William Nelson A Memoir 11

William Nelson A Memoir 11

The enduring impressions left on the mind of William Nelson by his visit

to the Holy Land found __EXPRESSION__, in long subsequent years, in a

well-known work, “The Land and the Book,” which in its final form

embraced: 1. Palestine and Jerusalem; 2. Lebanon, Damascus, and Beyond

the Jordan; and 3. Central Palestine and Phœnicia. The Rev. W. M.

Thomson was commissioned to explore the sacred scenes of Bible story,

with a view to the production of a work that should furnish for others

somewhat of the vivid realizations that William Nelson had experienced

in his own visit to the land

 

“Over whose acres walked those blessed feet

That eighteen hundred years ago were nailed

For our redemption to the bitter cross.”

 

The following extract from a letter written in July 1880 to his old

schoolfellow, Dr. Simpson, refers to the volume as then in progress, and

to the perils from which the manuscript had been so unexpectedly

rescued:--

 

“We are not out yet with the new volume of ‘The Land and the Book,’ and

I do not expect that it will be ready for publication before the middle

of next month. It is a truly superb work, and it has been got up

regardless of expense. It will, when completed, form three volumes.

Strange to say, the manuscript of one of them, ‘Egypt, Mount Sinai, and

the Desert,’ turned up the other day after we had given it up as having

been destroyed at our great fire, with many other valuable manuscripts.

But, fortunately, it was in one of the drawers of a writing-desk which

had escaped the devouring flames, and the manuscript was discovered

quite unexpectedly, after the author had for a long time been informed

of the loss that had been sustained.”

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VII.

 

_CHURCH--MARRIAGE._

 

 

The year 1843 is a memorable one in Scottish history. The controversy

between the two parties into which the National Church was divided had

been concentrated for years on the old question of patronage, or the

right of the people to the free choice of their clergymen. Under the

leadership of Dr. Chalmers, in co-operation with an able body of clergy

and laymen, enactments were passed by the Church courts restoring to the

people their rights in the choice of pastors. Influential patrons

acquiesced in its operation, and the sanguine hope was entertained that

a peaceful solution of the grievance which had long been a source of

bitterness had at length been arrived at. But in the famous Auchterarder

case the civil courts were appealed to; the action of the General

Assembly, the supreme court of the Church, was overruled; and on the

18th of May 1843 four hundred and seventy-four ministers of the Church

of Scotland voluntarily resigned their livings, and cast themselves on

the liberality of their people. Ten years of conflict, marked with an

ever-increasing intensity of feeling, and with all the inevitable fruits

of embittered controversy, had ended in the disruption of the National

Church. It was an event without a parallel since the ejection from their

benefices of upwards of two thousand ministers of the English National

Church in 1662 by the Act of Uniformity.

 

It is difficult for the present generation to fully estimate the feeling

which the Disruption called forth, or the bitter antagonism which in

many cases it engendered. The early training and all the strong personal

convictions of William Nelson alike determined his sympathy with what

claimed to be “The Free Church of Scotland.” The movement which led to

this result had appeared to him, as to others, to furnish a practical

solution of the difficulties which held his Covenanting fathers aloof

from the National Church. The financial question was an important one,

and long continued to be so; for not only churches but colleges had to

be built, theological professorships to be endowed, poor congregations

to be sustained, and the foreign mission field provided for. In all this

work William Nelson was a generous co-operator; and to the close of his

life he continued to respond with unstinted liberality to all the claims

which it involved. His brother John, who became the esteemed pastor of

the Free West Church of Greenock, was referred to after his premature

death, in an eloquent tribute by Professor Blaikie, as “one whose

natural gifts were of a high order, and whose early position as a

student was most distinguished. He was known to be of far too

independent a nature to fall into any line merely because it was

traditional or conventionally proper. He had courage and capacity to

strike out for himself; and he had spent much time in study in Germany

at a time when few students went thither, and when such a course was

regarded as somewhat suspicious.” The old Covenanting blood was in his

veins; but he had hoped that the National Church was resuming its

fidelity to the faith of his fathers, when the Disruption came, and he

cast in his lot with the champions of freedom. Personal sympathy,

therefore, as well as strong convictions, enlisted William Nelson on the

side of the Free Church; but he never was a partisan. No trace of

bitterness sullied the earnest zeal with which he promoted the cause

that he had at heart. His convictions were clear, and his devotion to

the Church unwavering; but this was never allowed to interfere with his

personal relations to those who adhered to the Established Church, nor

with his response to appeals made by them to his liberality. The

testimony to this effect was freely given when his death recalled the

incidents of earlier years. Among memoranda furnished to me by Mr. John

Miller of Glasgow is the following note: “My sole companion in the

railway carriage on my return to Glasgow, after attending Mr. Nelson’s

funeral, was a stranger, a clergyman of the Established Church, who had

travelled to Edinburgh on the same melancholy errand. In conversation I

learned that Mr. Nelson and another to whom he referred had been friends

of his from their earliest years. But at the Disruption they both became

members of the Free Church. Thereupon, as the clergyman said, his

unnamed friend took umbrage at him for remaining in the Established

Church, and their friendship ceased. It is not easy now to understand

the bitterness of feeling that existed at that time between those who

took different views on the question of the relation between Church and

State; but as regards Mr. Nelson, such was his breadth of mind and

catholic spirit, it never made the slightest change on their friendship

through all the intervening years, and he spoke of him ‘as the best of

all good men he had known.’”

 

But his broad-minded charity was in no degree traceable to

latitudinarian indifference. His convictions were strong, and when

occasion required it, were maintained with firmness, and defended with

incisive keenness of argument. And here it may be well to note a

characteristic trait. Few men were ever more notably marked by

transparent sincerity and truthfulness. If a truth told against his

cause, it never occurred to him to withhold it. There was indeed an

amusing simplicity in the manner in which he would disclose a fact

seeming to reflect on his own party or on himself; or, when in company

with persons disposed to arrogate to themselves rank or social position,

he would recall some homely incident or experience of his own early

life. But the same instinctive love of truth made him intolerant of

cant, or of any evasion in reference to matters of faith. If he were

perplexed with doubts, as he often was, in reference to the modern

conflict between science and revelation, he would give abrupt utterance

to them in the most orthodox circles; and if any attempt were made to

evade or gloss over the difficulty, his blunt reassertion of the point

at issue, in all its literal nakedness, was at times misunderstood and

even bitterly resented. Sanctimonious hypocrisy, or anything savouring

of insincerity in religion, was abhorrent to his nature, and provoked

his keenest ridicule. For his sense of humour was great, and he would

expose pretentious inconsistencies in their most ludicrous aspect,

giving no little offence at times to clerical offenders. To this habit

of giving __EXPRESSION__ of his convictions with all unguarded sincerity is,

no doubt, to be ascribed the remark in a letter of one of his oldest

Christian friends, when bearing testimony to the earnestness with which

in his last illness “he gave proof that he had attained by God’s help

to true faith in the Son of God, and was conscious of having definitely

accepted him as his personal Saviour, and given himself over to him on

the warrant of God’s own word of invitation.” The writer, a devoted

clergyman of the Free Church, adds: “There was an entire absence of the

old levity, which you will remember used sometimes almost to shock and

sadden even his best friends.”

 

It was perhaps a want of tact,--a diplomatic element apt at times to

verge on insincerity in which he was certainly deficient,--that led to

his being so misjudged. But the same unconscious indifference to the

prejudices of others could be seen when, among strangers at a public

hotel or on the ocean, he would ask a blessing before dinner with the

same earnest reverence as at his own table. The impression which his

manner of saying grace produced on a stranger is thus expressed in a

letter from an English lady, who, after his death, recalled the memories

of more than one sojourn under his hospitable roof: “One always felt

cheered in his presence by the glow of his great heart and that sweet

genial kindness to all which was like sunshine in the room. I also

greatly admired that dislike of any praise of himself which one always

saw in him, and which is so rare.... I so well remember in the

Philiphaugh drawing-room before dinner his kindly talk to us all, and

his almost boyish fun: so interested in every one, and saying playful

things to me about palmistry, etc. But when we went in to dinner, I was

always struck with his unusual way of saying grace: the reverence that

came over him, as if he were actually speaking to God, and as though

from his heart he was simply grateful day by day for each gift of the

heavenly Father. I can almost hear again as I write the rich deep tones

of his voice as he asked the blessing, and prayed that God would

graciously take away all our sins. I have never heard a clergyman, or

any other person, who so impressed me with reverence and reality in

saying grace as he did.” This feeling was by no means singular. In a

letter from Professor T. Grainger Stewart, a similar reference occurs to

“his mode of asking a blessing.” Alluding to his wife, Professor Stewart

says: “We were both greatly impressed with the earnestness and reverence

with which he spoke, and on our way home talked of it to one another.”

 

To one in whom the influences of early training had thus been confirmed

by the personal convictions of later years, the responsibilities of his

influence as a publisher were keenly realized. The system which he

developed was based on the anticipated sale of large editions at low

prices. Hence an important class of works issued by some eminent

publishing houses in costly editions of from eight to twelve hundred

copies lay entirely beyond the range of his publications. But the

imprint of Thomas Nelson and Sons became ere long the guarantee for a

pure, high-toned literature, admirably adapted for the special

requirements of the school library and the home circle; and as success