D.S.S. Miscellaneous one

D.S.S. Miscellaneous Bits # one

1. On the ‘Eldership’ in the Congregation. (Undated fragment)

We are apt to think that in older times the Elders whom the congregation had in their Kirk Session were all men about the age I am now. The only congregation in which I celebrated the Jubilee of an Elder was my first one [Teviothead 1925-1929] in which William Barton must have been made an Elder when he was 30 years of age. I learned something from that for in other charges I tried to get them picked young. On one occasion I had no hesitation in welcoming a young man to the Eldership of one of my congregations a fortnight after his 21st birthday.

2. Loveliest Christmas Tree. [26Dec1971 - Fairmuir]

The loveliest Christmas tree I ever saw was in the little Parish Church of Iona. There at the beginning of December the Sunday School Children, wanting to shew their pleasure that their neighbouring parish of Kilfinichen and Kilvickeon had recently welcomed as their minister the Revd. Dr Ronald MacPhail a Doctor of medicine who in God’s compassionate service had restored sight to over 50,000 blind people in India, had set up at the back of the church a bare branch of a tree on which Sunday by Sunday they affixed their offerings in little green envelopes on behalf of the mission in Sankli, still dear to Dr MacPhail’s heart. And on Christmas day they brought their now green tree forward into the Church adding their Text “and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” [Rev 22:2]

I remember this vividly today because we are to begin this service by singing a hymn composed in that Parish of Kilfinichen and Kilvickeon and sung to the tune called by the name of the village in which one of the two Parish Churches is set - Bunessan. [Child in a Manger - Words: Mary M. Macdonald (1789-1872); translated from Gaelic to English by Lachlan Macbean. Music: Bunessan, traditional Gaelic melody.]
[In the Parish of Iona and Ross and Mull supplement for September 1959 D.S.S. wrote: “I interrupted the writing of this supplement for I had been invited to attend and lead in prayer at the unveiling and dedication of the Memorial to Mary Macdonald by the roadside near Bunessan. As the choir sang “Child in a Manger” in the tongue in which it was composed I looked back with gratitude: but I felt we could also look upward and forward in hope that here, with good cause, men would still ‘give glory unto the Lord, and declare His praise in the islands.’”.]

3. Part of prayer prayed during “Tell Scotland’ June 1955.

“We thank Thee that in the holy love of Christ Thou hast called us to have a care for others and in His Name pray for them before Thee now.......
O God who hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; we pray specially for the work of the Churches in this land united in the Service of Offering, in Thy dear name, blessing and renewal to the men and women of our country and for the part we are to have in it in this Parish: for Dr. William Graham and those associated with him: and for those whose hearts have been troubled and whose lives have been changed by his message from Thee. Build them up in faith and hope and love and give them strength day by day to persevere in Christian discipline and to overcome temptation.......”

4. Commissioning by Presbytery of Dalkeith of Miss Mary Lusk as Deaconess in the Church of Scotland [Sunday evening 15May1955 at Parish Church of St. Michael, Inveresk.]

Present: Miss Mary Lusk, The Moderator (either outgoing Ernest D. Jarvis or incoming G. D. Henderson), the Very Rev. Dr. Baillie, Rev, Dr. Stiven, The Rev. W.F. Bruce, Miss Frazer, Mrs Budge, The Rev. Bruce Mackay and Rev. David Philpot.

D.S. Stiven delivered the Charge:
A long period of training is over. Two Universities have set their approval upon your preparation and already the Assembly of the World Council of Churches has welcomed and recognized you. Today a Presbytery of the Church by authority of the Church and in the Great Name of the Church’s Head our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has put the seal upon your probation and has commissioned you in the service of your Lord and of His Church to office in this congregation - to the office of a Deaconess - a woman called and chosen and trained to do the Lord’s work and to declare His Salvation.

It began in your home, the Christian home which in Christian love claimed Christian Baptism for you. I mention this because the relationships of a Christian home are so typical of the ties which bind the church to a heavenly Father and make its members brothers and sisters in Christ.

Your work, whatever form it may take, involves parochially that you make your people aware of those ties and that you strengthen them. You are set to gather men and women and children and to build them up together and link them together so that more and more they may serve one another in the love and holiness of Christ. Keep yourself therefore in the love of God.
[Ms Lusk (Levison) was ordained by The Church of Scotland on 4th December 1978]

5. On the death of Dr J. A. N. Scott, 13 High Street, Musselburgh.

One of the hymns we sang at the Crematorium was “By Cool Siloam’s Shady Rill” and I suppose we sang it because it was one of Dr Scott’s favourite hymns. If so, when he first knew it as a child it had six verses, the two verses in the middle being:

By cool Siloam's shady rill
the lily must decay;
the rose that blooms beneath the hill
must shortly fade away.

And soon, too soon, the wintry hour
Of man’s maturer age
Will shake the soul with sorrow’s power
And stormy passion’s rage.

That of course is the reason for that last verse:

Dependent on Thy bounteous breath,
We seek Thy grace alone,
In childhood, manhood, age, and death
To keep us still Thine own.

He whose infant feet were found within his father’s shrine is the same one who crucified and risen is our hope in the hour of death.

But as we sang I couldn’t help thinking of other lines:

We miss thy small step on the stair
We miss thee at thine evening prayer
All day we miss thee everywhere
Casa Wappy
Time’s shadows like a shuttle flee
And dark how e’er life may be
Beyond the grave I’ll meet with thee
Casa Wappy
[This touching elegiac poem was written by Dr David Macbeth Moir (1798 - 1851) Physician, Musselburgh on the death of his favourite child, Charles Bell--familiarly called by him "Casa Wappy"--who died in February 1838, at the age of four and a half years. Moir (whose nom de guerre was ‘Delta’) wrote “Mansie Waugh”.]

Through the generations Musselburgh has been blessed by the medical skill practiced at 13 High Street and through the generations linked each to each in natural piety at 13 High Street faith has burned strongly.

Casa Wappy and many other poems show the ancestor a man of words. Himself Dr Scott was like Col. Bramble a man of Silence. Yet although few were the words he spoke he left us no doubt about what his opinion was. As one of yourselves reminded me when I got my D.D. I was a preaching doctor; people like Dr Scott were practicing doctors. One day in Autumn 1939 I was just about to begin the service at the graveside out there when I suddenly heard a shattering clattering resounding din from the skies - a sound familiar enough amongst earth’s mud some 20 years before in Flanders. Standing opposite me was Dr Scott. He caught my eye and at once I knew without a word what he was thinking “sure enough the enemy were about us again: but sure enough, as we stood between life and the grave between time and eternity between this mortality and immortality sure enough was the same divine grasp upon us as had upheld us in quiet and in danger”. And I just went on with the service at the graveside.

Many of his older patients remembered the old Dr and naturally but by no means disrespectfully spoke of him as Dr Jamie. Indeed you had to see the look on their face and catch the tone in their voice when they said Dr Jamie to know they truly loved him. And how proud he was of them perhaps specially proud of those whom he was helping on their way to their hundredth birthday - weak perhaps but still healthy.

Still healthy. Yea I too was a patient of his (though I never called him Dr Jamie I was also a grateful patient). I was grateful that for 21 years of an arduous and exhausting ministry he kept me in good health. And to me his hands brought as much healing as his medicine. I have learned firmly to believe that to a Christian Doctor is given by the Spirit the gift of healing. Health was the important thing and never did he give me any prescription that might undermine health. I always felt when he prescribed that he was doing something and giving something to assist health to overcome disease.

And of this he was himself the best example. Of him it could be said that he obeyed the often vain precept 'Physician heal thyself’. He was left him with an utterly devastating wound. But he just made himself walk. Would any of you as you saw him moving with steady deliberate step down the church with his fellow elders ever have suspected that his war wound was a wound which should have incapacitated him for life? As you saw him thus putting his best foot forward would any of you have known indeed which was his best foot?

In faith and in sheer determination he was one who in the power of Christ had taken up his bed and walked - walked among you to work the work of Christ.

Lord we thank Thee for a good friend for the good work he did here and for the good example he set. We believe thy promise. We look for the life immortal. Help us as we wait to endure also as good soldiers of Christ faithful unto death.

6. Musings on a load of hay (Children’s service St Ninians Kirriemuir 20 Dec 1970)
Boys and girls, primary boys and girls especially I hope I’ll be able to tell you you something now of the happiness and courage which Jesus your Savior has brought into the world. There was once a little boy who was walking with his mother along a very narrow street in a town. It was a such a very narrow street the houses and and workshops rose high on either side and there was room for only a a very narrow pavement between them and the road. Halfway along what should they meet but a large heavy horse putting its feet down on the causeway stones with a resounding clang as it pulled behind it a heavy wagon piled high with hay which seemed to fill the whole road way from side to side.
The little boy became quite nervous and didn’t feel like going any further. In fact it wouldn’t have taken very much to make him turn round and take to his heels, when his mother exclaimed, “What a lovely load of hay!’ “Is that a load of hay?” said the wee boy, “Why that’s what the little Lord Jesus was asleep on!” and taking his mother by the hand he led her safely past that gigantic horse and that huge wagon and that immense load of hay that filled the road from side to side AS BRAVE AS A LION.

7. Musings on Philippians 2: 5-7: (Children's service St Ninians Kirriemuir 20 Dec 1970) “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant.”

This makes out that Christians should be those who like Christ serve others and attend to their wants.

So what I want to tell you bears on this. It is one of two things which when they happen to me make me feel quite like Father Christmas himself. It began during the War when my son was serving in the navy. His ship was stationed for a time in the Firth of Forth very handy for Musselburgh where my manse was and he got home as often as he could. One day when the sailors were having a wash and brush up in preparation for going ashore one of the sailors shouted over to my son asking if he’d be going to Musselburgh that afternoon. Then another voice piped up, “Is anyone here from Musselburgh?’ and David answered, “Yes, I am.” “So am I “ came the answer. When David asked his name and if he’d been a pupil at the Musselburgh Grammar School the boy said he’d been at Musselburgh Grammar School from such and such a year to such and such a year, the time when my son had been there and his name was Allan Rennie. At this David told him not too politely that he couldn’t be speaking the truth.

But as a matter of fact he was; for Allan came from the City of Dunedin in New Zealand and in a suburb of that city called Musselburgh he had been a schoolboy at Musselburgh Grammar School. So when they came ashore naturally he too came along to Inveresk Manse and was taken on a visit to Musselburgh Grammar School where he was shown a flag of Musselburgh Grammar School New Zealand which had been presented to the school the year before the war. The war ended and the soldiers and sailors and airmen went home again and of course Allan Rennie went home to Musselburgh Dunedin. And there although by that time in his 20’s he wasn’t too proud to go back to the Bible C;ass of Musselburgh Presbyterian Church New Zealand.

By that time we were all on pretty short commons in the home country where there was very strict rationing - only so much beef or mutton, so much butter, so much flour; enough to keep body and soul together but very little variety. We hadn’t seen a banana or a grapefruit for years. Allan Rennie Knew this and he spoke about it in the Bible Class and the boys and girls and young men and women there put their pennies together and bought a whole lot of tins of lambs tongues and bully beef and tinned fruit in great variety and sent them to me to distribute among my congregation. The first consignment came about Christmas time if my memory serves and I wouldn’t have called Santa Claus my cousin as I went among lonely people of my congregation the following week as the the servant of the Christian liberality of boys and girls and young men and women who in Bible Class in New Zealand were learning to let that mind be in them which was also in Christ Jesus.

8. Church of Scotland Huts and Canteens: Opening Ceremony: Static Canteen (St Andrews House) at Bad Segeberg 23 September 1945.

a. Apologies from Div. Cmd.
Bde Cmd
C.O. 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers

b. This canteen has been running now for some weeks in the evenings. This week we are to act on a larger scale. For troops in the neighbourhood it will now be open from 1030 to 1200, from 1430 to 1630 and from 1830 to 2000 hrs. Passing traffic will be attended to at all hours of the day.

So now that we are to begin full blast we asked representatives of all units in the area to come and see for themselves what the place is like. The canteen is at your service and I hope it will at least meet some of your wants. Round the Proscenium of this stage there is room for something. So thanks to the good offices of the Royal Engineers we have had oak shields made. During this week those shields will be sent round representatives of each of the units using the canteen and they will be asked to have their regimental crests painted on the shields.

This is a Church of Scotland Canteen but it is not meant for members of the Church of Scotland only. It is a little part of the work which the Church is doing through various agencies - Padres, YMCA, Church Army, Salvation Army - to help you here. If you value the work, please remember it is work which is being done by the Church for Christ’s sake.

Just when the work is taking shape I have to lay it down. I do so with rather a heavy heart for it is grand work. Miss Hunter and Miss Devlin who have already done most of the work are to continue and Miss Crimmon has also come to stay.

They and i have already had much help from many friends - officers, N.C.Os and men particularly as in the nature of the case it must have been in the R.S.F. I am confident that that help will continue and extend and that other units will lend a hand also to make YOUR Canteen the best it can possibly be.
c. Col Richardson is here as Bde Cmd. We are glad he has managed to come. I invite him to open the Canteen formally for your use.

d. Mr. Dunlop who is acting S.C.F. will now offer the Prayer of Dedication.

e. Thanks to the Bde Cmd and to the Band of 9th Camerom Highlanders, cookhouse staff of R.S.F.

f. Tea. Officers upstairs. Other Ranks downstairs or outside. Draw from Counter.

9. Oct/Nov 1945: D.S.S. Reports to Dalkeith Presbytery on return from Huts and Canteens work in Holland and Germany.

My first words must be words of thanks. I thank the Presbytery for the kindness in permitting me to go to the Huts work. I thank my many friends who supplied my pulpit with an unparalleled succession of brilliant preachers. I thank my assistants and my Kirk Session. And if would single out one name for a special word of thanks for unremitting courtesy and competence, it would be Moderator your own. I am deeply in your debt.

The kindness shewn me at home was equaled by the kindness shewn to me abroad. As soon as I arrived in Brussels and reported to my own chief Major James Watt M.C. I found myself in a congenial atmosphere of enthusiasm and friendliness. I was almost immediately invited to take the Easter Evening Service in the Garrison Kirk and I had hardly a Sunday afterwards without preaching at least once. Padres everywhere and in all denominations welcomed me in a most brotherly way and shewed the greatest helpfulness. My fellow workers in C.V.W.W. (Council of Volunteer War Workers) were a friendly crowd and the H.Q. staffs of Corps Div. Bde. and Bn. with only two exceptions, once when a stupid lad tried to outsmart me and once when a fellow at Corps., ignorant of the third of the three ‘Rs” cut our supplies, afforded me every facility for the successful prosecution of my Canteen work.

It was a busy life in the course of which I traveled 10,000 miles. Our days were employed in contacting units with the mobile, very often lonely units and satisfying their needs. But our policy from start to finish was to do a special job of evening work. Wherever we went we formed at the H.Q. where we stayed a kind of club where the men might have a happy evening. And this (thanks to the foresight and driving force of Brigadier Cunningham). And this eventually blossomed out into the establishment for 44 L Bde of a permanent static canteen in the Hydro at Bad Segeberg. Two Scottish ladies, Miss Hunter and Miss Devlin, joined us there. The presence of these two ladies - the only Scotswomen in a radius of 30 miles - had to be seen for its effect upon the troops to be understood.

One great privilege and honour came my way during my last three months in Germany. I was asked to do Padre’s work with the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers. Six Padre’s hours a week meant that for six hours a week I had to be very wide awake indeed.

When I left I was Padre for an area comprising one Infantry Battalion, one Royal Engineers Company, one Corps of Military Police Company, one Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers Company, one Royal Army Service Corps Platoon, Military Governance, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, all customers and well wishers of the Canteen. It was just like being back in Inveresk again, yes Presbytery included for I was made master of ceremonies of the Chaplains' Conference as well, though the Chaplains had this advantage over Presbytery that they had reverted to the ancient practice of the Exercise. A devotional exposition of Psalm 116 by David Cairns was well worth traveling 10,000 miles to hear.

Was the work worth doing? I can testify that it was and is. I know no sphere of ministerial activity at the present moment which makes greater demands upon the physical mental and spiritual powers of a minister than the work offered by the Huts and Canteens Committee of our Church and which affords a greater opportunity of going about doing good. Padres are being demobilized rapidly and their places are not being fully supplied. The men are lonely there in an alien environment. The nights are long and the days are often dreary. Amusements are few. To my mind if the Church wants to tackle the problem of the demobilized soldier it must tackle it first not here but in Germany in Austria in Italy in Palestine and in the Far East. Win the men there by kindness and you’ll stand a better chance of finding them here in thankfulness.
10. 6 October 1974 : Craigiebank Church of Scotland, Carlochie Place, Dundee.
Service for a local holiday Sunday.
Sermon: A Man’s Life
Text St. Luke 12:15
And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.

I have chosen this text, chosen it deliberately as giving the simple yet profound theme upon which I have to preach to you today. You see this is the first time I have mounted a pulpit for 15 long months, months during which, as we say, I have been "out of circulation’. I have preached on this text before but my experience during those 15 months has made me take now a rather different view of “a mans life” than ever I’ve had before.

O Yes, I’ve had illness and wounds. I walked with death during hazardous years between 1914-18 and saw brave young men, my friends, cut down in the full power of their young manhood. And there was a period in Aberdeen in the 30’s when every time I entered my pulpit I wondered if it would be my last. But this experience was different - vastly different. Often my body had been catlined [to do with barbed wire?]. It had suffered. Now I was with it on a sit -down strike. I really was laid low: movement was halted: neither limbs nor tongue would yield full trustworthy obedience: I saw: I heard: I thought: I considered: I was aware.

But all of a sudden more than half of a man’s life had been taken from me: or so I thought at first. But I was wrong. Physically indeed my limbs were recalcitrant but I soon discovered that my limbs were not nearly the half of a man’s life. In so far as I saw, heard, thought, considered and was aware mine was still very much regarded as a man’s life. In one very important aspect this was so. I found that mine was a man’s life indeed in respect of human relationships - relationships with other people, relationship with God.

In as much as I could be grateful to those upon whom I was so dependent it was indeed a full life and it was even more so Godward. When I was getting a little better and able to write, one of my first short letters was to another man in like conditiobn passing him on a lesson that the American David Grayson had taught me before I had sufficient occasion fully to profit from it:- “that sometimes a man has to be laid flat on his back in in order that he may learn the importance and indeed the necessity of looking up.”
Part of that lesson on the importance of looking up I had in part learned . After more than half a century I can still vividly recall how once when I was sent on a tour of our Battalion's front line as we were momentarily expecting attack, I had just got up to the line when the enemy put down what we most descriptively called a box barrage pouring shells into our front line and effectively sealing off all approaches to it from the support lines. There I was a laddie of about 20 all alone plowtering along knee deep in mud and water with an occasional broken parapet to shelter me from a blizzard of shellfire suddenly aware that I was singing and that what I was singing was the 46th Psalm:-
1 God is our refuge and our strength,
in straits a present aid;
2 Therefore, although the earth remove,
we will not be afraid:

3 Though hills amidst the seas be cast;
Though waters roaring make,
And troubled be; yea, though the hills,
by swelling seas do shake.

4 A river is, whose streams make glad
the city of our God;
The holy place, wherein the Lord
most high hath his abode.

5 God in the midst of her doth dwell;
nothing shall her move:
The Lord to her an helper will,
and that right early, prove.
There are many occasions in a man’s life when it helps to be reminded how good it is to look up.

I have found that “a man’s life’ is always being reinforced and reinvigorated, if he is receptive, from without, just as the tide keeps flooding in on a desolate shore. A simple thing shows it. The very first day of my incapacity I got the power to drag myself to the wash-basin even if it was only for ‘a lick and a promise’ and every day after I was able to go and wash although it was a fortnight till I could shave after a fashion: every day there kept flooding into a man’s life increasing hope and power and purpose. Burn’s, you remember, found this as a recipe for everyday living:
“ But when on Life we're tempest-driv'n --
A conscience but a canker --
A correspondence fix'd wi' Heav'n
Is sure a noble anchor!”
[Epistle to a Young Friend]

How few mere THINGS have any real effect upon ‘a man’s life’. As Jesus said in this context ‘ A man’s life consisteth not (doesn’t depend, we would say) in the abundance of THINGS. But it does DEPEND : it depends not on things but on PERSONS. As we discover when we look up a man’s life depends on God. That is a particularly one-way dependence. To God a man can give nothing but worship obedience service - God gives ALL.

But when we see a man’s life in its relationship to other men and women - family teachers friends we discover here a state not just of dependence
(You may remember the Catechism:
64. Q. What is required in the fifth commandment?
A. The fifth commandment requireth the preserving the honour, and performing the duties, belonging to every one in their several places and relations, as superiors, inferiors, or equals.)
But of interdependence with other men’s lives not just our contemporaries but those who went before and will come after. As Pericles said: “For the whole Earth is the Sepulchre of famous men; and their story is not graven only on Stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives.” or as 1 Samuel 25:29 has Abigail [wife of the boorish Nabal] describe it as “being bound up in the bundle of Life with the Lord thy God.”

To bring it right home to our own hearts what is our state of dependence and interdependence as each of us lives his or or her own life:- you were reminded last Sunday how much our daily bread means.

I have found that saying grace before meat gives zest to a meal. In a similar way an experienced cook recently writing a COOKBook says the food she cooks is served all the tastier if she loves the people for who she prepares it.

D.S.S Camus Bits and Pieces

D.S.S. Camus Bits and Pieces: (1979 -1980)
1. Skeletal outline of Chronological Events in the life of DSS.
16 Feb 1896 Born David Sime Stiven son of David Russell Stiven and Jane (Jeannie) Sime, Fir Neuk, Dundee.
School years Harris Academy, Dundee. Dux of School 1913
1913 Entered St Andrews University as second bursar
WW1 Joined the 5th battalion The Royal Scots after they were withdrawn from the Peninsular (Gallipoli) and came to Egypt in Jan 1916. Then he went with them to the Western Front in France and gained the Military Cross and a ‘blighty’ war wound.
1919 graduated M.A. at St. Andrews University (Berry Scholarship)
1922 graduated B.D. from St Mary’s College St Andrews University with special distinction in Hebrew and Biblical Criticism. While at St Mary’s he was Student Assistant at St Stephen’s, Broughty Ferry and in Dundee.
July 1922 becomes first holder of the McLean Scholarship for Hebrew and Arabic open to students of all Scottish Universities and administered by Glasgow University - 175 pounds sterling.
Term at School of Oriental Studies in London.
Winter 1922/23 research work in Jerusalem.
May - December 1924 Assistant to The Rev. Norman MacLean D.D. at St Cuthbert’s, Edinburgh.
Jan 1925 Elected to Teviothead Parish Church. Sole nominee and election unanimous.
March 1929 Elected minister of Gilcomston Parish Church, Aberdeen. (468 for and 16 against)
1924 - 1936 he was external examiner in Hebrew at Aberdeen and St Andrews
28 Dec 1936 preached for call at Inveresk Parish Church, Musselburgh.
18 March 1937 Inducted to Inveresk (call signed by 455 communicants and 78 adherents). Communion roll of 2700 and three mission stations - Cowpits (Whitecraig), Wallyford and Smeaton.
7 June 1942 Queen at Inveresk
1958 - 1966 Iona

2. We believe it is God’s good will for us to live in grace and goodness.
I used to admire one of my Edinburgh friends for his sweetness and strength
of character. It turned out be be something not too easily come by. Serving in the 1914 war he was so severely wounded that he was actually reported ‘Killed in Action’ and indeed a beautiful obituary notice about him was written in the press so that he had what was for him the sobering experience not only of going about forever after with only one leg but of reading his own obituary notice. As he read the many good things written about him and as he considered, as he himself said, how little he deserved them he became so utterly ashamed that at that moment he determined by God’s help to live up to the good things he read about himself. Throughout the rest of a happy life he kept endeavoring like John Milton [who must have been influenced by Carlyle’s “All men, if they work not as in the great taskmaster's eye, will work wrong, and work unhappily for themselves and for you.”] to live as ever in his Great Taskmaster’s eye. And I can tell you he made a job of it.

3. As a boy I attended a church whose minister some sixty years before had spent his boyhood in Canada and who knew a story about a United States General (Sherman) in the Civil War who sent a hard-pressed garrison the signal “Hold the Fort for I am coming”. One of the favorite hymns the Minister used to have us singing was based on that story and had a chorus that went something like this:
"Hold the fort, for I am coming,"
Jesus signals still;
Wave the answer back to heaven,
By thy grace we will."
P.P. Bliss

[Not sure about this story. R.S.]
4. A year or two after I had gone to my second charge my Student Assistant came back to me with a message from a wise old body “Tell the meenister that efter a year or twa the congregation begins tae tak’ a thraw at the meenister but tell him tae haud on. Efter they’ve got past their scunner it’ll be a’ richt.” Sure enough I began to feel some ‘thrawness’. Among other discouragements two sisters and a brother , without any reason, asked for and got their lines and then a week or two later on the only occasion I took my older children to a Cinema Matinee - it was Dicken’s Christmas Carol- a notice was thrown on the screen saying there was an urgent message for The Rev D.S. in the office. The urgent message was from the two sisters asking me please to call at the house at once for the brother was likely to die in a delirium. Did Acts 4 explain how I was helped to get over my natural resentment and what happened when I came to the house?
“Be it known to you all and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God hath raised from the dead, even by him, this man standeth here before you, whole. This is the stone which was rejected by you the builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved.”

It was as a servant of the Crucified and Risen that I answered the call for help and in the name and power of the Crucified and Risen I helped. In his delirium the sick man had a recurrence of a fear he must frequently have suffered in the 1914 war - the fear of being inescapably caught in a barbed wire entanglement. Our trenches and the enemy trenches 100 yards to 400 yards apart were alike protected by coil upon coil of barbed wire stretching yards deep in front of the trenches. Anyone of an attacking party who came upon upon a section of the barbed wire which had not been effectively cut stood the risk of being caught in the octopus like grip of the coils of barbed wire and exposed as a target for bullets bombs and mortar shells - utterly helpless.

That's the delirium from which the sick man was suffering and begged his sisters to send for me the one man who could get him out. Not as an old soldier, but rather in the power of that one name given under heaven whereby we must be saved standing by him in prayer I got him out. When he came round I had a wee word with him and, as I took his hand in farewell, I was fully persuaded from his calm steady eye and his cool hand clasp that he wasn’t a dying man. But before morning he was dead and his dying was I felt still under the power of the Crucified and Risen. That power had lifted him from the coils and wiles of the devil: “Even as a bird out of the fowler’s snare escapes away, so is the soul set free.”

5.
In my first parish [Teviothead 1925 -1929] being concerned about the living interest my people were taking in their kirk I made a suggestion which after more than 50 years is still remembered.
The upkeep of the kirk and the payment of the stipend being the duty of the Heritors [the term Heritor was used to denote the major "landowners" of a Parish until the early 20th century], all that the parishioners were responsible for were heating and cleaning and organists and beadles salaries. Added to this was what now-a-days we’d call outreach. It was then called the “Schemes of the Church”. As in other places at all times there were regular attenders and the occasional attenders. I felt that the regular attenders had the deepest concern for “outreach” and I felt also that even the non attenders appreciated the fact the the Church worship did go on week by week. Finding what that would cost I told them all that if every church member paid the price of one hen’s egg per week I could keep the kirk going and use the offering of regular church goers to support the schemes of the church. Of one of those regular churchgoers I also found out that if I’d been blind, I’d have known by the collection whether he had been there or not and especially on the Sunday he and his family returned from holiday.

6.
A story is told about a man in a Northern Parish (we’ll call it Gushetnaver) who in his youth had the great ambition to serve there as Beadle. Just in the nick of time there was a vacancy and he applied: to his delight the appointment was almost made: but at an interview being told he’d have to keep a record of all the burials, he had to confess he could neither read nor write. Heartbroken he went abroad to return years later to his native parish with a fortune. He discovered on his return that the kirk he loved was financially in low water and desperately in need of repair. Told by the minister how much was needed he said he’d foot the bill but would require a day or two to collect the money. “Wouldn’t it be easier to write a cheque,” said the minister. “Indeed it would,” said the philanthropist, “if only I could write.”

“Inspite of that”, said the minister, “you’ve made good. Just think what you’d be if only you could write!” “If I’d been able to read and write”, was the reply, “I’d be the Beadle at Gushetnaver.” For a long time I thought that that was just a funny story but more recently I’ve been thinking what a wonderful thing it would have been for Gushetnaver to have as beadle a man like that. A Beadle with a heart of gold is worth his weight in gold to the kirk he serves and the Lord he loves.

The relationship between being with a heart of gold and serving and giving is well brought out in what we are now to read: I Corinthians 15:10 “But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which [was bestowed] upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.”

7.
[4Mar79] I have been asked to take part this evening in the Celebration of the Centenary of Carnoustie’s participation in the work of the National Bible Society of Scotland and read in the original Hebrew a portion of the Old Testament. [DSS was external examiner in Hebrew at Aberdeen and St. Andrews Universities from 1924-1936].

In this I am reminded of a happy month nearly 60 years ago which I spent teaching in a boys Boarding School established by the then United Free Church of Scotland among the beautiful hills of Galilee and attended of all three faiths : Jewish, Muhammadan(sic), and Christian. It is strange to think that in that land, at present perplexed by national and religious strife, the U.F. Church was succeeding in bringing Jewish, Muslim, and Christian boys to live together as friends and companions.

Every morning before classes the school assembled for worship in the big classroom : and in that morning worship the Mu’allim, the Arabic-speaking teacher, read a psalm from the Scripture which is accepted by all three faiths - the Old Testament. While he read aloud in the Arabic, the language used all over Palestine, I read silently from the Hebrew version of the same passage. Remembering this passage and the Blessing of Him who remains our shepherd all our life long as he was to Jacob and his children’s children let us continue our worship......

The time I spent in Galilee was the time of the springing of the flowers which for so brief a season, as we read in Scripture, come up arrayed in all their bravery to ditch and lakeside and wayside and hillside and O so soon wither and die, and which help to make a land to love. I could not easily forget what was written in Deuteronomy 11:10 “But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven: A land which the LORD thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year.”

The great Dutch painter Rembrandt has left us a beautiful picture of the scene from Genesis 48. Five people were there, the aged Jacob, Joseph and his sons Ephraim and Manaseh and the fifth was included by the painter with a purpose, Asenath, the boys mother whose attentive adoring wonder brought home to me the awareness of a sixth Presence whom like Asenath we recognize as the Source of all Being and Blessing. So the sermon in worship must be an application of the Word of God to the life of man and therefore an important part of the Public Worship of that Unseen Presence with us - the source of all Being and Blessedness wherever we seek wonderingly and reverently from Him a fuller and more receptive and obedient awareness of His will for us through His Word. And He it is whom we know know and love as Our Father to whom we now pray: Our father...

Down by the lakeside of which I spoke earlier there came two Scottish ministers 140 years ago both of them poets and near the lakeside they pitched their camp. As the evening shadows were falling one of them returned from a walk along the shore with this poem:-
“O Saviour gone to God’s right hand
Yet the same Saviour still
Graven on Thy heart is this lovely stream
And every fragrant hill.
O give me Lord by this sacred wave
Threefold Thy love divine
That I may feed till I find my grave
Thy flock both Thine and mine.”

8.
Near the end of Chapter 31 of 2 Corinthians this is how the good King Hezekiah of Judah is described:- “he wrought that which was good and right and truth before the Lord his God. And in every work that he began in the service of the house of God, and in the law, and in the commandments, to seek his God, he did it with all his heart, and prospered.”
Worship and service of God go hand in hand and both can best be be given with enthusiasm and a pure heart. The description of Hezekiah given in these two verses is summed up in the chapter heading: “HIS SINCERITY OF HEART”. It is to such a wholeheartedness in worship and service that we too are summoned.

Wholehearted worship requires concentration and perseverance:-
Proverbs 4:
I have taught thee in the way of wisdom; I have led thee in right paths. When thou goest, thy steps shall not be straitened; and when thou runnest, thou shalt not stumble. Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go: keep her; for she is thy life. Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away. Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from evil.

Some simple foolish people think that men can worship God and expect His blessing upon them when all the time they are determined to keep on in their wicked ways.......

I’m very much afraid that common sense cannot agree with the rather sentimental poet who wrote :-
The moral Christian is the cause
Of th’ unbeliever and his laws.” (Blake)

Of course there’s no man on earth who can dare to be proud of his ‘virtue’ for we are all what the Anglican Prayer Book calls ‘miserable sinners’ : but that’s neither reason nor excuse for disregarding our obligation as Christ’s people for Christ’s sake to love that which is right and good and try to do it, striving to do it even at the cost of crying out in an agony with St. Paul ‘who shall deliver me from the body of this death’ (Rom 7:24)

James 1: 21 Takes up the same theme: Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls....... be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.


A man who many centuries ago suffered great hardship for Christ’s sake, even in his hardships couldn’t help singing Christ’s praises so that the Church still remembers him after more than a 1000 years as JOSEPH THE HYMN WRITER gave us these words to sing:

O happy band of pilgrims,
If onward you will tread,
With Jesus as your Fellow,
To Jesus as your Head.

O happy if you labor,
As Jesus did for men;
O happy if you hunger
As Jesus hungered then.......

[A native of Sicily, Joseph left that island in 830 for a monastic life in Thessalonica. From there he went to Constantinople, but left there during the iconoclastic persecution, going to Rome. He was for many years a slave in Crete..... Joseph died at an advanced age in 883]

9.
12 October 1980: I believe that this was DSS last Service (certainly at Camus). So here is the whole service. He was 84.

The theme of this act of worship is just to consider what we are doing and offering and getting in this act of worship and so let us begin by singing to the praise and Glory of HIS GREAT NAME, Hymn 400, or better known as Paraphrase 30 (Hosea 6:1-4)
Come, let us to the Lord our God
with contrite hearts return;
our God is gracious, nor will leave
the desolate to mourn.

His voice commands the tempest forth
and stills the stormy wave;
and though his arm be strong to smite,
'tis also strong to save.

Long hath the night of sorrow reigned,
the dawn shall bring us light;
God shall appear, and we shall rise
with gladness in his sight.

Our hearts, if God we seek to know,
shall know him, and rejoice;
his coming like the morn shall be,
like morning songs his voice.

As dew upon the tender herb
diffusing fragrance round,
as showers that usher in the spring,
and cheer the thirsty ground.

So shall his presence bless our souls,
and shed a joyful light;
that hallowed morn shall chase away
the sorrows of the night.
Words: John Morison, 1781

“Our hearts if God we seek to know shall know Him and rejoice” but this is only part of what happens when, as we say, we ‘attend a Service’. If this is indeed a Service , who is being served? It is called a Divine Service but what does Divine Service mean? Is this Service of God or service by God or is it both?

We come together just now - together as a Christian people - to offer our lives in renewed obedience and service to God
singing our Hymns to Him in Thanksgiving and Hope
and saying our Prayers to Him in Faith and Trust and Expectancy.
BUT there is a very real sense in which we, unworthy as we are, are BEING SERVED for as Christians we believe that Christ spoke truly when he said that he came not to be ministered unto but to minister and give his life... for us! Let us then see something of what the Bible has to say about this Divine Service:
Reading Deuteronomy 6: 4-13
“Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the LORD my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it.
Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for?..... Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons;.....”

One of my Professors used to suggest to us what a brave man he must have been who, in obedience to the will of God wrote the first chapter of the book of Genesis. The Hebrews were a small and feeble people having all around them great and mighty nations and empires who had the power of life and death over them. These mighty Kings and Emperors made Gods of the Sun and Moon and Stars and of the Earth itself and ordered their subjects to join them in the worship of the Sun and Moon and the Host of Heaven. Whereas this wise brave man who wrote Genesis 1 inspired by the ONE TRUE GOD, tried to teach his fellowmen what true worship really is, and how the God he worshipped and tried to obey was the ONE who had created sun and moon and all the host of heaven and had also created man for whom he meant sun and moon and stars to shew the times and the seasons - so many time pieces for man’s use - and had created the earth to be subdued by man. In response to such teaching he and his fellows sang and we also sing:

All people that on earth do dwell,
sing to the Lord with cheerful voice:
him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell,
come ye before him and rejoice.

The Lord, ye know, is God indeed;
without our aid he did us make:
we are his folk, he doth us feed,
and for his sheep he doth us take.

O enter then his gates with praise,
approach with joy his courts unto;
praise, laud, and bless his Name always,
for it is seemly so to do.

For why? the Lord our God is good,
his mercy is for ever sure;
his truth at all times firmly stood,
and shall from age to age endure.

To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
the God whom heaven and earth adore,
from men and from the angel host
be praise and glory evermore.

Words: William Kethe (died 1594), 1561

“It is he that made us and not we ourselves”. In this humble conviction an old sage, after reviewing many important aspects of human life finished the book he was writing. Ecclesiastes - Ecclesiastes just means the man to whom has been given the charge of a congregation - by writing in his 12 chapters advice to a young person setting out in life never to forget Him who has given life and breath and all things in order that he might keep a straight course to the end and so the next reading is Ecclesiastes 12: 1-7

“Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;
While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain: In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened. And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low; Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets: Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”

What good cause we have in our thankful praise to our Creator to grant us more and more wisdom and love and life: Hymn: by Charles Wesley

Come, Holy Ghost, our hearts inspire,
Let us Thine influence prove:
Source of the old prophetic fire,
Fountain of life and love.

Come, Holy Ghost, for moved by Thee
The prophets wrote and spoke;
Unlock the truth, Thyself the key,
Unseal the sacred book.

Expand Thy wings, celestial Dove,
Brood o’er our nature’s night;
On our disordered spirits move,
And let there now be light.

God, through Himself, we then shall know
If Thou within us shine,
And sound with all Thy saints below,
The depths of love divine.

Moved by the Holy Spirit we find ourselves giving spontaneous worship in a lively love, and, though offered reverently decently and in order, never making our worship first a thing of rules and regulations and forms and places as Jesus teaches in St. John’s Gospel 4:19-24

“The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.
But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”

and so THIS is a place in which we can be assured that God accepts our worship and hears our prayers. Let us now offer our Prayer to Him in the Name and the Faith of Jesus:
Assist us O Eternal God with the wisdom of Thy Holy Spirit that we my offer Thee what Thou requirest of us: worship, adoration, love in spirit and in truth. Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts can know no rest except in Thee. We come to thee looking for rest, quietness, peace, fulfillment; and we beseech thee to grant to others in like need an ANSWER to their seeking: and to the weak Thine arm to lean upon: to the sick renewed strength and to the sorrowful peace: to the penitent Christ’s reconciling love and to this place a continuance of Thy blessing .... Our Father...

Now, perhaps, we are ready to think about the STRANGE TWO WAY TRAFFIC which takes place between God and man which we call Divine Service. Our part in Divine Service is vain if we do not find God also giving, if we do not realize that in it that extraordinary saying of Jesus is fulfilled “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto but to minister” - not to be served but to be a servant. The Cross shews the extent to which this service went while yet He wore our flesh but the Divine Service still goes on: He has left us the promise of His Continued ministry through His Holy Spirit. How the Spirit takes part with us in Divine Service may be seen perhaps most clearly in Romans 8: 12-16 and 26-28
“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

We conclude this act of Divine Service by singing a Hymn we loved to sing as children:-

Great God! and wilt Thou condescend
To be my Father and my Friend?
I a poor child, and Thou so high,
The Lord of earth and air and sky.

Art Thou my Father? canst thou bear
To hear my poor imperfect prayer?
Or wilt thou listen to the praise
That such a little one can raise.

Art Thou my father? let me be
A meek obedient child to thee,
And try, in word and deed and thought,
To serve and please Thee as I ought.

Art Thou my Father? I’ll depend
Upon the care of such a Friend.
And only wish to do and be
Whatever seemeth good to Thee.

Art Thou my father? then at last,
When all my days on earth are past,
Send down and take me in Thy love
To be Thy better child above.
Ann Gilbert 1782-1866