D.S.S Six Variations on one Motif. [A Career Summary]

D.S.S. ‘Essay’ Six variations on one Motif. (Circa 1970) [A career summary]

In one lifetime we have moved with astonishing rapidity from the old into the new. Some things have passed utterly away like the watering troughs (drinking fountains for horses) found in my boyhood every mile or so along the dusty roads, or like the old bedtime candles which are so much a thing of the past that on B.B.C.1 people are given the impression that in those early days households moved along dark passages and up bumpy stairs hazarding life and property by humphing about enormous paraffin table lamps. Yet in my first Manse we were dependent for light on paraffin oil and thought ourselves far advanced to do our cooking on a Valor Stove and our ironing with a petrol iron. Now we have electric stoves that can be left alone to do the cooking. Horsetroughs have given place to the petrol pumps and the choking dust of the roads has vanished to leave a more formidable substitute - the reek of petrol and diesel fumes. And if the Rev. Andrew Morton has his way, those of us ministers who are well enough of to get access to computers will only have to punch a knob or two to turn out sermons in the very idiom of the Apostle Paul.

Certain things and institutions remain. Though petrol has come it only makes easier the ploughing and sowing and reaping which have to be done year by year and some of us still make and sup porridge and our meals are served up daily whether out of a tin or a packet or straight from the garden. The police and the law-courts, the army and the navy persist (The Royal Flying Corps was ‘since my time’) and the schools still turn out their yearly batches of educated and semi educated. In teaching there are many changes especially in Arithmetic and kindred subjects: but I like to boast that I was taught French by Sarah Bernhardt. My teacher in 1912 had an ancient phonograph one of the cylinders being the divine Sarah in her favorite role of LAiglon. Genius was genius before the flood.

The Church remains but the Church has changed: changed in all her branches and denominations, except perhaps in the extremities of Scotland. The Roman Church has changed more radically in the last 20 years than at any time since the Council of Trent. Very few congregations of the Independents remain in the same condition as Gilfillan Dundee. [Gilfillan Memorial Church; an Independent Church established in 1879 by members of the Rev. George Gilfillan's School Wynd Congregation, who seceded from the United Presbyterian Church.] The Churches of the Anglican Communion have changed and would have made greater changes still had not Members of Parliament whether Socialist, Liberal or Tory been so conservative. Great Churches still sundered here have united in Canada, in India and Pakistan and in Central Africa. But perhaps the greatest change of all has been happening in Scotland in 1900 and 1929 and in between in Edinburgh in 1910. If there has been a change, in many respects for the better, the change has not been accomplished without some loss - loss in particular of variety. We are all aware even those who are not of the Church of Scotland tradition that in the Union of 1929 are 3 main streams then 2 - Free Kirk and United Presbyterian Kirk who came together in 1900 and Church of Scotland after the separation and disruption. But few of you may be aware that in the Church of Scotland which came into the 1929 Union there were 6 different varieties of charge. I have served in all of them.

[1922 Dundee Student Assistantship - General Kirk session
1924 St. Cuthbert’s Parish Church, Edinburgh - Collegiate Church
1925 Ordination
1925 Teviothead Parish Church - Schedule B Church
1929 Gilcomston, Aberdeen - Chapel of Ease become Quoad Sacra
1937 Parish of St. Michael, Inveresk - Quoad Omnia
1958 - 1966 Parish Church Iona - A Parliamentary Parish]

1922 Dundee Student Assistantship - General Kirk Session
My first assistantship, a student assistantship was unusual: to it I was appointed by the General Kirk Session, during part of my summer holidays to give help in the City Churches of Dundee, St. Mary’s, St. Paul’s, St. Clement’s, St. John’s Cross, St. David’s (such is my recollection over 48 years, although Schedule 1x of property and Endowments Act does not include St. Mary’s.) It was a very valuable experience involving much weekly visiting and preaching every Sunday. Mairs Digest scouts the idea of General Kirk Sessions as being non-Presbyterian. I don’t know of any other General Kirk Session in Scotland but I saw it really in action in Leenwarden in Holland.

When the Presbytery of Dundee Licensed me in 1922 the great Harcourt Davidson was moderator and I sat beside him afterwards at the Presbytery lunch. To put me in my awkwardness more at my ease, Harcourt compared the Church of Scotland with other Churches especially those with an Episcopal Tradition but informed me that although holding to the principle of parity of Presbyters the Church of Scotland had its degrees of reverence: Moderator of General Assembly, Right Reverend, Ex Moderators and Principals, Very Reverend, and general run of Presbyters, Reverend, and continued that, while use or want allowed me a dog collar I was not yet a Presbyter - what degree of reverence shall we give you? I think “Rather Reverend.”

After my licensing I proceeded for nearly a year’s further study in the Holy Land as the first of the Maclean Scholars and became a student in the British School of Archeology Jerusalem, but was adopted by the American School of Archeology and W. F. Albright, digging at Tel Dor and at Tel Harbarj.

[Albright (the Director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, 1922-1929) wrote in ‘Some Archaeological and Topographical Results of a Trip through Palestine’ : W. F. Albright : Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 11 (Oct., 1923), pp. 1+3’ :

“Our tour in the spring of 1923 lasted eighteen days, from April 9 to April 26. With the writer were five others : Bewer of Union : Edwards of Missouri : Hawley of International Y.M.C.A. : Voight and Cooke from Yale: : Mr Voight had to leave us after a few days and Mr Stiven of the British School joined us later and remained until the end of the trip. With us we had six horses, and four pack animals to carry our two tents, bedding and provisions, besides two donkeys for the muleteers. The horse were good, and or supply of bedding and food proved satisfactory, so the tour was pleasant, besides being most successful from the standpoint of results.”]

I went to Harosheth of the Gentiles with John Garstang [Director of Antiquities in the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920-1926 Head of the British School of Archeology in Jerusalem (1919-1926)] and did tours on foot and on horseback alone and in company by land and sea. I month teaching in Sufad : the only ‘set on a hill’ work which bore fruit after the Jews took over. Many cabinet ministers and civil servants had been educated for their very important work there.

1924 St. Cuthbert’s Parish Church Edinburgh - Collegiate Church
In Palestine I had the good fortune to meet Norman Maclean who told me there would be an assistantship in St. Cuthbert’s, Edinburgh waiting for me on my return. In St. Cuthbert’s I was serving in a Collegiate Charge. The two ministers, Dr Fisher and Dr Maclean were of equal status and took it in turns to moderate the Kirk Session meetings. There is only one minister there now with an ordained colleague. At the beginning of the [20th] century when Dr MacGregor was one of the ministers he was told that one of his predecessors had called it a perfectly heavenly arrangement and another predecessor had called it pure hell, and, asked for his opinion, said it’s neither “It’s just purgatory!”

Ecumenism was at its beginnings but was frowned upon by Robertson, one of the Beadles. On one occasion a dignitary of the Church of England was to occupy St. Cuthbert’s pulpit and Robertson, well drilled beforehand, was firmly impressed with the need for calling the distinguished visitor ‘My Lord’. My Lord was not only a high dignitary he was also immensely round. And when Robertson got him into his cassock and was ready to apply what he heroically called the bellyband he put one end in the bishop’s hand and thrust it up against the bishop’s belly saying, “Just haud that there MY LORD and I’ll be round in a minute.”

5 Feb 1925 Ordination at Teviothead Parish Church - Schedule B Church
My ordination in 1925 brought me into a ministry in which in four successive charges I was to serve four other types of Churches all of them distinctively Church Of Scotland. Teviothead was one of 10 charges erected about the middle of the 19th Century under an Act of Parliament of 1844, called shortly ‘Schedule 8 Churches’. At the reformation the church was in possession of much property, mostly lands and in certain rights in the harvest of grain and the catching of fish, called tiends. The management of this vast property was entrusted to local noblemen and lairds called heritors who were obliged to maintain churches and manses and schools and schoolhouses and to arrange for ministers and schoolmasters to be properly paid and the poor to be relieved out of these properties in their several parishes, keeping the rest to themselves.

The purchase price paid by any subsequent owner of the property was paid in
the knowledge that it was thus burdened, if burdened is the word for wealth which could be enjoyed by by the administrator himself after the parochial needs for which he held it were met. That surplus was called ‘free tiend’. In 10 places where such ample free tiend was matched by heritors of responsibility and vision the heritors built manses and churches and provided stipends adequate for 10 ministers. One of these ‘Schedule 8’ parishes was Teviothead carved out as a parish from parts of Cavers, Kirton and Hawick.

In every parish I had at least one notable predecessor. In Teviothead it was Henry Scott Riddell (1798-1870) - never in full charge for he had a breakdown before the parish was erected and the Duke of Buccleuch built him a cottage in the parish where he spent his declining years. He wrote ‘Scotland Yet’ a toast to Scotland while out for a walk in a lonely glen at Teviothead and, although a poor man, devoted the money he got from the song to putting a railing round Burn’s Monument on the Calton Hill in Edinburgh
[Gae bring my guid auld harp aince mair;
Gae bring it free and fast,
For I maun sing anither sang
Ere a' my glee be past:
And trow ye as I sing my lads,
The burthen o't shall be -
Auld Scotland's howes and Scotland's knowes,
And Scotland's hills for me!
I'll drink a cup to Scotland yet,
Wi a' the honours three! [Crown jewels : Crown, sword and septre]

A photograph I have showing Riddle and his wife standing before their cottage with the harp which the brethren of Lodge St. John in Hawick gave him is now in the National Portrait Gallery. The minister of the Parish about that time was the Reverend Robert Young who enjoyed throughout the Parish and neighbourhood a byname that everyone here might envy: “Diligent Dick”. One day Henry Scott Riddell had gone to Hawick 8 miles away with Sandy Brown the Beadle. They had both of them enjoyed themselves and as they were stravaiging [D.S.S used ‘straughering’] homeward Scott Riddell halted and turned to Sandy Brown and said, “Sandy the Lord God A’michty may forgive us this nicht but the Rivverand Roaberrt Young? NIVVER!”

Presbytery met at Jedburgh nearly 20 miles away. As I didn’t enjoy a penny of my stipend between the 5th of Feb1925 when I was inducted and the 15th of May 1926 when it vested, I cycled. They met in the forenoons and lunched at the Spreadeagle. The older members delighted in telling me how lucky I was not to be in servitude. When they were my age it fell to the youngest to mind the kettle and see that it was on the boil all afternoon!

I am grateful that (as a young minister) the man who gave me my charge was Oswald Milligan of Jedburgh who bade me follow the Christian Year. I gleaned other things there and while I’m telling you about change may I mention one change which taught me not to be too superior about the ‘winds’ of change. An old dry-stane-dyker busy about his biggin’ complained about lack of apprentices. His was a dying trade. Young, and very superior, I spoke of the speed and economy with which a wire fence could be stretched along a boundary. I can still see the contempt with which he looked at me when he said, “There’s nae beild ahent a bit o’wire.” (Perhaps there’s a human reason why the winds of change blow so chill upon defenseless tribes today.)

1929 - 1937 Gilcomston, Aberdeen - Chapel of Ease become Quoad Sacra
My second charge was the type of congregation in which I myself had been brought up - a Parish Church quoad SACRA. When in the 18th century great cities began to grow it became evident that the existing Parish Churches were insufficient either in size or in numbers to accommodate the population many of whom in any case were being housed far from the parish church. To ease this situation Chapels of Ease were built and for long both congregation and minister of those Chapels of Ease were under the authority of the Kirk Session of the Parish Church. In time they and numerous new charges got autonomy as far as Ecclesiastical matters were concerned but without civil responsibilities. That’s why in contrast to the old parishes quoad omnia [to do with everything] they were called parishes quoad sacra [to do with sacred things]. They had no claim to Tiend and so before any new parish quoad sacra could be erected guarantees had to be given that it would be erected free of debt and that there would be sufficient endowment to raise and annual stipend for the minister of the then adequate sum of 120 pounds.

My celebrated predecessor in Gilcomston, the earliest quoad sacra church in Aberdeen, was Dr James Kidd, an Irishman who had come to Scotland by way of the United States, and who doubled the cure of souls at Gilcomston with the Professorship of Hebrew and Oriental Languages at Marischal University.
He was a character! (These were the days, when the men of Aberdeen boarded, that like England Aberdeen had two Universities. [In 1495 King’s College. In 1593 a second, Post- Reformation University, was founded by George Keith, fourth Earl Marischal. King's College and Marischal College were united to form the modern University of Aberdeen in 1860] Dr Kidd had a long long ministry and was beloved by his people and admired for miles around for his independent mind and ready wit.

When the First gentleman in Europe George 1V [1762-1830. Regent 1811. King 1820.] was puting away his queen he issued orders that no longer should prayer be offered for the Queen in the Churches of his realm. James Kidd continued to pray fervently for Queen Caroline Sunday by Sunday in Gilcomston. For this he was summoned before the Presbytery. The Presbytery had heard that Dr Kidd prayed for the Queen. “Yes,” said Kidd, “I do.” Bidden to stop this practice he asked why. The question landed a Presbytery of the Church of Scotland in a fix. They could hardly say, “Because the King says so”

[In 1596, the firebrand Presbyterian Andrew Melville had told James exactly where he stood: 'I mon tell yow, thair is twa Kings and twa Kingdomes in Scotland. Thair is Chryst Jesus the King, and his Kingdome the Kirk, whase subject King James the Saxt is, and of whase kingdome nocht a king nor a lord nor a heid, bot a member.']

and so the Moderator himself made answer, “Because Queen Caroline is a sinful woman” which provoked the devastating answer, “All the more reason to pray for her. If she is a sinful woman I’ll pray for Queen Caroline: and, turning to each of the Presbyters in turn, he went on “I’ll pray for you sir and you sir and you sir” and at last coming to the Moderator “and I’ll pray for you sir and any other sinner out of hell sir.”

But Kidd didn’t always have the best of the argument. One of his greatest friends in Aberdeen was the Roman Priest. On one occasion they had an argument about the Virgin Mary. “She was a saint” said Kidd “ but only in the same sense as my mother was a saint.” “I dinna ken Doctor” said the Priest “aboot the mithers: but I dae ken there’s an awfu’ difference in the sons.”

I had eight years in Aberdeen, eight very happy vigorous years for one of which I resembled Kidd in at least one thing, performing the duty of Professor of Hebrew as well as carrying out the duties of ministering to nearly 2000 souls.

It was well before the second world war of course but it was the only congregation I’ve ministered to in which men and women teachers in the Sunday School were equally balanced. We made up our 3 year syllabus of teaching and my organist came and taught Church music and MY how we worked.

1937 - 1958 Parish of St. Michael, Inveresk - Quoad Omnia
After a schedule 8 church and a Quoad Sacra Church came a call to one of the very oldest quoad omnia parishes in Scotland, Inveresk, where on the site of an ancient Roman fort Modwenna, an Irish saint and friend of St. Bride, who died the year before Columba was born [521] is supposed to have erected the first of several churches, the last of which is known as the Church visible so kenspeckle is it in the northern parts of East Lothian.

When, near the end of the most illustrious ministry of Jupiter Carlyle the last church was erected in the year of Trafalgar [1805] the Lighthouse Commissioner gave 300 pounds to put up the spire so useful was it to shipping on the Firth of Forth. And incidentally when the spire was up difficulty with the weathercock was overcome in a really appropriate way. In 1938 Sir Archibald Berkeley Milne(1855 – 1938) admiral of the Royal Navy, the last of three Admirals, Grandfather[Sir David 1763 - 1845], Father [Sir Alexander 1806 -1896], son [Sir Archibald], to occupy Inveresk Gate died. He was 83. His sister told me that their father had told her that when the Heritors were wondering where they could get a steeplejack to put the weather cock in its place HIS father then a young naval officer already making a name for himself spoke up, “Why worry about a steeplejack when you have a sailor?” So in the year of Trafalgar the weathercock was hoisted and fixed by a sailor who was to rise to a higher rank in the Navy than Nelson himself.

Inveresk Kirk has had a very long history. The Burgh of Musselburgh which is within the old parish - a parish which at one time marched with the West Kirk of Edinburgh - got the name “The Honest Town” in this manner: Randolph, Earl of Murray, Regent of Scotland, returning from the frontier of Berwickshire to defend Edinburgh from an expected invasion by the English, was surprised by sudden indisposition on the confines of this parish, in which emergency the magistrates of Musselburgh removed him on a litter to a house in the auld mid raw of the burgh, and night and day till he died on the 20th of July, 1332 the magistrates and chief men of the burgh took turns in watch and ward. In grateful acknowledgment of their kind attention, the earl's nephew and successor in the regency, the Earl of Mar, offered these good men any reward in his power to confer; and on their declining any remuneration for the mere performance of their duty, he exclaimed “You are a set of honest fellows!” In 1340 he granted them a charter of additional privileges, with the motto Honestas for the arms of the burgh.

But even before that it had earned fame in National Affairs having had sufficient accommodation for the First Synod of the Church of Scotland of which we have historical record. In 1242 David de Bernham held in Inveresk Kirk a synod in the interests of Church Extension, when Inveresk Kirk was already 700 years old. Many Churches which of late have been celebrating their 700th anniversary trace their origins to that meeting. Little wonder they sing:
‘Musselburgh was a burgh when Edinburgh was nane
Musselburgh will be a burgh when Edinburg’s gane.’

Inspite of delimitation of area and standardization of stipend Inveresk Kirk retained much of its ancient associations, forinstance the lion’s share of the ‘parish’ funerals came my way! Indeed I tried to shew more concern for these than for the funerals of members in spite of the fact that for Parish funerals the arrangements were usually all made before I was consulted whereas I was often so humbled when a son or daughter of a wonderful member of the congregation would call and hum and haw and say how sorry they were to trouble me but their father had died and could I possibly come along!

Its graveyard I used to call ‘Who was who’. As I left the vestry one day a visitor from the Glens enquired where Brigadier Finlay was buried. I knew that the gigantic standard bearer of the Scots army at the Battle of Pinkie had fallen there but I had to confess ignorance of the actual place where he lay. Both Pinkie Burn [10Sep1547] and Carberry Hill [15Jun1567] are within the parish.

The Kirk itself is an adequate setting for services of a national character be it of joy or of sorrow. Every one of its 1600 seats were filled for the memorial Service when King George V1 died in Feb 1952. Not only is it capable of holding 1600 worshippers: there surely is something about a place where generation after generation without intermission man and women have been offering their common supplication to our help in ages past and hope for years to come. Twenty-one years only served to deepen my affection for the Kirk.

During the war [1939-45] our senior elder, our session clerk’s son and I converged on the vestry every time the siren went. As in the erie blackout darkness I passed by the gable end of it I could hear the whispers of 1500 years of prayer going up. It was incendiary bombs we were concerned about. On the most dangerous night where we seemed to be exposed in a singular way to observers from the sky it was with awe that I beheld the mist creeping up from the firth and circling in protective folds around the ancient hill till all was swathed in white. Could I help thinking of Sandy Peden’s [Covenanter] prayer when hot pressed by his enemies he besought the Lord to cast a hap o’ his plaid aboot pair auld Sandy.

There was a social difference too in Inveresk. In my first Parish there were no resident lairds and Teviothead was known as the farmer’s kirk. Farmers and herds were assiduous in attendance. Hinds and bondages could be persuaded to come only reluctantly and occasionally (A mile or two on the other side of Hawick several retired lairds were pillars o the kirk. There farmers abstained and farm servants attended).

In Gilcomston my congregations were mostly working class and towards middle class (But don’t tell me there were no social distinctions in Gilcomston. In one corner of it quite a slummy bit called Jack’s Brae, where incidentally Mary Slessor [Calabar missionary]first saw the light of day, I found more class consciousness between the various households themselves than in any other parish I served). In Inveresk I felt I was ministering to a cross section of Scotland - the old essential industries of farming, fishing and mining: rope makers and net makers and papermakers shopkeepers of all sorts, schools public and the other sort of public; practically every trade profession and occupation right up to the throne itself. It was hard work.

I was very grateful soon after I went that they made me a member of the Edinburgh Clerical Society, about half of whom were professors, to which each member had to give a learned paper every three years. That meant that for six months in every triennium my intellects were writhing under necessity’s whip.

When I reached sixty I knew that Inveresk was gradually getting beyond me. Month succeeded month and two years had elapsed and still in my 62nd year I was still “labouring up that heavenly hill with weary feet and slow” getting more and more doubtful of the Divine Omniscience: for I’d made a habit of leaving changes to Him. When at last a call came most surprisingly to Iona and the Ross of Mull[1958] I found that it was wisdom human not divine that had been in question. That Parish had already been vacant 4 years.

1958 - 1966 Parish Church Iona - A Parliamentary Parish
If in Inveresk my ministry had been to a cross section of Scotland in Iona it was to a cross section of the world. One Easter every continent was represented in the little Parish Church. And of course in summer the little church was too small and we had to move to the Cathedral for our worship.
A little while before I left Teviothead for Aberdeen [1929] I was present in Westerkirk at the unveiling of a memorial by the then Duke of Buccleuch to the great Thomas Telford for whose memory I learned in the Borders to have a great regard as a great road builder and canal builder and bridge maker. Telford, an orphan boy became a journeyman mason at Langholm and the first job he did when he became a journeyman was to cut a tombstone to the memory of the father he had never known and whom he celebrated in this epitaph; "IN MEMORY OF JOHN TELFORD, WHO AFTER LIVING 33 YEARS AN UNBLAMEABLE SHEPHERD, DIED AT GLENDINNING, NOVEMBER, 1757." Little wonder he prospered and became the first of the Civil Engineers. I never dreamt then that the last years of my active ministry would be spent in a house of his building. But it happened.

Iona was still another type of parish characteristic of the old Church of Scotland, this time a Parliamentary Parish. A parliamentary Commission set up in 1824 had its recommendation approved by Parliament that 50,000 pounds be given to T. Telford to supply between 40 and 50 parishes in the Highlands and Islands with Churches and Manses and for that 50,000 pounds, which would only suffice for one nowadays, he built nearly 50 - and a pleasant Kirk and manse he made.

The costs have mounted up only since 1900 for there were still people alive in the Parish who remembered that in the ministry of A. MacMillan and to his design another necessary church was built and furnished for less than 700 pounds. Iona was by far my most generous congregation. The people both in Iona and in the Ross of Mull loved their church buildings. There was no beadle: they kept them spotless and bright themselves taking it in turns every week. There were about 70 adults in Iona (ten of then over 80) and about 80 or 90 in the Ross, not all of course church members. They were assessed at 190 pounds for the World Appeal and didn’t only double it but one year gave 60 pounds to Christian Aid from Iona alone. When the last lap was run it was a photo finish and how annoyed the Iona folk were then the Ross won by a short head -tuppence. Nor did they stint their giving to other causes. They usually met a sudden appeal - like the Life Boat Disaster - with a whist drive. There might be 6 or 8 tables at 2/6 a head we had tea at 9 and tea again at 12 and maybe a ceilidh for an hour and some suitable prizes. 6 tables at 2/6 a head is 3 pounds. And yet the sum transmitted to the need might amount to as much as 30 pounds.

There is no need to say who was my most illustrious predecessor in Iona. In 1400 years I suppose I was his only Sassenach successor. (The present one is actually from south of the Border). But as an Angus man I derived great blessing in spending the closing years of my ministry there. Their characteristics can perhaps be best illustrated by this story. A good while ago a company of Faith Mission Pilgrims conducting a campaign on the Island visited one of the crofts and invited the crofter to come to a meeting in the school that evening. When he shewed reluctance they pressed him by saying that all the rest of the family had agreed to go. In that case said he, “I’ll need to stay and look after the croft.” They made the pious answer, “The Lord will look after the croft” to which he made the quite unanswerable reply, “In that case I’ll keep Him company.”

They say in Iona that a man has to visit it 3 times to obtain the blessing.
A young woman from Inveresk, a Salvation Army Officer whose mother, to whom I’d been a friend, had recently died paid me a visit in Iona. Just before I saw her off at the ferry I quoted the local saying about three visits to her, but knowing her to be a very faithful and zealous officer whose work had already been much blessed in the Salvation Army I said “But perhaps you have been blessed enough already and won’t need to come back again for more.” “Blessing” she said - so simply “Blessing is something you can never have enough of.”