry
We have no record in his
autobiography as to his early spiritual experiences and we have no reference to his call to the
ministry. It was common enough in that
century that parents looked for at least
one of the sons in the family to enter the ministry, and that is exactly what
happened in the case of Thomas Guthrie.
Guthrie was born at Brechin in 1803, and after local schooling,
he came to Edinburgh University at the tender age of twelve. He spent eight
years in a regular course in the University plus two additional years and then
he was licensed to preach the Gospel. We
speak today about the difficulties of those who are licensed to preach the
Gospel and have become probationers, to find charges. Well, considering the preacher Dr Guthrie
turned out to be, it was five years before he received a presentation, as it
was called then, to a vacant charge. He used up some of that time by going to
Paris and studying there and also working in his father's bank in Brechin. But eventually he was presented with a charge,
and on the 13th May 1830 he was inducted to the rural parish of Arbirlot.
The district is very near to
Arbroath and in that day there were 1,000 parishioners in the place. After the induction there was a reception,
'at a cost to myself of some sixty pounds'.
He continues: 'The fees to the Crown cost about thirty pounds, and the
other thirty pounds or more went to defray the cost of a dinner which I gave that day in a hotel in Arbroath to the
members of the Presbytery, some of mine own private friends, and the farmers of
the parish of Arbirlot.' He goes on to comment:
'Happily nowadays these old convivial customs are to a large extent
abandoned. They not infrequently led to excesses, unseemly at any time and, and
on such solemn occasions as an ordination; not unseemly only, but revolting. On
this occasion one or two of the farmers were rather uproarious and one minister
got drunk before leaving the table. Some years thereafter, he was tried by the
Presbytery, and deposed by the General Assembly for drunkenness and other
crimes.’
When Thomas Guthrie came
to the Parish of Arbirlot he succeeded a very old man, Richard Watson, who
persisted in preaching to within a fortnight of his death, at the age of
87. Although he was popular in his day, and always evangelical, one does not
wonder that, in his closing years, there was lethargy in the pews. The very first sermon of the new minister
sounded like a trumpet call, the repose of the sleepers was effectually broken.
Mr Guthrie determined that his every hearer should understand him; carrying out
in a higher sphere Lord Cockburn’s rule while at the bar (an anecdote Mr
Guthrie delighted to tell as an illustration of the witty judge's sagacity):
‘When I was addressing a jury I invariably picked out the stupidest-looking
fellow of the lot and addressed myself specially to him - for this good
reason: I knew that if I convinced him I
would be sure to carry all the rest.’
When Guthrie went to the
parish of Arbirlot there was, as was the custom in that time, two diets of
worship on the Lord’s Day, separated from each other by an interval of
half-an-hour. 'This required the getting up of two distinct discourses
week by week, a serious task for any man and an almost impossible task for a
raw young man to do well'. He speaks
about the counsel of Hugh Miller, a very competent and indeed first rate
authority in matters of composition, that he wondered how a minister could come
forth Sunday after Sunday with even one good finished discourse. 'Robert Hall had no lower estimate of the
difficulties and labours of the pulpit; as appears in his reply to the question
of one who asked “How many discourses do
you think, Mr Hall, may a minister get up each week?” “If he is a deep thinker and great
condenser,” was Hall’s answer, “he may get up one, if he is an ordinary man
two, but if he is an ass, Sir, he will produce half-a-dozen”. ’
And so as these two diets
lay heavily on Guthrie, he planned to do
something about it. He decided to
dispense with the two services and instead have one service which lasted two
hours This was a view which he had
throughout his ministry that his hearers’ attention might be fixed on one
thing, because he found that the congregation’s attention was indeed lapsing
when it came to the second service. Not
all of them went to the second service, and even those who went were finding it
very difficult to concentrate. So here
at an early stage in the ministry he was showing the need to concentrate and to
get through to his hearers, and not only that but he set up what was at that
time quite a novel thing and that was he gathered together a class for young
men and young women between the ages of 15 and 25. He had this class every
Sabbath evening, with psalm singing and prayer, much the same as in ordinary
public worship but also had subjects of examination. First, there were one or two questions on the Larger Catechism,
the subject matter being broken down for most ordinary comprehension and
abundantly illustrated by examples and anecdotes. Secondly, the sermon or lecture delivered in
the forenoon was gone over head by head, introduction and peroration, various topics being set forth by illustration
drawn from nature, the world, history etc
of a kind that greatly interested the people but such as would not
always have suited the dignity and gravity of the pulpit.
This was a kind of catechising
and introducing people in a more informal way to the subject matter of the
sermon and this appears to have had great success in the community, and so that was another way in which he
helped to get through to the people.
But he also speaks about the
mode of his preaching. ‘I had when a student in divinity paid more than
ordinary attention to the art of elocution,
knowing how much of the effect
produced on the audience depended on the manner as well as the
matter; that in point of fact, the
manner is to the matter as the powder is to the ball. I attended elocution classes, winter after
winter, walking across half the city and more after eight o’clock at night,
fair night and foul, and not getting back to my lodgings until half-past-ten.
There I learned to find out and correct many acquired and more or less awkward
defects in gesture - to be in fact ,
natural; to acquire a command over my voice so as to suit it force and emphasis
to the sense, and to modulate it so as to express the feelings, whether of
surprise, or grief , or indignation, or pity.'
We can see in the
beginnings of his ministry the potential that was to develop in future years.
Dr McCosh, who became President of Princeton College in the United States, was a colleague of his in the ministry for
some years before he left this country. He said: ‘The dull eye of the cow boy
and the servant girl who had been toiling all week among the horses and cows
immediately brightened up as he spoke in this way and they were sure to go back
next Sabbath and take others with them.
It should be added that his unsurpassed power of illustration was always
employed to set forth the grand old cardinal truths of the Gospel.’ There is a little incident from this time
that is worth mentioning. 'He soon became a popular idol and the country people
had all sorts of stories about him illustrating his kindness of heart. He had a
favourite dog, Bob, black, rough and ungainly, much attached to his master but
in no way amiable to other men and dogs.
This animal at times insisted in going into Church when his master was
preaching and the minister in the midst of his sermon would open the pulpit
door and let him in, evidently to keep him quiet.’ Another informant remembers seeing this
actually occur. ‘Bob lay quietly at his
master’s feet until the close of the service.
When the blessing had been pronounced the people were vastly amused to
see his four paws lain on the book board, the great black head appearing above
it as he gravely surveyed the departing congregation.’
Other interests
In his first congregation
Dr Guthrie established a reputation as an orator and as a popular
preacher. There were other concerns that
came into his life too. He became
involved in the Church Extension work
that Dr Thomas Chalmers had launched.
He tells us, ‘On behalf of Church extension I visited a considerable
area of Forfarshire to stir up zeal in that cause in the ministers and the
people.’ In this connection he mentioned
how the Rev Robert Murray M'Cheyne met
with an accident that resulted in an illness that terminated in his death. ‘He accompanied me on my tour to Erroll, full
of buoyant spirit and heavenly conversation.
After breakfast we strolled into the garden, where there stood some gymnastic poles, an
apparatus set up for the use of Mr Grierson’s family. No aesthetic, no stiff and formal man, but
ready for any innocent and healthy amusement, these soon caught M'Cheyne’s eye
and, challenging me to do the like, he rushed at a horizontal pole resting on
two upright ones and went through a lot of manoeuvres. I was buttoning up to succeed and try if I
could not outdo him when, he as he hung by his heels and hands, some five or
six feet above the ground, all of a sudden the pole snapped asunder and he came
down with his back on the ground with a tremendous thud. He sickened, was borne into the manse and
lay there for days, and was never the same man again.’
But not only did Dr
Guthrie become involved in the Church Extension Scheme but he also became
prominent in connection with the Ten Years’ Conflict which lead to the
Disruption. He was one of the
Non-Intrusionists and he worked very zealously for that cause. He was very much involved in all the events
connected with the Disruption. There is one famous story about Dr Guthrie in connection with the Disruption
controversy which I would not like to omit..
This is what he had to say about
the interdicts that were being put on Courts and so on at that time: ‘In going to preach at Strathbogie, I was met
by an interdict from the Court of Session -
an interdict to which as regards civil matters I gave implicit
obedience. On the Lord’s Day when I was
preparing for divine service, in came a servant of the law and handed me an
interdict. I told him he had done his
duty and I would do mine. The interdict
forbade me under the penalty of the Calton-hill jail to preach the Gospel in
the parish churches of Strathbogie. I
said the churches are stone and lime and belong to the state, I will not
intrude there. It forbade me to preach
the Gospel in the schoolhouses. I said,
the schoolhouses are stone and lime and belong to the state; I will not intrude
there. It forbade me to preach in the
churchyard and I said, the dust of the
dead is the state's and I will not
intrude there. But when these Lords of
Session forbade me to preach my Master’s blessed Gospel and offer salvation to
sinners anywhere in that district under the arch of heaven, I put the interdict
under my feet and I preached the Gospel'.
And that was the man whose chief love was for the Gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ. And he saw that the cause
of Christ was tied up so intimately with
the contendings of the Disruption times.
Move to Edinburgh
We need to retrace our
steps. After a seven year ministry at Arbirlot, Thomas Guthrie was destined for
Edinburgh. A vacancy came in Old
Greyfriars Church and although the whole Kirk Session of that Church was
moderate in their outlook, the Town Council gave the presentation of that
vacancy to Guthrie. He was inducted as colleague to the Rev John Sym on 21
September 1837. There could be no greater contrast between the place he left and the place he came to.
From Arbirlot, with its fresh rural
fields, and he came to the Cowgate ,
with its dingy closes and overcrowded tenements.
There is a story told
about how Guthrie stood on George IV
Bridge one day soon after he arrived in
Edinburgh. His great heart was stirred
to its inmost depths by the crime, wretchedness and poverty he saw around
him. and thinking how he could best deal
with the discordant and seemingly irreclaimable material when a hand was laid on his shoulder. On looking round he saw the famous Dr Thomas
Chalmers. 'Hopeful of success, he
surveyed the scene beneath us, and his eye, which often wore a dreamy stare,
kindled at the prospect of seeing that wilderness become an Eden; those foul haunts of
darkness, drunkenness and disease changed into “ dwellings of the righteous
where is heard the voice of melody “. Contemplating the scene for a little in
silence, all at once, with his broad Luther-like face glowing with enthusiasm,
he waved his arm to exclaim, “A beautiful field, sir; a very fine field of
operation.”.''
He spoke of the contrast
with his previous field of labour. ‘The contrast both morally and physically
between my present and my former sphere was such as without God’s help to appal
the stoutest heart.’ Where he was preaching in the Old Greyfriars
Church there were many revellers but
also some men of nobility, including Lord Jeffrey and Lord Coburn. The story is told of Lord Coburn that being
asked by a friend who met him one Sunday where he was going to Church. He answered, ‘Going to have a greet with
Guthrie.’ He speaks about his preaching
in the Old Greyfriars Church and the collegiate minister there who was an older
man and how all the crowds were coming out to hear Dr Guthrie, but this man was
not jealous. .
Guthrie delighted to take
his turn in the service for the poor, which Mr Sym had, some years before, had
commenced in the old Magdalene Chapel in the Cowgate:
'With my excellent and
able colleague I have a parish where there are two congregations. We have in
the Greyfriars Church , a congregation of ladies and gentleman, and in the
Magdalene Chapel we have a not less interesting -to me in some respects a more
interesting – congregation in so far as it contains some who, like the lost
sheep of the wilderness, have been brought back by the parochial system
graciously and rejoicingly to the fold they had left'.
'When I preached there on
Sunday afternoons the seats were free in the first instance only to the poor
parishioners of the district. Till they
were accommodated others had to wait at the door and a curious and interesting
sight it was to see two lines of ladies and gentlemen stretching out into the
street as they waited their time while the poor, the maim, the halt and the
blind marched up between them to take precedence in the house of God. The gold ring and the goodly apparel were at
a discount with us in the Cowgate where the respectable stood in the passages
and the poorest of the poor occupied the pews.
Now I will give a little description about this. ‘Living in the parish on the very borders of
its sin and misery, the hours of the day were exposed to constant interruption
by my poor wretched parishioners when I was in the house. But most of the day was spent outside among
them and by the evening I was so tired and exhausted that I was fit for nothing
but the newspaper, light reading and the lessons and play of my children. Anyway, I had resolved on coming to Edinburgh
to give my evenings to my family, to spend them not in my study as many
ministers did but in the parlour among my children.’
The first winter he was in Edinburgh (1837-38)
was one of extraordinary severity. 'For
six weeks at least there was not a spade put into the ground. The working classes, most of them living from
hand to mouth, contracted debts which weighed them down for years. For the poorest of the people, who had not
character enough to procure on credit, were like to starve for lack of food and
fuel. My door used to be besieged every
day by crowds of half-naked creatures, men, women and children, shivering with
cold and hunger and I visited many a house that winter where there were
starving mothers and starving children, and neither bread nor Bible. With climbing stairs my limbs were like to
fail and with such spectacles of misery my heart was like to break'.
That is the situation he
came to and after speaking about the disease and so on that were so rife in
these places, he says: 'It was not
disease or death, it was the starvation, the drunkenness, the rags, the
heartless, hopeless, miserable condition of the people, the debauched and
drunken mothers, the sallow, yellow, emaciated children, the wants both
temporal and spiritual, which one felt themselves unable to relieve which
sometimes seemed to overwhelm me, making me wonder why for such scenes of
suffering I had ever left my happy country parish with its fragrance of bush, the golden firs of its moor and the
green and clover flowers of cultivated fields, with heath blowing in every
breeze and bloom in the rosy cheeks of infants laughing in their mothers arms
and of boys and girls on their way to school.
I began my visitations in the Horse Wynd and he speaks of the condition
of the Horse Wynd before but now he says:
'Of the first one hundred and fifty I visited
going from door to door there was not five who attended any house of God either
Church or Chapel. Most of the families
were clothed in rags. Many of the houses
were almost without chair or table; the bed was a quantity of straw gathered in
one corner beneath some thin and ragged coverlets and in almost every case all
their misery was due to drunkenness. The
fathers and mothers drunk and the children were starved with cold and hunger
and so brutally used that the young looked old and with a fixed expression of
sadness seemed as if they had never smiled.'
On one occasion he was baptising a child, in a house in the Cowgate. There was a terrific commotion next door and
as the walls were very thin, he could hear there was a violent struggle,
someone was thrown to the floor and a great cry went out. And he says: ‘not to baptise but to prevent
murder though at some risk, was present duty, so stopping the service, I asked
the father of the child I was to baptise to stand by me while I forced my way
into the room where this murder was going on.
Strange and startling as it was to me, he having lived long in such localities
had become familiar with such scenes and would have nothing to do with it:’ and
Guthrie had to do that on his own.
Free St John's
Before long another
church was planned to have for these poor people in the Cowgate. The building
was commenced in the Nether Bow, re-named Victoria Street, in 1838 and completed in 1840. Guthrie entered his
new pulpit on 19th November of that year. The gallery of the church, with three hundred and fifty
sittings, was let to applicants from all parts of the city; but six hundred and
fifty sittings – the whole area of the church in fact – were reserved as
absolutely free seats for residents in the parish, poor or rich, who applied
for them. Guthrie, writing to his
brother said 'We are abundantly filled with people, and you would be delighted
to see the masses of common people who cram every corner and nook of the area.'
Following the Disruption of May 1843 Guthrie and his congregation left their
nearly new building and for two years met in a large Wesleyan Chapel in
Nicholson Square.
Plans were soon put in place
to erect a new building just across on the other side of Victoria Street with
its front on Johnston Terrace. The sum of £6,000 was raised for the project and
it was recognised that the amount ruled out an elaborate exterior. Guthrie was
anxious that the architect, Thomas Hamilton, should devote his energies
'chiefly to the interior'. The building was opened on 18th April
1845 as was mentioned already. Guthrie comments: 'After sermon I made a short
address; in which, among other matters, I set myself frankly and fairly to
defend and justify the ornate character of our church, telling my hearers that
“there is no sin in beauty and no holiness in ugliness”.'
Other Ministries
There were may other calls on Dr Guthrie's time. He
became involved in what was known as the Manse Fund. After the Disruption of 1843 and the
formation of the Free Church of Scotland the ministers involved not only lost
their church buildings but also their manses. There was an incredible amount of
suffering for ministers and their families. So Dr Guthrie was appointed to go
round the country campaigning for funds for new manses. After he had toured thirteen Synods and fifty
eight Presbyteries in a year he was able to announce to the General Assembly of
1846 that £116,370 had been raised.
£116,000 was raised in one year and he put a great deal of effort into
that, an effort that affected his health.
But Dr Guthrie became
involved in many other things. He was
concerned for the situation in this area and what they wanted to do was to have
further Church extension, and plans were put in hand for this The church was
given an area of Edinburgh to operate in and that area was The Pleasance. So they began to work there and Dr Guthrie
delivered sermons in support of an appeal for that church and he preached on
the text, He beheld the city and wept
over it (Luke 19:41). These
sermons were published under the title The
City: Its Sins and Sorrows. That
volume made a great impact upon the people of his day. He says:
'Well, upon entering on a
work in The Pleasance, certainly not the worst district in the town, we found
more than one-third of its 2,000 inhabitants, more than 600 of the whole 2,000
people, passing on the grave as careless of their souls as if they had none to
care for: living without the profession
of religion, living without God and hope in the world, living to all practical
purposes, heathens in a Christian land.'
The Ragged Schools
Guthrie's familiarity with the needs
of the city, especially the area around
the Cowgate , inspired him to become a social reformer and he is remembered
today more than anything else perhaps for the promotion of the Ragged
Schools. The idea of these Ragged or
Industrial Schools originated in England
with John Pounds in Portsmouth. The inspiration for the Ragged Schools in
Scotland was Sheriff Watson who started one in Aberdeen in 1841. However it was Guthrie who became the driving force
behind the Scottish movement. Guthrie
appealed for public backing in his book, Plea
for Ragged Schools, published in 1847 and it went through eleven editions
in one year. It was met with a good
response and such a response in
Edinburgh that Guthrie was able to secure premises for the first Ragged School
on the Castle Hill in 1847. For these
destitute children this institution was intended to provide free food and
clothing, vocational training and religious instruction. They were sorely needed and a great provision
for the desperate situation that many children faced, homeless, parentless,
cast out in the street, and Guthrie had this great compassion for these
children.
Now some dissension arose
later on over the religious aspect of the education provided. Guthrie and most of his backers argued that
they were acting in loco parentis to
the children and so were entitled to instruct them in Protestant
Christianity. Other people of course
were making claims for Roman Catholic teaching and later on there were separate
Ragged Schools. Dr Guthrie had pioneered
this work in Edinburgh and also in other parts of Scotland. In 1852 he gave
evidence before a House of Commons Committee and an Act was passed in 1854
which empowered Scottish Magistrates to commit vagrant children aged four and
under to Industrial Schools. So the
State took recognition of what Dr Guthrie was doing and that was put on a more
established basis in the city..
We noticed in the
extracts already quoted how Dr Guthrie
was deeply concerned about the
drunkenness in the areas and the effect the drunkenness had in the sadness and
the sorrow that it was bringing into so many lives. Drink was at the root of all the destitution,
misery and crime. So both his experience
and his pastoral work in the Cowgate and other places led him to support the
Temperance Movement. In 1851 the
Scottish Association for the Suppression of Drunkenness was formed and Dr
Guthrie was urgently requested to write the introductory pamphlet of a series
to be issued by the Association. That
pamphlet is called Plea on behalf of
Drunkards and Against Drunkenness.
He himself became a total abstainer.
In the book, The City: Its Sins
and Sorrows, he laid so much to the door of strong drink, appealed so
earnestly on behalf of its victims that public feeling in Edinburgh and
wherever his books were read was stirred to its uttermost depths.
His Latter Years
All these labours took a
toll on his health. After all his
exertions going round the country for the Manse Fund he developed a heart
problem and he had to be off preaching
for more than a year (1848-49). And so
Dr William Hanna, who was to become the biographer of Thomas Chalmers, was
inducted as his colleague in the congregation of St John's in 1850.
But after he recovered from that illness he was able to preach again
but once on the Lord’s Day for a further fourteen years. And that was why Dr Alexander from the USA heard him preaching
at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. His
colleague would have preached in the morning.
There would have been no evening service in those days. He retired from the pastorate in 1864.
In his retirement he
engaged in many activities, including writing and travel. He preached his last
sermon during a trip to his beloved Highland retreat at Lochlee in August
1872. In the parish church in the
presence of the Duke of Edinburgh and
the Lord Chancellor he preached from Hebrews 10.38, 'The just shall live by
faith'. By September of the year he
suffered and attack of congestion of the lungs. During his final days he was
at St Leonards-on-Sea, in the south of England. Such was his name and reputation that a
telegram was received from the Queen at Windsor asking for information as to
his health. He passed to his eternal reward on the 24 February 1873 at the age
of 70.
His funeral took place to
the Grange Cemetery. What a scene that
was. He lived on Salisbury Road about a
mile from the Cemetery. The funeral
procession was three-quarters of a mile
long and both sides of the road, from the Salisbury Road to the Grange, were
lined with thousands of people. They
reckon that upwards of 30,000 people were assembled that day, the largest funeral gathering seen in
Edinburgh since the death of Sir James Young Simpson. And at the graveside there in Grange Cemetery
the children of the Ragged Schools were among the people who were the
mourners. They sang There
is a Happy Land. Two of these little
ones from the Ragged Schools placed a wreath on the grave of Dr Guthrie. Such then was the man who lived to do such
great things out of his love for God and for his people.
Lessons from his life
I would like in conclusion to draw some lessons from
the life and ministry of Dr Guthrie. I
would mention four in particular that we might profit from.
First of all, we, especially those of us who
are involved in the work of ministry
must learn a lot from his preaching: this determination he had to make
his hearers understand, to gain the attention of the people. As we saw in that extract from Dr Alexander,
'the audience was wrapt and melting' because he was getting home to them. As Guthrie said: ‘speaking to convert the
hearers was not within my power, but to command their attention, to awaken
their interest, to touch their feelings, and instruct their minds was, and I
was determined to do it.’
He was a master in the use of
illustration. The story is told of a
seaman in the congregation listening to Guthrie’s description of a nautical
disaster. As he listened to this
illustration, he leapt up and removed his coat and was ready to dive in and
save the drowning person. That was the
power that this man had, the power of illustration and he read widely, he took
his illustrations from nature. How many illustrations were given to him in
those days in his first congregation. He
was there beside the sea and he got illustrations from the sea and from
shipping. He got illustrations from
nature around him. And he used all these
things, he pressed them into the service of the Gospel and no wonder he was
such a popular preacher and such an effective preacher of the Gospel and the
preparation he put into his sermons. Perhaps
we preach too many sermons in a week in some parts of this land today. There is wise counsel from Dr Guthrie that a sermon needs a tremendous amount of
preparation if it is going to be effective and for good.
Then, secondly, his
soul-winning. It was the worth of the
human soul that affected Dr Guthrie. It
affected him in his first charge in
Arbilot as well as in Edinburgh. He did not
make any distinction. He did not regard
Arbilot as just a nice, comfortable place to be in. No, in his rural setting he gave himself to
seeking and saving souls. Likewise in the crowded tenements of the Cowgate he
went out after the lost. It cost him something as we have seen in his state of
health.. But he went after the people. Like his Saviour, he beheld the city and he
wept over it. As Dr Candlish says of
him, ‘his pity was ever active and he went out after the lost and he sought
them in the darkest places’.
Thirdly, his love. ‘He was
overwhelmed,’ says Dr Alexander, ‘by the love of the Spirit.’ You see it extended not only to the souls of
men but to the whole man. He had that
orthodoxy of doctrine and he was clear enough on the basic truths of the
Gospel. But he also had the orthodoxy of
life. He says in one of his sermons,
‘there is no respect in which we are more like our Father than this,
love’. And he says, ‘And so, brethren,
get me the love of Christ into a man’s heart.
Let God the Holy Spirit kindle that flame in a man’s heart, I say, that
man is fit for anything.’ That’s what
inspired Thomas Guthrie to be a preacher, to be a philanthropist, to be a
social reformer, to have an impact upon his city, to the needy around him, and
no wonder there is a statue to him in Princes Street gardens. The people of the
city and of the nation acknowledged the tremendous contribution that he made to
this city and to its needs.
And there is one final
thing that we can say about Dr Guthrie, and that is his
fervency. What fervency he
manifested in all that he did. He gives
an illustration of this himself. He
says: 'An obscure man rose up to address
the French Convention. At the close of
his oration, Mirabu, the giant genius of the revolution, turned round to his
neighbour and eagerly asked, “Who is that?”
The other, who had been in no way interested by the address wondered at
Mirabu’s curiosity, whereupon the latter said, “That man will yet act a great
part” and asked to explain himself added “he speaks as though he believes every
word he says.” Much of pulpit-power
under God depends on that. . They make others feel who feel
themselves. How can he plead for souls
who does not know, does not feel, the value of his own.’ And that was Dr
Guthrie. He had that desire to see souls
being saved, to see men and women being brought to the knowledge of the truth
and how he went about this work with such energy, and with such eagerness and
he speaks about the city, he says, ‘If this is not to be done, and nothing
effectual is to be done to meet the evils that afflict our country, what shall
be the end of these things?. Unless they
are met, met in time, and before the constitution sinks and loses all power to
rally, the end of these things must be the ruin of our land. Our cities, especially our large cities,
being in this, as they are in every other country, the great centres of
influence, if they increase in ignorance, irreligion and immorality during the
next century as they have done in the past, those who fear the God of heaven
and profess the faith of Jesus Christ will find themselves a weak minority. We are just now rapidly moving on to such a
dangerous crisis. That is the rock to
which the vessel of the State is drifting and when that happens it needs no
orator to tell what shall be the end of these things.’
And this is the rallying
call he gives to us today. Under God, he
says, it depends upon ourselves whether that shall or shall not be our
fate. Matters are not so far gone but it
may be averted. A great French General,
who reached the battlefield at Sandown, found that the troops of his country had
been worsted in the fight. Unskillful
arrangements had neutralised gallant bravery, and offered the enemy advantages
they were not slow to seize. He accosted the unfortunate Commander. Having rapidly learned how matters stood, he
pulled out his watch, turned his eyes on the sinking sun, and said, ‘there’s
time yet to gain the victory.’ He
rallied the broken ranks, placed himself at their head and launching them with
the arm of a giant in war upon the columns of the foe, he plucked the prize
from their hands and won the day. There
is time yet also to save our country.
There is no time to lose. To her
case perhaps we would apply the words which we would leave as a solemn warning
to every worldly, careless, Christless man, ‘Behold now is the accepted time,
behold now is the day of salvation.’
May what Guthrie stood
for, what he believed and what he worked for, make us men and women of God,
rise up to follow in his footsteps, to claim the lost for Christ, and this
country once again for God.
