AVID MAITLAND MAKGILL CRICHTON took rank in the Disruption days as one of " the Lords of the Congregation." His birth, his bearing, his shrewdness in discerning what ought to be done, at once assigned to him this honoured place. In addition to this, he was one of the foremost and lealest in the promulgation and defence of the Church's principles and rights, when church court and platform were distinguished by the noblest band of eloquent men that Scotland had ever listened to. And all was heightened by the generous self-devotion with which all was done. Time, labour, health, horses, hospitality, means, were all unstintedly surrendered by him in the great struggle. The spirit of Christian chivalry was in the man.
Makgill Crichton was born at Rankeilour in 1801. His ancestry connected him with the Maitlands of Lauderdale; with James Makgill, the friend of John Knox, and the founder of the Rankeilour family; with Viscount Frendraught, Lord Crichton, to whose title he served himself as heir; and with the Johnstons of Lathrisk. Being the second son, he studied law, and passed as advocate in 1822. By the death of his brother he succeeded to the heritage of Rankeilour.
But his highest distinction, and as Baron Bunsen said of himself on his death-bed, " his richest experience, was the having known Jesus Christ." To this he was " won" by the Christian conversation of his first wife, a daughter of Mr Hog of Newliston. He saw in her during a lengthened illness the sustaining power of the gospel of Christ. And what he saw in her he sought and got for himself - a saving interest in the same Redeemer. From the very first to the very last of his religious life, the inner character of his religion never altered. It was that of an individual soul dealing with a personal God. It was a transacting with God on the provisions and promises of the gospel for all that, as a fallen creature, he felt that he needed. If then, as Carlyle says, "belief is the whole basis, essence, and practical outcome of human souls," it is to the faith of Makgill Crichton that we are to look for the purpose and the energy which he put forth in the struggles of the Church, and "by this he obtained a good report." This only can adequately explain the man's entire consecration to the work. It was faith that worked, it was love that laboured.
In 1834 it was that Makgill Crichton enlisted as a willing worker, under the leadership of Dr Chalmers, in the cause of Church Extension. The commencement of his labours consisted in hard, patient, obscure local efforts to call forth thought and interest and liberality to the subject. Chalmers acknowledged, "with the deepest feelings of gratitude, his exertions," and was accustomed to express it as his wish that there was a " Makgill Crichton in every parish." By-and-bye he was moved forward to the front as a platform speaker. There he culminated at once as the most efficient of orators. Everything was in his favour. He was in his thirty-fourth year. An air of distinction sat upon the man. His figure was tall. An expression of firmness gave character to his sharp-cut features. His voice rung clear and trumpet-toned through the largest meeting. The cause which he advocated was of the very noblest. The motive which inspired him was of the very highest. " If under the Church," he said," we have ourselves tasted of the word of life, we have in ourselves the true and only spring of pure philanthropy, and of love to God." The high-souled look which lighted him up when he pled his cause, convinced every observer of his sincerity and earnestness.
His success was very great, but sometimes he was trysted with disappointments and downcasting. After a church extension tour, in which he met with discouragement, he returned to Rankeilour. His mind was weighted with its own depressions. It chanced to be the night of the prayer-meeting, which was held in the house of old Saunders Honeyman in Springfield, and being one of the members, David Makgill Crichton went to it. Before the service commenced, he unburdened his. heart by telling his humble friends how much discouraged he was. All they of the meeting gave him their attention and sympathy. It was old Saunders' turn to conduct the services. Saunders selected the 132d Psalm, and with solemn Scotch accent read out -
"David and his afflictions all,
Lord, do Thou think upon."After singing the usual four verses, they knelt on the earthen floor. Saunders led in the prayer, asking for the kneeling company all promised and purchased blessings, and not forgetting " David and his afflictions." The laird returned home, and his countenance was no longer sad. Those clay-floor cottage prayers were the presage of success.
With the view of aiding the cause of Church Reform and Church Extension, Mr Makgill Crichton complied with a call which was given him, to offer himself for the representation of the St Andrews district of Burghs in Parliament, he entered the field as a moderate Conservative. He left the field, "declaring his mistrust both of Whig and Tory, and assuming the independent position of a Bible politician," words which Merle D'Aubigne adopted as a motto to one of his own pamphlets. Mr Ellice was his opponent in the contest; and out of 551 votes given, it was only by the narrow majority of 29 votes that Mr Ellice was returned.
It was because the Christian men and women of Scotland believed that the Church of Scotland, "like Jerusalem which is above," was free, and protected in her freedom by the constitutional law of the country, that they wished to promote the extension of that Church. But as the Church went forward, reforming her practice according to the word of God and her own standards, the law courts, by a strange fatuity, obstructed her path at every stage by a series of decisions which have deprived her of every shred of jurisdiction. "He that is spiritual discerneth all things." As these law court decisions succeeded each other, the Evangelical leaders felt, that such a church as the law courts leave to us, is a church not worth extending. It would be a moral and spiritual nullity in the land. And the men and women in Scotland who knew their Bibles and the Church history of Scotland, responded, the true Church of Scotland, which is the mother of us all, is and has been a free church, and, God helping us, she shall be free. And so the great question of spiritual independence came up and stirred the country.
No one was more impressed than was Makgill Crichton, of the far-reaching importance of this subject. As a Christian who read his Bible, he saw that this spiritual independence was "a thing touching the King," and the spiritual life of the Church. As a Scotchman, he knew Scottish Church history, and that in the words of Froude, "the political freedom of the country had been hitherto wrapped up in the kirk," or in the words of Professor Blackie, " the centre of Scottish nationality lay in the Scotch Presbyterian religion." As a lawyer, he was well convinced that the constitution of the country and special statutes had secured, as far as it was possible for legislation to do it, protection to the Church in all spiritual matters. He was quite equipped for the conflict, and most heroically did he enter on its self-denying labours. In church, in school-house, in hall, in barn, all throughout Scotland, and in many parts of England and of Ireland, did he advocate that Scottish doctrine of the co-ordinate jurisdiction of church and state, which Minghetti has in this year of 1875 been commending to his constituents at Boulogne, and to the Italian Parliament, as that which can alone secure a free church in a free state. If it is in the masses that the feelings of a community reside, no man, either clerical or lay, did more to implant these great church principles in the mind of the masses, than did Makgill Crichton.
It is not easy to convey to the reader an idea of the multitudinous subjects which were constantly pressing upon the attention of Makgill Crichton, and of the stern working to which he subjected himself, during these eventful years. Here is a bundle of his letters, about the year 1843. By opening them, we may see the multiplicity of questions which distracted his thoughts and time.
The first is from Dr Ferrie, refusing an offer to address the people of Kilconquhar on the Church question. The second is a letter dated "St Andrews" and signed " A Working Man," saying, " a new era is about to commence in the history of our Church and country. The Lord in his goodness grant that it may be found worthy to be called the third Reformation." The third is from a zealous layman, beseeching Mr Crichton " to let the dead bury their dead, and to allow the Quarter Sessions for that day to take care of themselves, and not fail to be present as corresponding member at the Synod meeting at Brechin.'' The fourth is from Sir David Brewster, telling "that the St Andrews University have, by a scandalous and illegal decision, expelled, without even the form of a trial, three of the most distinguished students, all these being members of the Church Defence Association, which is their crime," and asking his presence in St Andrews. The fifth is from Charles Leckie, acknowledging with gratitude a cheque for £8, and continuing, "I have little hope for betterness. I am endeavouring to contemplate the Cross of Christ in its variety of associations, as my sure ground of hope, and I have reason to bless God that although my light and experience are not of the first magnitude, yet they leave me not without comfort and peace of mind. Dear friend, pray for me, that God would enable me to glorify Him in the day of His visitation." A sixth is dated, " The Reform Club," London. It says: " Twice since Iwas under your hospitable roof, I have been on the verge of eternity, and there nothing seems worth standing up for except eternal truth and right. In the valley of the shadow of death one cannot see the greatness of cabinet ministers." The seventh is from Hugh Miller. It has this sentence: "I sadly miss your companionship, and my thoughts get mouldy for want of airing." Hugh, whose words were well considered, usually closed his letters to Makgill Crichton with " Very affectionately yours."
These letters shew the range of his sympathies. His activities were represented by his being week after week away from his home, in all parts of the country, and night after night addressing meetings, yet taking care to be at Rankeilour every Saturday, that he might spend the Sabbath with his family, and be in his own pew in Collessie church. It was in the face of the most vituperative opposition, both public and private, that all this was done. The editor of The Witness newspaper tells us, that for a few days he had clipped out of the newspapers all that he had seen written against Mr Crichton, and by fastening it together, he found that it had extended to eleven feet six inches and three-eighth parts of undiluted abuse, in one brief fortnight.
In 1844, under the strain of this excessive work and excitement, health gave way. Paralysis shewed itself unmistakeably, shattering for a time both body and mind. As Mr Percival Bunting of Manchester, wrote - "Many, very many, friends, both known and unknown, sympathised with him in his afflictions, and prayed, not coldly or unfrequently, for his recovery." Among such, it is deeply affecting to see the venerable Chalmers bending over his fellow-labourer and fellow-soldier when he was stricken clown, relating to him his own somewhat similar experience, and comforting him with the comfort wherewith he himself had been comforted of God.
"My very dear sir," writes Chalmers, 18th August 1844, " I was forcibly reminded of my own situation in 1834, when an arrest was laid upon me in going along the North Bridge, after a three hours' speech in the Presbytery, and I was conveyed home in a coach. The treatment which my physician laid upon me reduced me in the course of the summer by thirty-five pounds weight, so that, when I picked up again, it was more like a reconstruction than a recovery. . . .
"A very remarkable experience of mine during that summer was, that I often in speaking stuck in the middle of a sentence, and it seemed as much due to a failure in thought as a failure in articulation. I mention this because I have been recently visited by the same symptoms. . . .
" It is a great comfort, amid the uncertainties of this ever-shifting pilgrimage, to think that we are in good hands, and under the vigilant eye of Him who likes to be trusted, and bids us cast all our care upon Himself. May you, my dear sir, have great peace and joy in believing, and may you realise in your own person that most beautiful of Scripture verses, 'in quietness and confidence ye shall have strength.' I ever am, my dear sir, yours most cordially and with great affection, THOS. CHALMERS."
Another evidence of the wide-spread sympathy with which he was regarded, was the presentation of a silver centre piece, combining the properties of an epergne and candelabrium, bearing this inscription - To David Maitland Makgill Crichton, Esq. of Rankeilour, from ten thousand members of the Free Church." Dr Candlish, in making the presentation, said, "The principles in support of which you have submitted to so much labour and to so many sacrifices, are worthy of an apostle's zeal and a martyr's faith, connected as they are with the kingly crown of our blessed Saviour, and the freedom of his people."
We have not space to particularize further. The years of life which yet remained were actively spent in the midst of the practical questions which were always turning up, and the course which he followed was the same "slapdash, straightforward, earnest course" it had ever been. But it was marked by more irritability, and impatience of contradiction, and severity of censure. And what were these but the symptoms of what the post-mortem inspection afterwards revealed, that structural disease had so pervaded the system as to make life a continual struggle and disturbance!
His last efforts were called forth on behalf of Dr Thomson of Coldstream, who had spent many years of his life, and "all he had left in the world," in contending for a cheap Bible against Bible monopoly. Again did Mr Crichton traverse Scotland, raising the needed funds, and relieving a good man's heart " from a heavy load of anxiety."
Of all who still remain and knew Makgill Crichton intimately, there is not one but will regard his memory with fond affection. His likeness hangs in the "ben room" of their heart. One who was much with him, and knew him well, penned this statement the other day, and many will endorse it: "The general impression of the grandness and nobility of his character has been only deepened in my mind with the lapse of years, and with my increased knowledge of the littleness and selfishness of the mass of mankind." Who that knew him will forget his zeal and generosity; his ready humour, and the twist of the mouth and the twinkle of the eye that accompanied it; the hospitality of his home, lighted up by the presence and the varied converse of Brewster and Hugh Miller, of Guthrie, Candlish, Patrick Clason, Begg, and James Mackenzie, whose fifteenpence History reflects more truthfully the spirit of Scottish history than all the volumes which have been written? Who will not remember his readiness humbly to acknowledge wherein he had erred, when dealt with in the spirit of meekness, - his gentleness in the midst of his family, - and the feeling of lowly reverence with which at family worship he prostrated himself before God? It is his religion, and the nature of it, which after all is the great fact to him now, and ever was, for it gave complexion to his character and life. His religion was strong in its scriptural simplicity. It was to him a matter of certainty, not so much logical or inferential as experimental, for he felt that it righted his relation with God through Christ, and maintained daily fellowship with God through Christ. His religion was definite and doctrinal, for he knew it as a system of divine truth wherein one doctrine harmoniously combined with and sustained another. His religion was a simple, childlike devoutness, healthily fed by the varied elements which the Spirit of God has infused into Bible narrative and Bible statement, and gathered by him daily, as the manna was gathered by the Israelites, with the dew of heaven fresh upon it. On this religion he lived the life he led, and by it he died in the quietness of faith.
There was a soldier-like simplicity in the manner of his death. He had sat up to evening family worship. He had requested to be allowed to ascend the stair to his bed-room unattended. He had his portion of Scripture read to him after he had gone to bed. In the early morning a fit of breathlessness aroused him. His son was immediately at his side. "Thank God," he said, "my boy, I am better." Scarcely were the words uttered, when the spirit fled.
''We bless Thee for the quiet rest thy servant taketh now,
And for the good fight foughten well, and closed right peacefully."Makgill Crichton was one of the row of hard-wood trees which stood on the outskirts of the forest, and sheltered it from the tempest. These have now been mostly removed one by one. The stormy blasts now get entrance into the depths of the wood, and many a green spruce is seen lying on its side, with its surface-spread roots high up in the air.
J. W. T.
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