WHYTE OF FREE ST. GEORGE'S.
The Life of Alexander Whyte, D.D. By G. F. Barbour. (Hodder and Stoughton. 11.) Tim subject of this biography was probably the greatest religious force of his generation in Scotland. It is not, indeed, only the religious motive which makes the Scottish pulpit an object of ambition ; men of mental power are attracted to it because, if not to so great an extent as formerly, it expresses and is addressed to the mind of the nation ; the result being that the Church of Scotland, in the larger sense of the word, is still the National Church. Dr. Whyte repre- sented both standpoints, the evangelical and the scholarly ; had circumstances permitted, he might have been as dis- tinguished as a man of letters as he was as a divine. But :—
"Slow rises worth by poverty depressed."
He had to choose between the two ; and he chose wisely. He was a preacher born. "I wonder," said one who knew him in his earlier days, "where that boy gained all his know- ledge of the human heart."
English readers will, perhaps, find the atmosphere of this memorable life of a memorable man unaccustomed ; Scottish religion is of an intellectual cast. And the sermon bulks large in it. The minister of the Church of Scotland does not celebrate or administer a rite ; he delivers a message ; and preaches not because he has to say something, but because he has something to say. The result is that he has 'a hearing from persons of education. The congregation of Free St. George's was one to which any man might be proud to minister ; its pulpit was a centre from which the light of intelligence and the warmth of piety were widely diffused. The great man who filled it from 1873 to 1916 has been described as "a High Calvinist." He was, indeed, steeped in Puritan divinity ; his conviction of sin was intense and abiding ; he knew, and preached, "the terror of the Lord." But his vivid sense of the depravity of human nature was accompanied by an unequalled tenderness for sinners ; and his unique knowledge of the Bible—if ever a man was " mighty in the Scriptures," it was he—trimmed the balance of his theology. The most living incident in this Life is that of the burial of Sir Hector Macdonald, at which he officiated at a moment's notice and under dramatic circumstances.
Sacerdos alter Christ us : here was a Christian minister— and a man.
Calvinist as he may have been, he had passed, it seemed, a Declaratory Act in his own mind before the Assembly framed one. It was said of him truly that, "while preach- ing always the everlasting Gospel, he took upon him the burden of the changing times, and was enabled . in a singular degree to tmite the hearts of the fathers to the children, and of the children to the fathers." This is a matter rather of spirit and temper than of opinion. Most of us are more orthodox than we think ourselves or appear to be ; the roots of the past strike deeper in us than we know: The part which he played in the Robertson Smith case will not soon be forgotten ; he regarded it as "a battle for scholar- ship and culture in the Church." Not that he either thought or spoke on the Professor's lines, but that he believed that "the cause of religious truth had nothing to fear from single- minded inquiry in any field of knowledge," and that he would have endorsed without question the saying of his friend, Marcus Dods, that "the man who refuses to face facts does not believe in God." This was not the path of safety ; but he was a truth loving rather than a safe man. To be both is difficult. Later, when Dr. Moffatt's appointment to a professorship was opposed on the ground of his advanced views, "I put all my money on Moffatt," he said. And he insisted that "the traditions and prepossessions of those who could not be familiar with critical and scientific questions should not be allowed to trammel the hands and 'grand the names of men who are doing some of the Church's selectest and most delicate work."
In the 'sixties, he tells us, he "came under the influence of the Spectator," of which he had thirty bound volumes in his study. To this, in due time, both the Nation and the New Statesman were added, and the variety of subjects treated in his Classes—Bacon, Dante, the Mystics from Eckhart to Mme. Guyon, and among the moderns Mill, Newman, Ruskin, &c.—shows the wideness of his range. He "fanned intelligence," and this gave a certain catholicity to his outlook. We came to know," says a student, "how heavily he leaned on Newman, though it was always a Newman evangelized " ; and, in the words of a French Academician, the Abbe Bremond, it a 6te les epines du Protestantiswe. But, eclectic as he was, he had a rare power of selection : he took his goods where he found them, and let the rest go by.
What drew him to Newman was his profound sense of sin, not his theory of Church authority ; and to Mill his un- conquerable veracity, not his "sceptic side." Ile was as impatient of platitude as he was of sect : with reference, e.g., to the projects of reunion now so greatly exercising the clerical mind, he saw clearly that union, to be worthy of the name, must come not from without and as a matter of organiza- tion, but from within :—
"The first step to a real union of Christendom will be taken when we come to admit and to realize that the Greek Church was the original mother of us all; • that the Latin Church was her first child ; and that through both these Churches we ourselves have our religious existence—the universal foundations of our Creeds and Confessions and Catechisms ; our public worship also ; our Christian character and civilization, and everything indeed that is essential to our salvation."
How much Church History is comprised in these few words I For his own Church he desired : "(1 The recovery ol the Christian Year ; (2) an optional Liturgy ; (8) the simpli- fication of the Standards ; (4) Superintendents who should have all the virtues and none of the faults of Bishops." With regard to the last, we may, perhaps, say with the prophet : "Thou bast asked a hard thing ! " When the end came, January, 1921, a great power for righteousness passed away with him. "The world was broken," it was said, "when God made him and sent him to Scotland." No one has filled, or can fill, his place.
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