IV. The Parting of the Ways

I AM sitting on a seat by the roadside at Bendochy in Manitoba, enjoying to the full a glorious August day. Over head the sky is a great vault of blue, without the speck of a cloud in it; in front of me the Assiniboine is making its way round the beautiful wooded bend, which seems from my seat as it were an island in one of our Scottish lakes; the woods around me are alive with the chirp of grasshoppers and the song of birds; a pert little squirrel is eyeing me very suspiciously from a hole in an old tree. The peacefulness is most comforting. It is a veritable paradise.

I am thinking of the days of “Auld Lang Syne,” and wondering if there are any still to the fore of the friends and acquaintances, who had a share in helping or hindering me, when I came to the “parting of the ways.”

The mosquitoes are getting a little troublesome, so you will excuse me while I gather some leaves and grass, and light a smudge.

There now, that’s all right. I’ll see if I can call to memory some of the “characters” in the old village of long ago. Of course, the ministers come first. There were four kirks in Glenconan.

The established Presbyterian church stood in its ancient burial-ground on the north side of the square, quite close to the old house in which Dean Skinner wrote “Tullochgorum”. The first minister I remember was the Reverend Dr. Ogg, whose smile and kindly words were like a benediction to us children. He died when I was twelve, and was succeeded by a man of an altogether different type. Before he came to us he had been Assistant in a large city parish, and, as we thought, rather gave himself airs on that account. It’s true, there were few country ministers more popular with the gentlefolks; no one was more welcome at a garden party, and, he was a first-class tennis player. He had taken his B.D. degree, and was generally supposed to be of a scholarly turn; but, insofar as turning his learning to practical account was concerned, results were meagre. When I was about fifteen years of age, I saw a good deal of a Mr. Cowie, a man of beautiful life and wide reading. He was an elder of the Parish church, but had distinct leanings towards Plymouth Brethrenism. My converse with him raised the question of the Baptism of Infants; and, for a time I was at loss to know just what to believe. I went to Mr. Greig, the parish minister, and laid my difficulties before him. So far from helping, he hindered me. He did not understand the eagerness of my countrymen for the acquisition of knowledge; he treated me as a forward child, who was inquiring into things entirely beyond his grasp. He was too busy to go into the matter then, and told me to go home and forget about it. I asked for bread, and he gave me a stone. My father and mother were members of his church; but, they did not lay down any hard and fast law to me, so long as I went to church.

For some time I wavered in my leanings. Our home was near to both the Free and United Presbyterian Churches. Occasionally I attended the last named, mainly because I liked to hear Mr. Haldane, the U.P. minister, commenting on the Scripture lessons, as he read. One could not fail to be instructed. He was a dear old man, and was beloved by everybody. His quiet, unobtrusive, saintly life was one long uplifting sermon. You could not be in his company without appreciating the rays of happiness and kindliness that were all the time going forth from him. No one would have classed him as an eloquent preacher, in the ordinary acceptation of the term; but, he possessed a gentle persuasiveness, that had a wonderful influence on his little flock.

For several years I most frequently attended the Free Church, of which I became a communicant at the age of sixteen. The minister, the Reverend William Manson, had taken a brilliant degree in classics at the University of Aberdeen—and he had been equally proficient in Oriental languages—during his course at the Theological Hall.

While possessed of great goodness of heart, he was by most thought to be an ambitious man. I knew him well, and it always seemed to me that it was not ambition as it is usually understood, but rather a consciousness of his own intellectual power and ripe scholarship, and a feeling that these were not finding their complete development in the quiet, old world village, where his lot was cast. I have often thought, too, that the General Assembly of his church did not know what they cast away, when they chose a “Higher Critic”, in preference to him, for one of the Divinity Professorships. It was under his fostering care that I was first led to interest myself in religion as “the way of life,” and I shall always retain the deepest gratitude for his wholesome influence on my young life. He had, however, a certain dignity and aloofness, that kept me from daring to intrude into the inner circle of his friendship.

There were several things that came into my life about this period, and compelled me to relinquish, for a time at least, the strong desire which I had for a college education. I resolved to learn a trade, by means of which I hoped to earn my living, and put by a little towards college expenses. I was indentured as an apprentice carpenter, and three very happy years I spent at the “bench”. I never was a good tradesman, but I learnt enough to enable me in after years to erect, partly with my own hands, a mission church on the Red River.

Mr. Manson took notice of the fact that I seldom participated in the ploys of the other village lads; and, when he found out that I was making a brave effort to prepare myself for college, he constituted himself my private tutor. For nearly two years I studied under his direction, and made such progress that I was able to qualify for the post of Junior English Master in a small English Grammar School.

I used to think that my inability to enter college was something of a calamity, but, when I look back upon those days in the perspective, I am firmly convinced that I was being guided and controlled in all this by one wiser than I. There were many things besides classics and mathematics which I ought to know before I made the plunge into academical life.

Undoubtedly the experience through which I passed gave me an outlook on life, which has been of inestimable value.

Now and then I made my way across the river to the “Chapel”, as the Episcopal Church was called by the villagers; I learned to follow the services in the Book of Common Prayer; but the prejudices against a prearranged form of worship were hard to uproot, and my Scottish soul revolted at the English accent of the clergyman. Nothing is more repellent to my countrymen than to think of their being dominated by the “Sassenach”; and, nothing has contributed more to the success of the Scottish Episcopal Church than the ministration of clergy of Scottish birth and lineage. My old friend, Mr. Lindsay, was sometimes very caustic in his criticism of a certain young English cleric, who was in charge of a country living at no great distance from us. “Poor laddie,” he would say, “he seems to think oor sturdy Scotch folk are as illiterate as the working men he had in his last English curacy. The time has lang gane by, when oor folks were sae under the thraldom o’ priest and laird that they couldna ca’ their souls their ain. Nae man has a greater respect for the church and the minister than oor folks hae; but, whatever is presented to them maun appeal to their reason and common sense, or they’ll hae nane o’t. There’s nae a man in his congregation that canna tell him why he is an Episcopalian. He needna think he can drive his folk as he would a herd o’ stirks.”

Mr. Lindsay was always delighted to help me, when I asked his assistance, but, when he saw me impatient to find a way out of my quandary, he would say, “Mind the auld Latin motto—‘Festina lente’. Just you tak’ your time, and get a clear grasp o’ things before you set aside the faith o’ your fathers.” I have no doubt but that I was saved from many misgivings and serious misunderstandings, by giving heed to the wise counsel.

I never got to be well acquainted with the rector of the Episcopal Church, very much to my regret; but, perhaps it was just as well that I should “dree my ain weird.”

It was about this time that Mr. Lindsay introduced me to Bishop Wordsworth’s “Theophilus Anglicanus”, which gave me a full explanation of the genesis, and development, and organization of the Church of Christ. He also lent me Palmer’s Treatise on the Church, which I found very useful, but not altogether satisfactory to my way of thinking.

I was very unwilling to say anything of my religious difficulties to my own family; and so, when the time came for me to begin my work in England, I left home to all outward appearances happy and contented, but in reality groping after truth, tossing to and fro on a sea of uncertainty and seeming contradiction.