When Dr Guthrie died on 24th February 1873 the funeral was arranged for 4 days later on the 28th of February.
The procession stretched for a mile from the Grange Cemetery down to Salisbury Road where the Guthrie’s lived. There were over 30,000 lining the streets to say farewell to one of Scotland’s favourite sons.
But today his statue stands in Princes Street Gardens and thousands walk past every week without the faintest clue who he was or what he achieved under God for the cause of the gospel.
What I want to do this morning is whet your appetite for an incredibly inspiring figure from an exciting period of church history in Scotland.
Biographical sketches can sometimes crush and depress us. I don’t want to do that today.
Rather, I want to encourage you that Thomas Guthrie faced many of the same challenges you do, but he believed in the power of a big God and a beautiful Saviour.
Guthrie’s life and legacy is a vast subject so let me try and achieve 3 things this morning.
1. Let me give a very quick snapshot of his life.
2. Let me share a little about his incredible impact as a church planter, social reformer and preacher.
3. Let me draw 4 lessons from his life that can inspire and encourage us today.
A Brief Overview of Guthrie’s Life
Thomas Guthrie was born on 12th July 1803 in the Angus town of Brechin to David and Clemintine Guthrie.
He was born four years after the French Revolution and his childhood was in the shadow of the Napoleonic Wars. As a 12-year-old Thomas Guthrie saw the 42nd Regiment of Highlanders marching in to Edinburgh after the battle of Waterloo in 1815.
He was the second youngest of 13 children - three died in infancy and of the remaining 10 who survived, there were 6 brothers and 3 sisters.
Sent off to Edinburgh university at the tender age of 12 he acknowledges in later life that this was far too young.
He studied four years of philosophy and literature and then a further 4 of theology. He then studied for another 2 years: chemistry, anatomy and natural history. He attended the lectures of Dr Knox famous for the Burke and Hare murders. This sparked a lifelong interest in medicine, and he used to prescribe medicine for minor ailments as a parish minister.
Despite clear ability, Guthrie had to wait 5 years to be called to a charge. During this time, he went to the Sorbonne in France to study and he returned to work in his father’s bank. This allowed Guthrie to hone his preaching skills and to spend time working and getting to know the frustrations of everyday life.
Eventually Guthrie was called to Arbirlot in Angus in 1830 where he proved to be an innovative and diligent pastor for the next 7 years.
In 1837 he was called to Old Greyfriars Parish Church as a collegiate minister to Rev John Sym.
In 1840 he planted St John’s Parish Church in Victoria Street. The congregation left at the disruption and worshiped in Nicholson Square while they were building Free St John’s which is now St Columba’s Free Church.
He is remembered for launching the Ragged School movement in 1847 after his elders took cold feet and pulled back from supporting it in Free St John's. His book 'A Plea for Ragged School' was like 'a spark amongst combustibles' and his leadership and vision led to a nationwide and world wide movement.
He was a leader of the temperance movement and wrote the powerful book ‘The City its Sins and Sorrows’ in 1857 to call for radical change to the availability of ‘dram shops’ and ‘gin palaces’.
Guthrie raised an incredible £116,000 in 1845 to build over 700 manses after the disruption. He was known as the 'Big Beggar Man' as he toured 13 synods and 58 Presbyteries.
He struggled with a weak heart but continued to write and edit The Sunday Magazine well into his late 60’s after retiring from Free St John’s in 1864.
He died in February 1873. Some of his last words of himself were ‘a brand plucked from the burning.’
By the time Dr Guthrie came to Old Greyfriars in Edinburgh in 1837 he was already convinced of the need for church planting particularly amongst the poor although there is little that could have prepared him for his new parish. He says:
‘I can compare it to nothing else than the change from the green fields and woods and the light of nature to venturing into the darkness and blackness of the coal pit. Guthrie was already an advocate of the revived Parochial System: a church at the very doors of the poor, the church free to all without distinction, properly equipped schools, elders, deacons and district visitors to assist the minister in his pastoral work.’
His vision was for a new kind of church and work began on St John’s in Victoria Street in 1838. When Dr Guthrie entered his new pulpit on 19th November 1840, he could never have imagined that his tenure would be only 2 short years before the congregation would leave at the Disruption.
But in 1840 St John’s in Victoria Street become a beacon of hope for the poor. It was to be a new kind of church where the poor were welcome to hear the gospel without money and without price. Only the balcony continued to be rented out to the wealthier residents of Edinburgh and brought in a healthy income of £280 per year.
Thirty elders and fifteen deacons were allotted districts where they actively sought out non church goers and assisted the poor in practical ways. Dr Guthrie saw the church like a parish well and said: how often have I wished that the parish church was more like the parish well, a well of salvation where all might draw and drink. Finally, in St John’s this vision was realised.
While Thomas Chalmers may have been the great pioneer of church planting in the pre-Disruption Church of Scotland, Guthrie was one of his most zealous followers. Both men were in the vanguard of what Dr Cook of Belfast called a glorious enterprise of Christian aggressions upon the region of popular ignorance.
It is incredible to think that between 1835 and 1841 the Church of Scotland raised a staggering £300,000 and 222 churches were built. Men like Guthrie were not ‘hand ringers’ but men of action.
Let’s take encouragement from the words of Thomas Chalmers at a Church Extension meeting in 1838 where he commended the work that Guthrie was to undertake in St John’s Edinburgh:
‘I know that my friend Dr Guthrie is a house-going minister, and I also know this is the patent way to create a church-going people. I trust that when this arrangement shall be exemplified in the Cowgate, and multiplied over Edinburgh, it will be found that – what no adjustment of political or civil wisdom has been able to effect – the harmonisation of all classes of society shall be at last effected through the medium of Gospel ministrations, and by the omnipotence of Gospel charity.’
Dr Thomas Guthrie is famous for his 'Ragged Schools'. The schools went on to become a huge movement that saved thousands of children from a life of crime and abuse. But as with every great movement it had humble beginnings at Guthrie's newly built church in 1847. They had a huge room in the basement and the elders initially agreed to set up a ragged industrial feeding school for '20-30 waifs'. As time drew near for the launch the elders took fright and the project was abandoned. While Guthrie was cast down, and felt like a man who has 'launched a good sturdy boat, sees her before she has taken ten strokes from the shore seized by a mighty billow, flung back, and dashed to pieces on the strand.'
In 'Out of Harness' which are Sunday Magazine articles collected and published in 1883, Guthrie sees the Lord's providence in this initial disappointment. He says 'Baffled in this direction another lay open to me. I might leave the limits of St John's congregation, and of the Free Church, to launch out on the open sea; I might throw myself on the Christian public, irrespective of sect or party; for were these children saved, it was nothing to me to what church they might attach themselves, or whose arm plucked them from destruction.'
The first or ‘original’ ragged school in Edinburgh was established in 1847 in a small room on the Castle Hill. The main building that was eventually used is now part of Camera Obscura and the open bible can still be seen above the door with the words ‘Search the Scriptures’ (John 5 v 39) engraved on it.
The ragged children who attended the school/s did not remain overnight but were in school for 12 hours in the summer and 11 hours in the winter. The day started at 8am with the rather painful sounding ‘ablutions’ and the children were dismissed at 7:15pm after supper. Guthrie describes the daily routine; ‘in the morning they are to break their fast on a diet of the plainest fare, - then march from their meal to their books; in the afternoon they are again to be provided with a dinner of the cheapest kind, - then back again to school; from which after supper, they return not to the walls of an hospital, but to their own homes. There, carrying with them a holy lesson, they may prove Christian missionaries to those dwellings of darkness and sin.'
There is a famous story about Dr Thomas Guthrie when he was visiting the studio of an artist. An unfinished picture lay on an easel and Guthrie suggested one or two adjustments that might improve the painting. The artist responded: ‘Dr Guthrie, remember you are a preacher and not a painter.’ With his usual rapier wit Guthrie responded: ‘Beg your pardon, my good friend, I am a painter; only I paint in words, while you use brush and colours.’
While Guthrie’s enduring legacy is his work as a social reformer, his highest calling was always preaching. His colleague, Rev Dr Hanna, said of him: ‘No readier speaker ever stepped on a platform.’ Whatever Guthrie may have lacked in fine theology he made up for in passion and imagery. One anonymous writer said:
‘His oratory wanted none of the polish that distinguished Chalmers’ wild whirlwind bursts, or Hall’s grandly ascending periods, but it had qualities entirely of its own. More, perhaps, than any other preacher of his time, he had the power or knack of fixing truths on the memory. He sent them home as if they had been discharged from a battery, and fixed them there by a process peculiar to himself.’
Guthrie’s pattern of preparation was mainly to study in the early morning. After breakfast he would retire to the vestry where he could be heard rehearsing his sermon. He believed in ‘committing’ his sermon to memory and was scathing of ‘readers’ (those who rigidly read from a script). Like all great preachers, Guthrie spent many hours in preparation and believed ‘that God does not give excellence to men but as the reward of labour.’ Even once his sermons were finished he would revise them: ‘After my discourse was written, I spent hours in correcting it; latterly always for that purpose, keeping a blank page on my manuscript opposite a written one, cutting out dry bits, giving point to dull ones, making clear any obscurity, and narrative parts more graphic, throwing more pathos into appeals, and copying God in His works by adding the ornamental to the useful.’
Despite a deep grasp of truth as can be seen in his published sermons, Guthrie believed in simplicity in his sermons: ‘I used the simplest, plainest terms, avoiding anything vulgar, but always, where possible, employing the Saxon tongue – the mother tongue of my hearers. I studied the style of the addresses with the ancient and inspired prophets delivered to the people of Israel, and saw how, differing from the dry inquisitions or a naked statement of truths, they abound in metaphors, figures, and illustrations.’ As with his character, Guthrie blended a perfect mix of truth and love, passion and solemnity. As he says in a letter to Rev Laurie of Tulliallan: ‘The easier your manner, without losing the character of seriousness and solemnity, so much the better. Vigour and birr, without roaring and bellowing, are ever to be aimed at.’
1. Vision - Guthrie had incredible vision. He literally, by God's grace, changed Scotland. His vision was not shaped by the challenges of 19th Century Scotland but rather shaped by the greatness of the God he served. He believed that the Christian gospel could save anyone and transform any community. While others saw homeless and ragged children as burdens or a nuisance, Guthrie saw in these street children the potential for moral and spiritual change. By the time of his death Guthrie had, along with many other social reformers, changed childhood. Rather than being seen as commodities, towards the end of the 19th Century, children were seen as those in need of protection and nurture. Partly as a result of lobbying from social reformers like Guthrie legislation was passed protecting children from working long hours in often dangerous situations.
The DNA of men like Thomas Guthrie and Thomas Chalmers is that they had a big vision. It wasn't a congregational vision or even a Free Church vision but a national vision. Through church extension, the Manse Fund, education and his incredible work with Ragged Schools, Guthrie gave us a great example of the need for a coherent Christian vision for Scotland.
2. Truth - Like so many Christians who get involved in social action, Guthrie never lost his moorings when he become a social reformer. It is clear from his writings that he adhered to the bible as the word of God and remained confessionally Reformed throughout his ministry. He believed in the supremacy and centrality of preaching as the main method that God uses to save sinners. There is no evidence that he ever watered down his preaching or softened his stance on any major Christian doctrine as he became the figurehead for social reform in 19th Century Scotland.
3. Love - As a minister of the gospel, Guthrie embodied love. We are told in James that 'Pure religion and undefiled before God, even the Father, is this, to visit the fatherless, and widows in their adversity, and to keep himself unspotted from the world' James 1 v 27. The fruit of true Christianity is always love for the poor and the oppressed. Many people regard practical love for the poor as a deviation from the gospel. Nothing could be further from the truth. Guthrie's work with ragged children enhanced his message and gave his Christianity a reality and authenticity that made the gospel attractive to sinners. His love was on display throughout the week as he visited some of the worst closes and stairs in the Cowgate, Edinburgh. He was regularly broken by the sights that he saw. Love was the great motivation of his ministry.
This was the same for men like CH Spurgeon as Alex DiPrima says in his excellent book 'Spurgeon and the Poor; ‘Spurgeon believed gospel proclamation and social ministry ought to be inseparable in the work of the church. Good works of love and mercy toward the poor are the hands and feet of the gospel message. The Christian community should be marked by compassion for the poor, and this compassion should adorn the proclamation of the gospel.’
4. Hope - It was this combination of truth and love that gave Guthrie such hope for the communities he worked in and for the individuals he sought to reach. The gospel, when preached in all its fullness and freeness, should fill every sinner with a sense of hope that Christ died to reconcile them to a holy God. The church has gone though many periods when this message has been lost or when she has lost confidence in the power of this gospel to reach the darkest and most hopeless parts of our communities. Guthrie (among others) gave the Free Church the belief that the gospel, accompanied by education for the poor and the practical outworking of love through the local church could redeem the darkest and most hopeless communities.
As we said at the start Guthrie’s funeral took place on 28th February 1873. 230 children from the Ragged School attended his funeral and one little girl was overheard saying ‘he was all the father I ever knew.’
Dr Candlish took his funeral and preached on Hebrews 9 v 27, 28. He said;
‘Men of talents, men of abilities, men of learning, are not uncommon. Men powerful in thought are often raised up: but genius, real poetic genius, like Guthrie’s come but once in many generations. We shall not look upon his like soon, if ever. Nor was it genius alone that distinguished him. The warm heart and the ready hand; the heart to feel, and the hand to work. No sentimental dreamer or mooning idealist was he. His pity was ever active.’
May we know some of that 'active pity' as we seek to win Scotland for Christ.
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