The Scottish Reformation | Page 7

of Christendom.'
In 1885 the Church showed her appreciation of the Professor's character and work by electing him to the Moderatorship of the General Assembly, an office which he filled with a union of dignity and authority which reflected honour upon the Church. If there are parties in the Church of Scotland, he never identified himself with any of them, and had learned to call no man master but Christ. He knew his own mind, and could give forcible expression to his convictions when occasion required. Naturally of an unassuming disposition and unobtrusive manners, he never courted popularity nor sought to thrust his opinions upon others; and it was for this reason, perhaps, that he was deferred to even by those whose views were in some respects widely divergent from his. It was doubtless for this reason also, as well as for others, that he wielded so great an influence in the counsels of the Church, and probably few men had more to do than he with the shaping of her policy in recent years. In paying a tribute to his memory at a meeting of the Presbytery of Edinburgh a few days after his decease, the Very Rev. Dr Scott of St George's said that "by Professor Mitchell's death the Church had lost a laborious, faithful, successful, and honoured minister and professor, and perhaps one of the soundest and wisest counsellors that the Church ever had. He was a man who had friends in all the Churches. He knew how powerfully his influence had told in the Church--always for conciliation, not only so far as those without their own Church were concerned, but those within the Church also. Had it not been for Dr Mitchell's influence the relaxation of the formula regarding the subscription of elders would never have been carried through."
A man of a very catholic spirit, and a lover of peace and concord, the Professor, like many others who longed for a comprehensive union of the Scottish Churches, would willingly have made all reasonable concessions for the attainment of so desirable an object. But he was too loyal a son of the Church of Scotland to consent to any unworthy compromise, and in the hour of danger no one was more ready than he to exert all the influence at his command in her defence. Readers of Dr Boyd's 'Twenty-five Years of St Andrews' may remember the account there given of the impression made by the Professor's sermon in the Town Church in the height of the contest in 1885, when the question of Disestablishment was brought so prominently before the electors of the St Andrews Burghs. Dr Boyd says: "It had been intimated at the services during the day that Dr Mitchell, our Professor of Church History, would lecture in the parish church in the evening on 'Some aspects of the Church Question deserving of consideration in the present crisis.' Dr Mitchell was that year Moderator of the Kirk: and he very seldom preaches. The church was filled by a great congregation. I should not in the least degree have been surprised to hear Dr Mitchell preach wisely and devoutly: that is his usual way. But it did surprise me to find that man of calm and well-balanced mind fire up into a pathos and vehemence which I have rarely seen equalled and never surpassed. The question of disestablishment had been raised: and one was made to realise how it stirs the blood of good men here. And not merely were there this evening a fire, a keenness, a power of stirring a multitude to the depth of their nature, which are rare indeed, but an incisive severity of denunciation which few had expected from that calm, cautious man. And if the preacher was at white-heat, so was the congregation long before he was done. Several times there would have been loud applause, had it not been hushed."
The attitude which the Professor maintained in regard to the doctrine and worship of the Church was a strictly conservative one, and may be best described in his own words, taken from an article included in the list of his minor works. In that article, after quoting the advice tendered by an eminent minister of the Church of England to a minister of the Church of Scotland--"Stick by your own Kirk: it is an honest Kirk, one of the few that has fairly rid itself of sacerdotalism and ritualism, and you have no cause to be ashamed of it"--he goes on to say: "The advice is not unneeded in the present day by others than he to whom it was originally tendered, and I give it this publicity for the benefit of all whom it may concern. The Reformed Church of Scotland from the first rid herself of these medieval