Ringan Gilhaize, or, The Covenanters
Page 40
CHAPTER XXXIX
It was on the Wednesday that my father came home from Edinburgh. OnFriday the farmer lads and their fathers continued coming over to ourhouse to hear the news, and all their discourse was concerning themanifest foretaste of papistry which was in the praying of the prayers,that an obdurate prince and an alien Arminian prelate were attempting tothrust into their mouths, and every one spoke of renewing the SolemnLeague and Covenant, which, in the times of the Reformation and thedangers of the Spanish Armada, had achieved such great things for THETRUTH AND THE WORD.
On Saturday, Mr Sundrum, our minister, called for my father about twelveo'clock. He had heard the news, and also that my father had come back. Iwas doing something on the green, I forget now what it was, when I sawhim coming towards the door, and I ran into the house to tell my father,who immediately came out to meet him.
Little passed in my hearing between them, for, after a short inquiryconcerning how my father had fared in the journey, the minister tookhold of him by the arm, and they walked together into the fields, where,when they were at some distance from the house, Mr Sundrum stopped, andbegan to discourse in a very earnest and lively manner, frequentlytouching the palm of his left hand with the fingers of his right, as hespoke to my father, and sometimes lifting both his hands as one inamaze, ejaculating to the heavens.
While they were thus reasoning together, worthy Ebenezer Muir cametowards the house, but, observing where they were, he turned off andjoined them, and they continued all three in vehement deliberation, inso much that I was drawn by the thirst of curiosity to slip so neartowards them that I could hear what passed; and my young heart waspierced at the severe terms in which the minister was condemning theringleaders of the riot, as he called the adversaries of popedom inEdinburgh, and in a manner rebuking my honest father as a sower ofsedition.
My father, however, said stiffly, for he was not a man to controvertwith a minister, that in all temporal things he was a true and leilsubject, and in what pertained to the King as king, he would stand asstoutly up for as any man in the three kingdoms; but against ausurpation of the Lord's rights, his hand, his heart, and his father'ssword, that had been used in the Reformation, were all alike ready.
Old Ebenezer Muir tried to pacify him, and reasoned in great gentlenesswith both, expressing his concern that a presbyterian minister couldthink that the attempt to bring in prelacy, and the reading ofcourt-contrived prayers, was not a meddling with things sacred andrights natural, which neither prince nor potentate had authority to do.But Mr Sundrum was one of those that longed for the flesh-pots of Egypt,and the fat things of a lordly hierarchy; and the pacific remonstrancesof the pious old man made him wax more and more wroth at what hehatefully pronounced their rebellious inclinations; at which bitterwords both my father and Ebenezer Muir turned from him, and wenttogether to the house with sadness in their faces, leaving him to returnthe way he had come alone--a thing which filled me with consternation,he having ever before been treated and reverenced as a pastor oughtalways to be.
What comment my father and the old man made on his conduct when theywere by themselves I know not; but on the Sabbath morning the kirk wasfilled to overflowing, and my father took me with him by the hand, andwe sat together on the same form with Ebenezer Muir, whom we found inthe church before us.
When Mr Sundrum mounted into the pulpit, and read the psalm and said theprayer, there was nothing particular; but when he prepared to preach,there was a rustle of expectation among all present, for the text hechose was from Romans, chapter xiii. and verses 1 and 2; from which hemade an endeavour to demonstrate, as I heard afterwards, for I was thentoo young to discern the matter of it myself, the duty and advantages ofpassive obedience--and, growing warm with his ungospel rhetoric, hebegan to rail and to daud the pulpit in condemnation of the spirit whichhad kithed in Edinburgh.
Ebenezer Muir and my father tholed with him for some time; but at lasthe so far forgot his place and office, that they both rose and movedtowards the door. Many others did the same, and presently the wholecongregation, with the exception of a very few, also began to move, sothat the kirk skayled; and from that day, so long as Mr Sundrumcontinued in the parish, he was as a leper and an excommunicant.
Meanwhile the alarm was spreading far and wide, and a blessed thing itwas for the shire of Ayr, though it caused its soil to be soakened withthe blood of martyrs, that few of the ministers were like thetime-serving Mr Sundrum, but trusty and valiant defenders of the greenpastures whereon they had delighted, like kind shepherds, to lead theirconfiding flocks, and to cherish the young lambs thereof with the tenderembraces of a holy ministry. Among the rest, that godly and great saint,Mr Swinton of Garnock, our neighbour parish, stood courageously forwardin the gap of the broken fence of the vineyard, announcing, after a mostweighty discourse, on the same day on which Mr Sundrum preached theerroneous doctrine of passive obedience, that next Sabbath he wouldadminister the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, not knowing how long itmight be in the power of his people to partake of it. Every body aroundaccordingly prepared to be present on that occasion, and there was awonderful congregation. All the adjacent parishes in succession did thesame thing Sabbath after Sabbath, and never was there seen, in thememory of living man, such a zealous devotion and strictness of life asthen reigned throughout the whole West Country.
At last the news came, that it was resolved among the great and faithfulat Edinburgh to renew the Solemn League and Covenant; and the ministersof our neighbourhood having conferred together concerning the same, itwas agreed among them, that the people should be invited to come forwardon a day set apart for the purpose, and that as the kirk of Irvine wasthe biggest in the vicinage, the signatures both for the country andthat town should be received there. Mr Dickson, the minister, than whomno man of his day was more brave in the Lord's cause, accordingly madethe needful preparation, and appointed the time.
In the meanwhile the young men began to gird themselves for war. Theswords that had rested for many a day were drawn from their idle places;and the women worked together, that their brothers and their sons mightbe ready for the field; but at their work, instead of the ancientlilts, they sung psalms and godly ballads. However, as I mean not toenter upon the particulars of that awakening epoch, but only to showforth the pure and the holy earnestness with which the minds of men werethen actuated, I shall here refer the courteous reader to the annals andchronicles of the time,--albeit the truth in them has suffered from thealloy of a base servility.