The Scottish Reformation | Page 4

many more good and devoted ministers, abandoning in despair the
contest of ten years, withdrew from the Church of their fathers, to rear
another in which they hoped to enjoy greater freedom and peace. My
next view of the Assembly was in 1848, when, along with Dr Tulloch,
and two or three other college friends, I took my place for the first time
as a member of the House, and when my old preceptor, then Professor
of Church History in St Mary's College, filled the chair. The Church at
that time was but slowly recovering from the staggering blow she had
received in '43, and the great Dr Robertson was shaping out the
splendid scheme which was to constitute her mission for the immediate
future, and give to her the consciousness and confidence of reviving
life. There were plenty of aged men there, whose lives had been
honourably worn out in her service; a goodly band of young men, with
not a little of the ardour and enthusiasm of youth; not a few of riper
years, who, after weary waiting, had at last been promoted to pastoral
charges. But that class which is the mainstay of a Church--the men who
have attained to experience by years of labour in her service, and are
still able to bear the burden and heat of the day--was more scantily
represented."

The young minister, with so many conspicuous gifts and graces, was
not allowed to remain long in the quiet pastoral charge at Dunnichen,
where his ministry had been very acceptable; and in 1848--only one
year after his ordination, and when not more than twenty-six years of
age--he was appointed to the chair of Hebrew in St Mary's College, St
Andrews, through which he had so recently passed as a student. He has
himself told of the cordial welcome which he received from the
venerable Principal Haldane and the other members of the professorial
staff, and of the harmony with which they co-operated in the work of
the College.
It was not then a common thing that so young a minister should be
called to occupy such a position of dignity and responsibility, nor was
Hebrew then so popular a branch of study as it has, for various reasons,
since become in our Divinity Halls; but the ability and success with
which the Professor discharged the duties of his chair, and the salutary
influence which he exerted in many ways upon the students, more than
justified the appointment. He was one of the first in Scotland to
introduce a scientific method in the teaching of Hebrew, and his
class-room became a place of very real work, necessitating careful
preparation on the part of the students. Some of these, perhaps, thought
him rather exacting, and the strict discipline which he enforced was not
altogether to their liking; but there were very few who did not value his
good opinion, or who would not have considered it a kind of
degradation to incur his displeasure; while many, imbued with
something of his own spirit, attained under his guidance to such a
degree of proficiency in the knowledge of the sacred tongue as made
the reading of the Old Testament in the original a source of interest and
pleasure to them in subsequent years. Dr William Wright, one of the
greatest of Orientalists, was one of his students, and two others of them
are occupants of Hebrew Chairs in Scottish Universities.
The appointment of the Professor to the Convenership of the
Committee on the Mission to the Jews in 1856 marked a new era in its
history, in respect both of the method of its operations and the field in
which these have ever since been carried on. One of the results of the
Crimean war, which had then but recently closed, was the opening of

the Turkish empire for evangelistic enterprise; and it may be said that
the Professor laid the foundations of the Mission in the Levant at the
several stations occupied by the Church of Scotland, which are now
known not only as places of great historic interest but as important
centres of missionary activity in which the Church bears an honourable
part. In the autumn of 1857 he undertook a journey to the East at the
request of the Committee, and in the course of his travels there visited
not only the principal Turkish cities on the coast, but Jerusalem and
other places in Palestine and Syria, collecting information with a view
to find openings for the planting of the Mission at suitable stations in
addition to the two which had been already occupied. The report which
he presented on his return led by degrees to a great expansion of the
Mission, and several of his own students and others were through his
influence induced