The Kirk Above Dee Water VIII.

More about the Twelfth Paraphrase. 95

VIII.

MORE ABOUT THE TWELFTH PARAPHRASE.

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IN a time when Sir John Lubbock’s ingenious researches have thrown fresh and curious light on the habits of ants, this quaint Scripture Paraphrase, which invites the “indolent and slothful” to “view the ant’s labours and be wise,” should have a new interest for Scotsmen. Few of us fail to remember the old-fashioned lines, paraphrasing the saying of the wise man in Proverbs vi. 6-12. Modern science lends them added point, since it has strikingly demonstrated by experiment the instincts of order, organisation, and provident labour upon which the paraphrase dilates:—

“She has no guide to point her way,

No ruler chiding her delay;

Yet see with what incessant cares

She for the winter’s storm prepares:

In summer she provides her meat,

And harvest finds her store complete.”

If there be any error here at all, it is in stating that the ant has no guide or ruler, at least among its own communities. Sir John Lubbock has proved that a complete system of subordination and discipline, with a regular division of labour, prevails among ants. More wonderful still, he has shown that they are

96 The Kirk above Dee Water.

divided into distinct tribes, which recognise and distinguish each other, and exercise many arts of mutual defence and helpfulness. Ants of the same tribe know each other at once, and appear to cherish feelings of social kindness and humanity. Thus a new paraphrase might be composed, inculcating, by the example of these little creatures, the spirit of brotherly kindness and charity.

Samuel Martin was born in 1739, and on his ordination to the parish of Balmaghie he was therefore thirty years old. At this age most preachers of our time have already done five years’ work in a parish. But promotion moved more slowly in the last century, and many able and accomplished men spent their best years as schoolmasters in a country village, or as tutors to some noble or landed family. In point of fact, Samuel Martin had hitherto been engaged in teaching, combined with occasional pulpit appearances. Patronage at this time ruled supreme, and it was by the favour of the Gordons of Balmaghie that he at last entered on his lifework as a parish minister. The parish itself is of considerable extent, with a population at one time most numerous around the old church, but now chiefly housed in and near two widely-distant villages, each of which, unhappily, lies four miles off from church and manse. In Martin’s time, however, the case was different. The population, numbering nearly 1000, lived and laboured largely within a three-mile radius of their pastor. The sites of many small “crofts” can still be identified within five hundred yards. Sometimes it is the clear, bubbling well, carefully built in with round stones, which mutely records that a thriving family once lived there. Sometimes

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it is the ragged gable, with its wide ingleneuk [fire-side nook] still complete, and a solitary beech growing lustily at the spot where the garden once bloomed amid its trim hedges. In other cases the plough has destroyed all visible relics of these homesteads; but a skilled botanist, from some green patch of turf picks out a flower or herb which could have come there only by the kindly work of human hands, and he tells us that there must have been a cottage-garden at the desolate spot. The increase of large farms, and the exodus of labour from the country to the town, have wrought similar results all over Scotland. Samuel Martin’s parish, however, was as yet untouched by such influences. From the narrow windows of his small manse he could see a score of houses, mostly full of children, who were employed, as they grew up, in the cultivation of their parents’ crofts. Record still remains of as many as nine up to eleven sturdy sons and daughters being reared in cottages of three rooms and a “loft.” On Sundays the little old church—a facsimile of Samuel Rutherford’s church at Anwoth—was always full, sometimes even crowded, since it held no more than 100 souls. Such tiny parish churches throw a new light on our vexed question of non-churchgoing in rural districts. A population of nearly 1000 served by a building which contained only one-tenth of that number; this surely indicates that churchgoing has not fallen off, as our older hearers are prone to aver, but rather that our buildings have been enlarged beyond the bounds of former attendance.

Samuel Martin’s ministry here was brief, but it appears to have been eminently active and acceptable.

98 The Kirk above Dee Water.

Of his work in Monimail I can give no particulars; but that he proved as active and useful there, his memory, still green in that parish, amply demonstrates. The present incumbent, the Rev. James Brunton, B.D., has been most kind in furnishing me with any available particulars. But these are naturally scanty, and of a homely character. Oftentimes the best parish minister leaves hardly a trace behind him, save what He marks, who sees and marks all. It is said that during his long ministry in this beautiful Fifeshire parish, Mr Martin never failed, in summer or winter, to bathe every morning in a small brook running through a wood near Monimail Manse. “This,” remarks my kind informant, “may help to account for his longevity.” It also gives point to his poetical exhortation in the paraphrase:—

“Ye indolent and slothful, rise !

View the ant’s labours and be wise.”

None but an early riser could conscientiously tender such advice. At Monimail he became at length Doctor of Divinity. It was in this period that he composed the Twelfth Paraphrase, which breathes in every line a love of nature, a rustic health and suavity of feeling, and a firm belief in hard work. Its sombre close is quite characteristic of the paraphrases in general, and not at all surprising in one who had ministered in Macmillan’s pulpit, and dispensed Macmillan’s sacramental cup.*

Of the outward appearance and bearing of this venerable divine, distinct records fortunately survive. He is described

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* Regarding the cup used by Macmillan, the Reformed Presbyterian father, tradition alleges that none, who was unsound or unworthy, could receive it sacramentally without trembling or turning pale.

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as being “very courtier-like in his manners.” His face, a remarkably fine and striking one, is preserved in a lithographed portrait dating from 1800, when he was over sixty years of age. The head is dignified, venerable, and resolute; but there are lines of gentleness and sympathy around the mouth. It is such a face and look as befit one who, through his quaint paraphrase, has warned thousands of Scottish youths against indolence and sloth.

He died in 1829, aged ninety—truly a “grand old man.” He is buried at Monimail, “in an old churchyard where the parish ministers who die in the parish are laid to rest. His tomb is next to that of the Very Rev. Wm. Leitch, D.D., who was minister here before he became Principal of Queen’s College, Kingston, Canada.” So writes my kind correspondent, Mr Brunton; and he adds the simple epitaph:—

To the Memory of

The Reverend SAMUEL MARTIN, D.D.,

Minister of Monimail,

who died 12th Sept., 1829, in the 90th year of his age,

and 62nd of his Ministry.

By doctrine and example he faithfully upheld the

Cause of Evangelical Truth.

Num. xxiii. 10. Phil. iii. 21.