The Scottish Reformation | Page 3

old Cathedral,--having made a voyage round the world in the
Dolphin, in which also he ran the blockade in time of war into some of
the French ports. Elizabeth, daughter of James Ferrier at Broadmyre,
the Professor's mother, was a woman of good judgment and deep piety,
and from her he seems to have inherited some of the most prominent
features of his character. He was one of a family of three, his brother
and sister having died, the former at Bloemfontein in South Africa,
many years ago. In childhood he had a narrow escape, a cart having run
over his body. He was picked up and carried home by the minister of
the Episcopal church. As a boy he passed through more than one severe
illness, and when taken for a change to Glenesk one summer he was
described by a sympathetic friend as "a deein' laddie." To a mother's
unwearied care and attention he owed, under the divine blessing, the
recovery of his health, and to a mother's religious training he owed in
no small degree that knowledge of the Holy Scriptures and that pious
disposition by which he was distinguished from his earliest years. His
elementary education he received at the grammar-school of his native
town, and when fifteen years of age he proceeded to St Andrews to
prosecute his studies with a view to the Christian ministry.

In those days the journey thither was not made with the comfort and
facility with which it is now accomplished; and the Professor himself
has told how, on landing from the North off the ferry-boat at Newport,
he walked all the way to St Andrews--a distance of eleven miles--along
with the carrier's son by the side of the cart which conveyed his
luggage to its destination. Widely different as were the future careers of
those two youths, there were various interesting points of contact in
their lives, the one becoming an eminent doctor in the University, and
the other filling the honourable position of a magistrate in the ancient
city, while both were associated as members of the kirk-session of the
Town Church.
At the very outset of his career at St Andrews the young student from
Brechin gained the highest distinction, having won the first bursary
open to students entering the University, as the result of a competitive
examination in classical scholarship. Throughout his course, both in
Arts and Divinity, he maintained a highly honourable place in all the
classes, distinguishing himself particularly by proficiency in Hebrew
and other Oriental languages; while he won the commendation of his
professors and the esteem of his fellow-students not more by his
attainments in learning than by the sterling integrity of his character
and the example of his consistent Christian life. Among his
contemporaries at College were not a few who in after-life rose to
prominent positions in the Church, one of these being his future
colleague, the late Principal Tulloch, with whom he continued to have
most cordial relations during a lifelong friendship.
On completing the usual curriculum of study at the University, Mr
Mitchell was in 1844 licensed to preach the Gospel, and after acting for
some time as an assistant, first to the minister of the parish of Meigle
and then to the minister of the parish of Dundee, he was in 1847
ordained by the Presbytery of Meigle to the pastoral charge of the
parish of Dunnichen in his native county.
The Professor had been no passive spectator of the exciting and
momentous events which were taking place in the Church of Scotland
in the years which immediately preceded and followed his entrance on

the work of the ministry; and in his address as Moderator of the
General Assembly, four decades afterwards, he gives a graphic account
of the impressions made upon him by his visits to the Supreme Court of
the Church during that period of acrimonious controversy and painful
separation. He says: "My first view of the General Assembly was
gained in 1840, where from the public gallery of the Tron Church, in
near proximity to Dr John Ritchie, of the Potterrow (whose thoughts
were already running in the same direction as those of his successors
are now), I listened to the thrilling eloquence of Chalmers, and the calm,
thoughtful utterances of Cook, and witnessed the first of those titanic
encounters between Cunningham and Robertson, which the pen of
Hugh Miller and the histories of the period have made classical. My
next glimpse of the Assembly was in 1843, when, from the students'
gallery of St Andrew's Church, beside my friend William Smith,
afterwards of North Leith, I witnessed that sad sight which was never to
fade from our memories, nor cease to influence the course of our
thought and action--the scene when Welsh, Chalmers, Gordon, and