Correspondence After Leaving St. Andrews

‘E has made friends at college; and the friendships there formed remain. Some, of course,
are soon broken up, but others are life-long.
Mutual sympathies and congenialities make them
permanent.

These college friends now pass into correspondents; widely separated from each other in place, but united in affection. Their letters now reveal their college experiences; recording reminiscences of study, trial, conflict, disappointment, success; letting us into the secrets of a student’s life, with its vicissitudes, hopes, doubts, fears, and sometimes sadnesses, — making us also acquainted with its socialities of mirth and jest, and pleasant interchange of thought and feeling, of joy and sorrow.

Mr. Dodds’ letters, even in these early days,

indicate the same facility of style which he showed

in after years amid the bustle and weariness of Paris. They are thoughtful, yet full of pleasantry; with nothing morbid or morose; the overflomngs of an affectionate and happy spirit; always in earnest, yet sprightly and elastic.

The correspondence of college friends is full of interest in after days, even though at the time it may have been so little valued as to be thrown aside. In the present case a great deal has been lost; for Mr. Dodds wrote long letters to his companions, full of the thoughts passing through his mind at the time, and of the incidents occurring, as well as of recollections of student life and adventure.

Every student has something to tell of his university, his professors, his fellow-students. In general, these reminiscences have nothing in them of the malicious, though often of the ludicrous and peculiar. A book of such memories, written faithfully and intelligently, would be one of surpassing interest; and the materials could be easily gathered. Each university has its floating anecdotes of former or present professors; many of them worthy of being recorded, some better forgotten.

One professor (not of St. Andrews) Mr. Dodds used to speak of as manifesting his religious sentiments from the chair more than once in a peculiar way. “I have never heard a sermon for half-an-hour without hearing nonsense.” To some of his students this was rather annoying; to others it was rather gratifying, and they used to repeat the dictum of their teacher, sometimes as his experience, and sometimes as their own, when they mshed to say a specially clever thing against the evangelical pulpit.

Dr. Chalmers, in a very different strain, one day startled his students. He had been dwelling on the simplicities that make up the Gospel of Christ: a theme on which he loved above all things to dwell. He “expatiated” on the “good news” as that which, when simply believed, brings peace to the tossed spirit. He then came to speak of those who mystified faith, and held it up as one of the most complex acts of the human mind, consisting of no small number of separate emotions which required to be gone through, tested, and approved of by the conscience, ere the sinner could take rest or be entitled to extract peace from the thing believed. Laying great stress, as he always did, on this simplicity of the Gospel and of faith, he waxed vehement as he spoke of these mystifiers, and, starting from his seat, uttered the memorable words, “Gentlemen, these men may be tolerated, but they are much to be pitied.”

Such incidents of college life are not soon forgotten, and impressions made rise up in after years and reproduce themselves in letters such as those from which I wish to give a few extracts, — characteristic of Mr. Dodds and illustrative of his training and companionships.

He accepted a tutorship near Liverpool, in the family of R. P. Wood, Esq.; moving about with his pupils, sometimes to Yarrow and sometimes to Edinburgh. Of that period I shall only say this, that it was a period of profitable quiet, and of great enjoyment to himself His affection for and interest in his pupils were quite paternal. His frequent visits to his old home, the manse of Lochee, during this period of changes, showed where his heart still was.

His correspondence at this stage of his life is worthy of being preserved; and we cannot pass from St. Andrews to Edinburgh without taking note of his progress, mental and spiritual, as exhibited in the following extracts.

The Rev. J. Forgan, of Cullen, thus writes to his brother, Mr. J. D. Dodds : —

“29^/fc March, 1883. — I send you a few of my old friend’s letters, or parts of them, that I happen to have preserved. It has been a pleasure to me to read them over again; and I find I can scarcely add anything to the picture they disclose of my friend. They are so true and like himself in every way, as I remember him in those old college days. They exhibit his genuine kindness of heart, his willingness to help and oblige a friend in any way that lay in his power, and at the same time his sprightliness and cheerfulness of disposition. Honest kindliness lay at the very foundation of his character; and I can recall his bright smile and cheerful greeting as I used to enter his lodgings; and I remember well, too, his hearty laugh when anything amusing occurred in our intercourse. Euskin was his favourite author in those days, and he delighted to introduce his friends to the world of truth and beauty he found in the works of that great writer. But his range of reading was wide and varied, including philosophy and theology, as well as general literature. Vinet’s ‘Outlines,’ and Duncan’s ‘Colloquia,’ were favourite books with him. He took good places in his classes, but college work did not arouse the deepest energies of his nature, and he had no great ambition for college honours. The study of languages always interested him, and in private he was breaking ground in the department of philology, for which he had a special aptitude. I did not see the goal whither his linguistic studies were tending at the time, but I have frequently reflected since how Providence was even then preparing him for the work that lay before him in France. All along his college course he was in fact pursuing a process of self-education in philosophy and general literature, and especially in the study of languages. His spiritual life was, I think, to some extent overborne by the predominant intellectualism of college life, and suffered from the want of any helpful spiritual influence in the atmosphere that surrounded him. He came in contact also with the doubt and unrest of the present time; and although his fundamental convictions were never shaken, his spiritual life declined in an atmosphere of doubt. He believed thoroughly in all lawful inquiry, and was willing to admit that doubt might be at a certain stage a natural, although by no means a necessary experience, and one from which a person might emerge with a more assured faith. Many of his own doubts he came, however, to regard as sinful in their origin. At the close of his college course there was, I think, a requickening of his spiritual life. His letters then assumed a deeply spiritual tone, and dealt largely with experimental religion. I did not fully sympathise with the views he presented, and, in fact, only dimly descried their meaning; but I have often since loved and respected him for the way he wrote to me then, and the real desire he had for my spiritual good. He was much pleased when we afterwards came to see eye to eye in regard to the Gospel of Christ, and the way of acceptance through Him. Such are some reminiscences of your brother as I knew him at St. Andrews. It so happened that our spheres of labour lay far apart in later life, so that we did not come much into contact. I knew, however, the noble work he was engaged in. His work is now over, and he is at rest. I would wish to hear the Master’s voice saying, with ever deepening solemnity, ‘Work while it is day; the night cometh, when no man can work.’”

In a subsequent letter, dated 5th April, 1883, Mr.

Forgan again writes: —

“I am very glad I happened to preserve the letters I sent, and can well believe that they will be of much interest to your family. He doubtless wrote me others at an earlier date, but they have been lost. ... I have thought that I might in a few sentences define more exactly George’s attitude towards the speculations and inquiries of the present time during his college career, so far as I can recall it through the mists of the past. I should be disposed, perhaps, to put in the words ’ to some extent,’ in the sentence of my previous letter in which I said ’ that he came in contact,’ &c. He never paraded his doubts or difficulties. So far as I can remember, he did not speak of them even to his closest friends. I am inclined to think that his letters to me at the close of his college course, gave me a clearer disclosure of what had been passing in his mind than I had received from my intercourse with him as a student; and but for these letters I probably would not have associated an experience of doubt with my recollection of him. I should not have expected him to go along with me in the expression of doubts and objections to orthodoxy, as a matter of course. He never gave himself out as a ’ liberal,’ nor was he in any way identified with ’ heterodoxy.’ We regarded him in the main as orthodox, and imputed his more settled convictions and more definite ecclesiastical sympathies to the fact of his being a son of the manse. At the same time, he could not but come under the influence of present-day literature and the atmosphere that surrounded him; and the awakening of his own mind still more brought inquiries for him. His correspondence gives evidence that the struggle, though in the main carried on within his own breast, must have been a pretty severe one. So far as I remember, he was in a state of inquiry during the last years of his arts course, and perhaps a general expression of intellectual unsettlement would have awakened some sympathy in him, or at all events, would not have met with very decided opposition. Some snatches of conversation I happen to recall confirm me in this impression. During those years he dealt with religion mainly on its intellectual side, and our intercourse was more of that of the better class of students, moral and intellectual; with no want of happy intercourse, but not expressly religious. In him, however, there was more of fixity of religious view, and somewhat more of reverence, and something more of strictness here and there, than in some others of us. I think I used playfully to call him my News of the Churches.’ He cherished all along a loving remembrance of our Disruption leaders, such as Chalmers, and Candlish, and Guthrie; and we used often to speak about them. He was more en raijport also with anything of interest that was transpiring within the Free Church and other Churches than I was. I remember his lending me Dr. Dykes’ sermon on the ‘New Apology,’ as he was ready to lend me anything of interest that came out.”

Correspondence after leaving St. Andfews. 53

These two extracts give some idea of his mental condition during these early years. It may be said that at this time his passion for Ruskin was all-absorbing. It seemed like a spell. Whole pages did he copy out. “Ruskin,” he says, “taught me to watch the skies and their colours. It is such a pure pleasure to watch the clouds.” Paintings were a great delight to him, especially landscapes. Speaking of the Turner Collection in the National Gallery, he writes: “What a time I have spent of delight and interest! How grand a sky he paints! scowling often, but none the less natural. His mind could not have been playful at all. Even his mythical subjects want the cheerfulness which a Greek would have put into them.”

No man, even then, could appreciate culture better than he; yet no man in after years saw more vividly the dangers of that so-called school, in which culture is substituted for spirituality: as if culture could reach the depths of a human conscience, or cultured essajrism supplement the theological failure of the pulpit. His progress both in music and painting showed how dear true culture was to him, and yet how well he could subordinate it to his great work as an ambassador for Christ. Though in later and busier days he ceased to paint, yet he never regretted the time saved from hard college work which he had devoted to this. His musical tastes and acquirements did not terminate with college days. They were carried with great effect and skill into his after-work.

His love of Church order was even then beginning to show itself; and his reverential bearing in the house of God, so genuine yet so unostentatious, was of itself a revelation of his character. He was one of the few students who regularly attended the weekly congregational prayer meeting in St. Andrews.

In my own early Edinburgh college days there was hardly such a thing as a congregational prayer-meeting or weekly lecture; but we had our students’ missionary prayer meeting on the Saturday mornings, and it was well attended. Many of these students went forth to missionary work — Wilson, Ewart, Anderson, Johnstone; others remained at home — M’Cheyne, Miller, Hewitson; all of them greatly honoured.*

Yet he relished society, — shone in it, — and was always a welcome guest. Genial and polished, he repelled none, but made himself most pleasant in his different circles of companionship. Levity in handling Divine things he shrunk from; equally so from

* Dr. Hodge records a remarkable fact as to Princeton: “Almost all the College attend the prayer meeting, which is held every evening at eight o’clock.” — (” Life,” p. 34. )

any affected gravity. His manners were simple and natural. So was his style both in writing and in speaking. As a classical scholar, as a lover of poetry and art, he knew what refinement was, and knew how it should express itself. He knew also how little is gained by parading aesthetics in public. He was not to stand up, and astonish his hearers by expounding “development” or the “science” of religion. Had such ambitions ever occurred to him when a student, the work in Paris among the ouvriers would have swept them away. The “aesthetics” of the Master sufficed for him. There was enough of “culture” in the discourses of the Son of God for the most refined Parisian. He was to take these for his model. The childishness of modern attempts to deceive the public by means of fine words, and to make little thoughts seem great by cloaking them with peculiar phrases and mannerisms, he despised. He went straight to the thing he wanted to say, and he said it well; not waiting to consider whether it was the language of “culture,” or “aesthetics,” or “philosophy.” It was no object with him to dupe his hearers into the belief that he was a grander man than he really was, or that he was formed out of

“The precious porcelain of human clay,” while the majority around him were but coarse earthenware. He assumed no airs, either at this time or afterwards, nor sported any peculiar “style” of thought and language “above the heads” of the people; a “style” remarkable chiefly for its nonsimplicity and want of definite meaning.

“Shall I enwrap my thoughts in cloudy words,

To make men think me greater than I am?
Shall I enrobe myself in dreamy mist

To hide my conscious poverty and shame?
The eternal future of a thousand souls

Hangs on my words; shall I not then be plain? The herald of God’s love to dying men,

Shall I court transient praise or earthly gain? The truths I teach are the great truths of heaven.

Shall I defile or dim what shines so bright?
Shall I proclaim myself a man of thought

By darkening that which God has made all light? The wealth this Book contains is for the poor;

Shall I then hide this gold from poor men’s eyes? Shall I bemist the untaught multitude,

To win the plaudits of the great and wise?”

Some of his letters at this time are specially interesting as going back in their reminiscences upon college days. It would be unfair to give these in full. They are the letters of confidential friendship, and, as such, contain allusions to individuals and events which need not go forth to the public. There is nothing in any of them to be ashamed of; nothing ill-natured or unkind; nothing of mere gossip; no retailing of idle incidents or malicious reports. They are most pleasant and affectionate; but circumspection is required in publishing even a student’s playful remarks about his professors or his fellow-students. Yet one almost regrets striking out these references; they are so natural and happy. The letters are racy and genial, — perhaps not always free from the juvenile tendency to sport a little wit, — but the tone throughout is altogether pure and healthy.

Thus he writes to his friend Mr. Forgan. He
dates —

“Bank House, Maghull, Liverpool, ib February, 1870.* — My Dear Forgan, — It is truly dreadful to think that you and I have not seen each other for more than six months now, and have not written. So I shall write now; and don’t you let a week pass before you write me a long letter. I had a letter begun to you on the 26 th of December, which I never finished, and I have not written since, to you or any one hardly, for a month past almost. I have been sufi’ering most keenly from neuralgia in my face, with toothache and earache; all which have driven me nearly wild. I have hardly known what it is to sleep at night; so you may be thankful you did not get a letter from me written when in that state; or my condition and disposition would both have been reflected in a peculiar manner in such a letter. Instead of my writing mildly, as I am now doing, I should have vented my wrath on you; for, remember, if any of us is in debt, it is you. Last letter I wrote,

* It would appear that this date ought to be 1871; only on the letter itself, in his own hand, it is 1870.

and did not send, contained a great deal of wondering as to what

had become of. Would you believe it, I wrote thre,

letters, — two long ones, — to him, and got no answer? I thought he might be ill, or dead, perhaps, or gone off to join some Pantheist society in Germany, instead of living a decent life at St. Andrews. He had become a mystery. Finally I wrote a postal card, — I suppose you have seen these said articles in your outlandish place, — a card in French, to save it from prying eyes, and sent it off. Yet no letter. Then I got one from home. He had called and told my friends that he would write and send an apology. A good while after came a letter. He has a fine faculty of generalising; putting the chief and one trenchant point in a forcible manner. The passage is really good, so I will give it. I had been speaking of my student sympathies being awakened up by being away from college. He says: * Your reflections on your past college life were such as were struggling in my own bosom unexpressed. It only reminds one of the fleetingness of all earthly things; a common observation, but true (now here is the generalisation), and one which has been forcibly illustrated in my case by the flight of Forgan a hundred miles north, and you two or three hundred miles south.’ I doubt if you or any one else could make so fine a generalisation as that! I must say I often find it coming up to my mind. Do you know, I often feel qnzzr at the sudden launching I have had into another kind of life. Did you ever feel the truth of a sudden experience of ’ reverse the process ‘? I feel exactly as the words express it. Instead of having as much time to study what you like, — Ruskin, Spinoza, e.gr., and philosophy, — why I am compelled to look after two young fellows, and to train their minds in Latin, Greek, Mathematics, and French. I have no time to indulge in the strange themes I used to elaborate about the end of each session. I have no particular companion, — I mean student companion. You can’t feel for me here, separate as I am from all that is dear. I know you will laugh, you stoical wretch. I can’t help it. I live on distant dearness. I treasure up all memorials of all kinds. Ah, well! the day shall come when

; but to return from such details, this my mode of life

is totally different; I feel the beneficial effects already. It is systematising my mind. You knew we were both (pardon me including you) rather given to be fine, literary, philosophical young men; to study just what we chose, and nothing more; to fling C.’s Greek to the winds, and to laugh at W. S. and his discoveries. Well, we have had all that; and now we are at sterner work. I must say I do not know anything that is doing me more good. “Whether it may possibly be that my mind is just maturing, I feel more mental accuracy in what I do than I did before. For instance, you remember me reading an essay on ‘The Law of Life in Relation to Temperance,’ or some fanciful title of that kind? Well, I was reading it over the other day, and I was really surprised and confounded to find how I had let my mind wander. I had thought it was practical, and that I had said practical things in it; but they were struggling to get expression beneath the load of mysticism, and fancy, and idealism which crowded the essay. I could not write anything like that now. The study of Spinoza’s philosophy did me a world of good; and ever since I have been reading some clear philosophy or theology to keep it up. Both of these sciences grow always in interest to me.... From another point of view, Ruskin may have done me good. If one is ever to get imbued with goodb sensuous literature, or poetical literature with fine idealistic thoughts, don’t you think it had better be at college, or in one’s earlier years 1 Afterwards you have to get disabused from that sort of thing. It cannot guide you practically, however much good it does in helping you to take a fine and sensitive view of practical things. That is the one thing it does. You look at practical things in a finer light when you do come to experience their present and abiding influence on your life. Dreamy day-quietism won’t do. I must say I rather feel for any one who takes a sort of wild fancy in his college days for some sort of phase of literature — for one

who shows a hias. Now, staid and sober fellows like and

never feel these things. used to laugh at me for my

devotion to Kuskin.... This is a land of brick houses and bramble lanes. The country is as flat as a pancake. There is faithful preaching here; no ritualistic nonsense, and none of the bad effects of Broad Churchism. I must say that for the saving of the Church of England God seems to be raising up many young men who take their place as defenders of their ancient faith. If they are not to save the Church, they are, I am sure, to be witnesses.... The absolutely same service of prayer every Sabbath is rather tiresome. I never felt so much the rugged grandeur of our Scotch metre psalms! Nothing here but hymns — vapid and meaningless. Somehow or other one of our paraphrases — ‘Come, let us to the Lord our God’ — was sung, being in the hymn-book. It was a pleasant, old, familiar sound in my ears — almost brought tears. But then it also wonderfully suited my feelings at the time. I think I shan’t weary for hymns after this. There is nothing like the Psalms; they go into all human experience. Two things or three I like in the English service — the people respond ‘Amen,’ and read the Psalms verse about with the minister. The Commandments are read every Sabbath; and when a collection is being made, sentences are read from the Bible on giving.... I don’t know anything more contemptible than ritualism.... They seem to think that God is pleased when they wear embroidered petticoats, and wave incense before Him. Can you imagine anything less earnest than serving God by symbols? I am getting intolerant against these innovations, which are hankered after, not for the glory of God, but because they delight the senses. For such reasons I am inclined to resist the use of organs. They are not for the spiritual good of the Church.

“I have been reading the third and concluding volume of ‘God in History,’ by Bunsen — by far the most interesting and best written of the three. He goes over a vast extent of ground; and secondary intellects should be thankful that the labours of such a man are of practical use to them. Bunsen gives Bossuet a pretty hard overhauling, which is rather necessary for the admirers of that pre-eminently silly churchman and philosopher — rhetorical preacher as he may have been. There is a fine notice of Luther, of Calvin, and all the great reformers. Boehme, the mystic, too, I find reviewed.... Strange to say, I am still taking a particular interest in the controversy about the unconditioned. I read Mansel’s ‘Bampton Lectures ’ with great interest. He writes, besides, a small work called the ‘Philosophy of the Conditioned,’ in reply to the examination by Mill of Hamilton’s philosophy. I do not think I ever read a more interesting book of its kind. It has awakened in me a great admiration for Sir W. Hamilton. I do not think there ever was a professional philosopher did more to show the true connection between Christianity and philosophy, and how they are one; and when apparently diflferent, can be reconciled. ... I know no one like him for logically clenching all his metaphysical conclusions. I am afraid I agree almost wholly with Mansel, as I understand him, in his view of the impossibility of conceiving — making a conception of the infinite or unconditioned; though Stuart Mill hammers away pretty hard on him, and even Duncan, in his ‘Peripatetica,’ difi’ers from Mansel. All that Mansel says, as far as I can see, is that we cannot make the Infinite an object of conception, else we destroy our personality and our consciousness in time. As I am speculating boldly, I would like another word for our knowledge of the Infinite and of God, and say that we have an affinity to both, inasmuch as we are recipient and percipient of God, being made in His image, and so divine — i.e., is recipient, and so, consequently, percipient. I wonder if you saw a long letter that Carlyle wrote to the Times on the war. If you have not, I shall be glad to send it to you. It is very interesting. The old man is wakened up, and how he speaks in it! I have a conviction that he is right. I must say that I can understand a man of his mind and nature looking out on our nineteenth century, and despairing of the world; for though we are increased in our wealth and discoveries, are we progressing in morality? I often think not. So I can understand Carlyle saying that Britain and all Europe are going to hell. Fancy an earnest, upright man like him living in the midst of all the nonsense in Church and State, and not feeling dreadfully aggrieved and disheartened. If you like I can also send you the Congregationalist Magawe, where there is a short notice of James Russell. You knew him, and would like to see it. I felt and still feel his death much. Reading that short notice of him makes one feel how we ought to work for Christ. When I look back on my twenty years, I think how little I have ever done. I do feel as a cumberer of the ground in God’s sight, though I may not be so in man’s. My dear friend, do you feel with me the awfully solemn thing that life is, especially with us who intend to be teachers. Oh, I think if there are any who especially need God’s guiding Spirit in everything that they do, it is we. I must confess, when I despair of this world, the only refuge from dreadful and dark views of everything, is in prayer and communion with God. How little do we avail ourselves of what should be a solace, a comfort, a delight! How often to me is prayer rather a duty to be performed! How we need Christ’s spirit to make us not only earnest men, but earnest

Christians. The times to me are full of solemn events and solemn futurities. ‘The blasphemies of the earth are sounding louder, and its miseries heaped heavier every day.’ Is not this too true? Often when wandering through the densely crowded streets in Liverpool, I study the faces of the people, and think. There is an immortal soul; how is it with it? I confess I am sometimes made, in an evil hour, to doubt the Almighty’s love

and goodness. Such doubt is devil-born. Faith is enabling

me to throw the burden of my doubt, not my doubt, on Christ.

‘Father, I know that all my life is portioned out by Thee.’

Experience, long and severe, long struggle with besetting sins,

has taught me this, — that when I am tormented (and J am

tormented, for the devil does not like to leave hold of those who

are escaping), the only way is to pray — pray that if my doubts

of all kinds cannot all be cleared up, faith may enable me to pierce

such clouds, and rest on God’s providence, and say, ‘He doeth

all things well.’ Our part is not to listen any more to doubt;

it is to work against both doubt and those evils which cause it.

Then I go back to the experience of great Christians who came

through as great and painful seasons; and if they emerged, and

lived afterwards in peace, and worked in faith and love, why

not 1 1 But it is a dreadful thing to be tormented with doubt

of any kind. How it wears one out, — body, soul, and spirit!

I hear men praise the ’ doubting ’ school. Well, I must say

that the worst thing is to systematise into a school the wasting

principles of doubt. The picture which Bunyan draws of

Doubting Castle lets me see that the less we are in it the better;

though when, by God’s grace, we get out, if we get out, we

know by experience what it is, and are doubly stronger. True

it is that my doubts have been blessed to me. I am so strong

in some points now that what man could do would little avail to

shake my faith; and yet the old enemy knows the point of

assault, and if I am tormented in any way it is by doubt. I am

often tempted to envy those who are at perfect rest. Have you

never found it so? I find prayer a great antidote to these

things, and yet how little we pray, or read and study the

Word! I have got much good from reading Dr. Marsh’s Life.

It is a wonderfully helping and satisfying book. I wish more

of us would live and act like him. I don’t know anything that

grieves me more just now than the controversy going on in our

Free Church. And yet if there is anything I am determined upon, it is the great fact of national religion. I want a comprehensive union. I don’t want to sneer at the Established Church because she has come to see what patronage is. I cannot see that a nation is a Christian nation, in the full sense of the word, till she is bound all together in faith and polity; till there is a State fostering the growth of religion, and religion, on the other hand, influencing the State. Such things may not seem important, but I have studied these points independently. I can say most fully that I am not a Free Churchman at all by traditions I am so by conviction; and on the question of the civil magistrate, I hold most definite and clear opinions. People say that Chalmers’ view was too ideal. I don’t think we can aim at a too ideal view. Dr. Duncan says it is a monstrous thing that while the State may give money to any object whatever, it is not to give money to the cause of Christ.“* What do you think of that? I cannot join in union with a Church whose principles tend to unchristianise a State, by assuming a negative position towards it, offering no safeguard for national religion and national Protestantism. I have studied the subject deeply and long, and I am perfectly convinced about it. Have you read Dr. Kennedy of Dingwall’s speech? It is about the best I have ever read. But I am done with this subject. Do write me a letter soon, — a long letter. I have little time here. Would you like to read my Spinoza essay ‘? I could send it you. Good-bye, old fellow, for the present. — Your attached friend, George T. Dodds.”

A letter such as the above shows us the reader, the student, the thinker, and the observer of passing events. Perhaps among many students reading is

* Dr. Duncan used to quote the aphorism of one of the Greek philosophers, “No government without the gods,”

Correspondence after leaving St. And7^ews. 65

less systematic than it ought to be. Arrangement, classification, method, are often lacking, and the youthful mind is left too much to its own tastes, unhelped and un guided. At such a stage to be let loose over literature is a great calamity, and one which tells for evil upon mental habits; affecting both intellectual and spiritual health, interfering with the formation of true character, and impairing that orderliness and compactness of thinking which every student ought to cultivate. Studious desultoriness is sometimes as pernicious as idleness. In this respect a great deal depends on the professor, though more upon the student. But it is often long before the latter learns the value of consecutiveness and arrangement in reading. Skipping from volume to volume, or from subject to subject, is the cause of permanent instability of judgment, and onesidedness in reasoning. This capriciousness of study during the first four years of university work tells far more upon character and accomplishments in after life than is generally believed. Regularity of lioiirs enters largely into mental as well as moral training, and Mr. Dodds was too neglectful of this, both at college and during his tutorial life, to the injury of his health, by late hours of study. He lacked somewhat the art of packing up time. At schools the pupils are, by the superintendence of masters, shut up to regularity.

At college the pressure is withdrawn, and each one does what is right in his own eyes. This relief from restraint operates seriously upon mental discipline and preparation for life, even though no moral evil may follow.

How far our Scotch professors enforced systeniiatic study in all their different departments I do not know. Mr. Dodds always spoke in high terms of Professor Flint, at that time Professor of Moral Philosophy in St. Andrews, now of Theology in Edinburgh, and seems to have owed a great deal to him.

“I think,” says his friend, “that it was in the summer after his fourth session that he wrote to me in the serious strain of his later letters. So far as I remember, it came upon me as a somewhat unexpected revelation of what was going on in his inner life. It struck me as being like one who had been somewhat undecided becoming now very decided, to a degree beyond my sympathy or full understanding at the time, — as the closing of the door to a good many things that had previously found entrance. I have no doubt there was a deepening and re-awakening of his religious life at the close of his college course, and probably earlier. I can well understand what he told you about the glamour of culture and the confusion thence arising.”

He had not gone to St. Andrews to trifle, and he came away more in earnest than he went. He knew what he had gone for; and of that he had gotten not a little that would serve him in coming years, and help him in prosecuting his great life-work. Bright and cheery he naturally was; — none brighter or cheerier among his companions; though sometimes, perhaps, reserved, and giving way to depression. Unambitious of distinction, he pursued knowledge for its own sake. But the training of mind and discipline of spirit, through which he then passed, were followed by lasting results. The educationary process went on in silence; but it did its work effectually.

But here is another letter which, like the former, carries us back to college days and scenes. It is written from the old home that he loved so well: —

“Free Church Manse, Lochee, 31si Maly 1870. — My Dear Forgax, I wonder what you are doing; whether you are grinding Hebrew, and have crammed all about the Dagesh forte and Dagesh lene, &c. The sooner you begin the better; which advice I may take to myself, as I am not very far on with it. I am reading all sorts of literature:... transcendental philosophy; that vigorous thinker, M’Cosh; that refined and subtile analytic, Vinet; and last, not least, MorelFs ‘Critical Review of Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century,’ which I am delighted with, — able, candid, grasping, and very clear thinking for any one who wishes an elementary, but by no means small acquaintance with the philosophy of our day. I have also been reading Hamilton, Schlegel, and amusing myself with Blair’s ‘Lectures on Rhetoric,’ which are rather pleasant. But I object to a man’s laying down such defined rules of taste, — in short, making a grammar of all rhetoric, and writing as if (in the words of a writer whom you may recognise) the tongue, wit, and invention of the human race were supposed to have found their utmost and most divine mission in syntax and syllogism, perspective, and the five orders. I am deeply versed, you will see, in all about art, especially the Renaissance, or artificial and scientific period; for, sad to say, I have beside me at this present moment no less than three of my admired Ruskin’s works, viz., — Vols. IV. and V. of ‘Modern Painters,’ and Vol. III. of ‘Stones of Venice.’ But, after all, I am not reading them so much as would be expected. However, now and then I refresh myself from the drier studies by reading them. ... I am just beginning to feel strong now in the least degree. For weeks after I came home I was very unwell, — the manifest result of stupid grinding at subjects which sap and undermine all that is natural and healthy and soul-like in a man. A thousand woes on the man who invented M.A. degrees, and as many more on the professors who confer them. I am sure you will agree with me. I think we have more serious life-work before us than spending our precious time in cramming for degrees. I doubt if I shall trouble St. Andrews’ professors again. Adieu! I say to them, adieu!... Have you seen a very remarkable book called ‘Colloquia Peripatetica,’ — conversations with that very extraordinary man. Professor Duncan of Edinburgh — Hebrew professor — one of the most remarkable men of his time, but so eccentric that no one could make anything of him. The sayings are very remarkable; the newspapers call him a second Pascal. There is one place in which he says, * Carlyle’s earnestness touches me much. What of hero worship Aye, he and I have to meet with a strange hero yet, Gdj’aros, — Death.’ Duncan was a wonderful man. He was a sceptic in his youth, also a great Spinozist; and is one of the most remarkable men converted from extreme scepticism to the clear knowledge of Gospel truth.”’^ It is a pity we shall not be under him

’ * This is hardly correct as to Dr. Duncan. His very peculiar mind did lead him, when a student, into much that might be called sceptical. But he was, at the same time, always shrinking from his own conclusions. He never revelled in scepticism, as some do, nor reckoned it manlier than faith; and he was continually seekinof to extricate himself from the meshes of that unbelief into

Correspondence after leaving St. Anctrews. 69

at the Divinity Hall. I hope you are getting on with the work for the Board. If I may offer a word of advice, it is to set yourself to work steadily at the more difficult parts of it, and resolve to pass. Work up the Hebrew with a strong resolution. If you don’t, you won’t have a very favourable opportunity afterwards.... Now do take an old fellow’s advice, and don’t be behind. Besides you have not much to do except the Hebrew. There is, I see, some Scripture history, — the Pentateuch. There is a particularly useful book which would help you in that — Angus” Bible Handbook.’ It epitomises, and gives a great deal of information; there is also a book which I find very useful, Vinet’s ‘Outlines of Theology.’ That part on the doctrine of Christianity on faith and works is particularly able and good.t I think it is a very necessary thing that when students go up to the Divinity Hall they should go up with their minds quite settled in the prominent features of Christian doctrine. I remember Elder noticing this to me one night. There is nothing I feel the truth of more than this. If we go up with our minds

which his amazing power of metaphysical analysis sometimes led him. One day he said to me, and said it sorrowfully, in one of our many walks: “I was as nearly an atheist as I believe it possible for a man to be;” implying that from his own experience he was inclined to conclude that there never was such a being as an out-and-out atheist. His dread of his own doubtings was seen strikingly in what he said to a friend regarding the breaking of the light: ‘• When first I saw there could he a God, I danced for joy.’’’ It was when walking out alone that this light broke. It was on “the Brig o’ Dee” that he “danced for joy,”

“t He afterwards was led to modify his opinion of Vinet on one important point, — the position which faith holds in justification. Vinet, in opposition to the Reformers and subsequent sound theologians, held that faith justifies because it contains in it the seed or germ of good works, not because it connects us with Christ. Against this subtle error, — which is only another form of justification by works, — Melanchthon protested. Mr. Dodds came afterwards to see this.

still in a douloting state we shall do little; our study will be comparatively useless and unhenefiting. I have felt this so much of late that it has been completely taking up my thoughts. There is nothing I should contemplate now with greater fear and regretful anticipation than a continued state of doubt and unsettled mind. It is a most unhealthy condition; just as Vinet says, it is to the mind what indolence is to the body. Besides, though I know there are some men who must doubt, or they are never themselves, we too often get into the habit of doubting, — of encouraging doubts; our mind, our whole nature dwells in a doubting atmosphere, and we cannot determine anything. We are not intended to doubt always, and we are intended to doubt not sceptically or unbelievingly, but sincerely, and most of all prayerfully. I can look back with sorrow on the time when I was in such a doubting spirit that had any person applied to me for light on any of these subjects, I positively should have felt myself totally powerless to assist him. I don’t say that I envy the man who never had his painful, inquiring, sincere, and saddening doubts,... yet I have a strange feeling that too much doubt is very bad for any man. Too much of the doubting we have comes from the devil. Doubt is ‘devil-born.’ I know it, and I feel it. There are things which I have doubted which, as a creature, a created being, I should never have doubted. I am under a moral government, and a just and loving God presides over all. I know and believe this; and am perfectly certain that I shall not fail to get justice at the hands of a just and merciful God. It may seem strange my writing thus, but I have no one to whom to say all this; and perhaps it may be beneficial for us both. I know that for a long time past, though I have neglected to do what I ought, to pray as I ought, to think as I ought, God’s hand has been pursuing me and leading me in a way I knew not. I often look back with amazement at the lovingkindnesses which have really been mine, notwithstanding all my wanderings. I am

Correspondence after leaving St. Ancirezvs. 71

sure that many of mj’’ doubts (I do not say all) have been offensive, — insults to God, — and that makes all the more wonderful the fatherly care and providence that have been watching over me. I often feel now as if God had been leading me nearer and nearer, to see what I am and He is, when I was keeping afar oflF. I have never been without convictions of a certain kind. Indeed, I can say that, years ago, I thought I knew what Christ was. It would be a chequered religious experience mine if it were related; but there is one fact of which I am indubitably convinced, and that is God’s care. During the last two or three months of last session, when I was so ill, there was nothing I felt so much as God’s kindness and love through Christ. I had communion with Him. I had a measure of peace; but I can say, as I dimly felt then, that it was not a full measure of peace. I could not say I was satisfied with myself. I thank God I have now a deeper view of the sinfulness of sin and the depravity (obnoxious as the word may be) of our nature. Had we not been desperately wicked we should never have needed God’s only Son to suffer crucifixion for us. There is nothing gives us so deep a view of ourselves as the habit of prayer (for the promise of God is not simply to the act but to the habit of prayer), therefore we are told of praying always and praying without ceasing. There is nothing which I think will bring us to see ourselves sinners in need of a Saviour as constant, unfailing prayer. It is prayer, more than anything else, that will and can through Christ unveil the mysteries which our natural man cannot and will never comprehend. There is often the objection urged against continuance in prayer because of no immediate answer — i.e., because we have not got the needed grace. But why? There is grace in the very act of heartfelt prayer. We are not to expect an answer all at once; and how often have I found my prayer answered, not in my own short-sighted way, but in a far greater and fuller enlightenment. There is no duty I would inculcate more on men seeking for light than the habit of prayer. I don’t scorn an infidel on his knees, beseeching the Author of his being to show him His existence. I don’t scorn a doubter on his knees seeking that God would show him the divinity and co-equality of Christ with Himself. In both these cases there is the intercession of the Saviour. Though the man does not know it, it takes place; and there is assuredly in both cases the working of the Spirit. If our prayers are not answered at once, we must wait, and wait * in patience continually, and the answer will come, and many glorious sights will be obtained, — such as a view of our own guilty nature and the absolute necessity for a Redeemer. We often puzzle ourselves about the Atonement. Well, I have found, — and all who are to enter heaven through Christ’s merits must also come to find that it is only faith that will give us peace; it is only by prayer that our doubts will be cleared up. We may get to an imagined philosophical settlement of the question. This will satisfy the intellect; but it will have no influence on the soul. Faith is the harmony of the conscience, the reason, and the heart, all combined. And then how answered prayer does clear up all difficulties y leads us to accept of the Bible as our only guide and rule; and to accept it with little more of thdt questioning doubt which we had so much of. In salvation a man must feel the nothingness of his righteousness, and see the righteousness of God. There must be a complete self-renouncement and abdication of our own merits to obtain peace through the merits of Christ. Oh, that is, and always shall be, the only way for men who feel themselves sinners. We must accept God’s conditions of

salvation, and see that there is not on earth any other principle, any other system, whereby men can be saved. When I look at it now, the Atonement appears to me the most wonderful exhibition of God’s love that we can imagine. God is love. He loved His Son, and yet this Son He gave up for our salvation. And if people begin to talk of a partial atonement, and say that this man cannot be saved, because he is not elected, I answer, you have nothing whatever to do with the doctrine of election. You are not to settle whether you are elected or not; you are invited to come, invited freely.... Attending on every prominent doctrine of Christianity, you will find there is a mystery. But shining and burning truths lie beside the darkest mysteries. As Dr. Duncan says, ‘The Cathedral has its crypts, and cannot be without them.’ There is always sounding in my ears that grand old truth of Paul’s, that we see in part, and know in part. Our present concern is to obtain pardon and peace, and God is a liar if every one is not invited.... There is also this one indubitable fact, which every one who has prayed can testify to, and that is, that we are conscious of an answer from God to our prayers. No man ever prayed believingly, and from his heart, but received an answer (perhaps not a direct one) to his prayer; and we know and believe that any one who comes to the mercy-seat will ohtam an answer.... There is nothing the world needs so much as the labour of praying ministers. There is no new Gospel obtainable. If a man is an earnest Christian (we talk too much of earnest men), I say an earnest Christian, and speaks from the heart the truths of the Gospel to sinners, then we shall need no gospel of reason, which I hear talked about. It is true our Gospel is a reasonable Gospel, but it is also a faithful Gospel. I often think of the noise that some men make now-a-days about the want of something new, and preaching to the age. But many of these men have itching ears, and their hearts cannot be touched. I have made up my mind to walk about with my own eyes open as to what these men do for Christ, and shut my ears to a great deal of their talk. I know too well that there are ministers not a few who do not preach as they ought. They spoil the old story which is ever new. They are denounced by men like Gilfillan; but the question is. Is this or that denouncer advancing Christ’s work — doing any good for Christ’s cause 1 Are they prayerfully acting thus? are they asking Christ to give them strength to denounce the orthodox? It is curious to see how these very liberal men are so willing to hide the faults and errors of infidels and men who had no religion at all. Let us take a lesson, and hide the faults of those who err on the right side. Every man’s duty is to ask counsel at the throne of grace, then to act and speak. However sincere a man may be, all is unavailing without prayer. We must regulate ourselves by a rule above us, and if such a man looks more clearly at his sincere ’ convictions, he will find that his own convictions are his own self-will. We must stand up for ‘Christ or no Christ,’ in the present day; be on one side or another. Our duty is to preach Christ to men, and not to spend our time in finding fault with weak brothers.... We shall be of little use in the world if we are in a state of uncertainty. We can do nothing for Christ, unless we are totally for Christ. And who has not felt it? I have. The Christian walk is very difficult, but it is attainable. ... It will be well for us to walk life together; but better, oh, better and more blessed far to look forward to the time when this life shall end, and together we shall begin another life, an eternal one, in the presence of Christ, and rejoicing in His merits. That this may be is the earnest and often-repeated prayer of your very attached friend, George T. Dodds.”

His Christian character we see thus beginning to unfold itself. He is speaking out to his fellow-students. He lets them know what he is, what he means to be, and what he wishes them to be. The well-known shyness of students in speaking to each other of religious experience is giving way. It is not philosophy that is uppermost in his mind; nor even his beloved philology; nor is it theology.

It is the inner experience of the soul that has at length realised the difiference between light and darkness; between groping after a divine abstraction and enjoying conscious relationship to the living God.

I do not know how far he was successful in dealing with his fellow- students at this time; but I know that in after years, by means of personal intercourse and faithful dealing, he did signally succeed in turning some from the broad into the narrow way. His influence in Paris among many older than himself was very remarkable. And it was the firm hold which he himself had of the truth which enabled him, in his own clear direct way, to bring it home to others, as well as to dispel the mists with which he found some enveloped. His letters show this; yet they are not what we should call out-and-out religious letters, but letters in which his own religious feelings and opinions come out in intermixture with all the occurrences of the day. In these everything is natural; and so more effective.

Here is another, dated “St. Mary’s Loch, Tibbie Shields’, August, Friday, 12th, 1870.” It is addressed to Mr. Forgan: —

“I am staying a few nights — in fact this is the last — at that famous hostelry, Tibbie Shields’, whom everybody knows. She can boast of acquaintance with more great men than either you or I can ever venture to expect — Wilson, Wordsworth, Sir

Walter Scott, Sir D. Brewster, and others innumerable. She is a fine old Scotchwoman, a real type of the common specimens of last century, with all the distinguishing points of a remarkable person. She has books presented to her, some of which are lying at the head of my bed, from all kinds of people. Looking over these, I found such a mixture — Owen on ‘Indwelling Sin,” Old Mortality,’ a pack of cards, ‘Addresses ’ by Brownlow North, Winslow’s ‘Sympathy of Christ ‘; — Carlyle’s ‘French Revolution,’ was evidently well read.... My bedroom is oflF the kitchen, behind the kitchen fire; my door leads into the kitchen; and you may imagine that in this hot weather I am not very cold; and in this bedroom I hear all that goes on. Tibbie is very quiet just now; I think is asleep. Her son, Willie Richardson (her married name is Richardson), is discussing with some English fellow the comparative merits of Prussians and French, holding his own most tenaciously. So you see I am having experience of a very varied kind. To-day begins the shooting, and the unlucky grouse are being startled in their peaceful solitudes by an intruding set of human (humane?) beings. Whir, whir, and a covey rises of splendid birds. The old cock leads the way with his peculiar cry, Kok, kok, koka (only lie cries out), shouting defiance, for he is cunning. But craclz the rifle goes, and generally the game basket gets a couple of beautiful grouse or grey game. I daresay it is pleasant to some, but I don’t care for it. I love to wander among the hills, not to kill grouse, but to botanise; admire the beauty and grandeur all around; to sketch, at which I am becoming quite a proficient; and generally to meditate for a while on all subjects. There is no place that I know which has more of beauty, — greener hills, with a pastoral glow of light and peace, — finer sunsets. I think Wordsworth says, * The peacefulness of heaven broods on the sea.’ Some fool changed on into olr. What a change! I have realised the beauty of it, — the expressiveness and truthfulness of the ’ on,’ over and over again. I don’t think I am inclining at all to mysticism when I say that the word ’ on’ expresses the spiritual presence of heaven, — of God’s power and love, which I can see so fully in all around. I remember standing one night at my window and looking across the lake to where Yarrow, — that word of sorrow, — enters. The patriarch’s moon, ’ walking in brightness’ (Job xxxi. 26), was actually before me, — the patriarch’s moon really ’ walking’ among the clouds, and the silver shadows cast on the loch came to the very edge of it, just where I stood. There was something inexpressibly beautiful in the sight.”

Tweston, the German professor (fifty years ago), went to the theatre from a sense of duty, to “cultivate his taste”! Mr. Dodds preferred the mountains and lakes. They were realities, and he found them best fitted to cultivate his taste.

“Sometimes in the morning the water was perfectly still, and the hills reflected so perfectly in it that you could see the sheep grazing. I never tire looking at the hills. How they gradually come out in the morning; colour unceasingly as changefully under the sun; rest in the twilight; hold the stray clouds in their courses as by a spell; and melt away later on in the most perfect and unbroken sympathy, till the remotest seem to colour with the lightest shades of the most delicate blue, purple, and tender green, and blend with the sky! And then there are burns — not plain and unspirited lowland rivulets, but brooks with their cold ice-water sources, tumbling over rocks, running on golden gravel; then confined to a narrow miniature gorge; then becoming larger and forming some of the finest and most picturesque pools. Large rocky boulders soften their severity and let the water flow over them. Ferns of the purest green fringe the banks, and purple heather, with yS Memoir of Rev. G, T. Dodds.

many other plants. The rocks become lichen-covered, grassovergrown. Your eye can rest satisfied with this abundant gratification, while the ear delights in the never-ceasing cascade of music that pours over the rock. I never can forget a favourite verse — ‘His tender mercies are over (or on) all His works.” How manifold are Thy works; in wisdom hast Thou made them all.’”

His love of wild scenery, — sea and sky, streanis and mountains, — comes out romantically in these letters. The painter, the poet, and the musician get vent to themselves amid these splendid solitudes. This passion for the beautiful grew upon him, even after he had ceased to sketch; and in his visit to the High Alps, made after he was settled in Paris, we find it in his descriptions of nature. Above all, it was the sky that he admired most, with its dissolving views and changing colours. He had a quick and discerning eye for colours.

Amid these pastoral solitudes, I doubt not, he looked into his own future, — meditating on missionary life in some land of the far East or South. But I do not suppose that Paris ever then entered into his plans. He little thought that his work was to shut him up within the walls of a crowded city, far from the green valleys and clear streams that he loved so well; and that at last, when he went out of the busy streets into the solitude of Buisson, it was only to die.

The next letter breathes the same spirit, and shows the same man. It is written a month later (10th September), and is dated from Lochee: —

“I left St. Mary’s on the 13th of August; drove by omnibus to Selkirk — such a splendid drive! You scarcely miss sight of the Yarrow all the way. And the hills — now bare, but purpled with heather, then deeply wooded — extend almost the whole way. There are so many associations connected with it that the drive is one of the finest you could have. I saw what remains of the ’ dowie dens of Yarrow.’ But they don’t look so very poetic now.... Stayed in Edinburgh for a few days; then here (Lochee); then went to stay with some friends at Kenmore. ... I had never been north of Perth before. The scenery all the way above Perth is grand, — the Tay watering the valley all the way down, and the hills mostly wooded; not as at St. Mary’s, with Scotch pine. Fir and larch form a very fine combination of colour; and the fields in the valley are studded with beeches, — of all trees, the most pleasing in the level part of landscape. We went to Loch Eannoch one day, — such an unequalled drive! I cannot forget the perfect purple and yellow sunlight on the hills, nor the way the grim and grey Schiehallion rose over all the rest against the sky, with grey-green birches near its foot, reminding me of the old trees you see in stucco paintings. I have not seen many Highland lochs, but Loch Eannoch was silent, solemn, grand. The great extent of its water and the partial bleakness of its scenery made it remarkable. I stayed and painted it while the rest of the party wandered ofi”. Then we had dinner at the inn. Strange experiences you have in travelling! I looked through th tourists’ book. Every fool scribbles in it, — writes his name, exaggerates the number of fish he has caught; so that if all the piscatory statistics were true, the loch would be pretty empty just now, whereas it seems to get fuller every year. I wonder how many people there are who travel just for the sake of saying they have been at such a place; not to admire it, but just to say they have been there.... Then the Pass of Glenlyon — which the hills seem to shut in, and over which they keep watch in terrible silence and jealousy, as if no one might dare violate the grandeur of those Highland hills. I was silent when I saw that Pass of Glenlyon: its awful grandeur, its impressive gathering round it at one single point of so many hills; rough here with loose boulders, green there with fir-trees, that fretted the sky with their dark, needle-like points. I drank in with purest pleasure the joy that came over me when I saw this Pass. What it must be in a clear moonlight night, just darkly visible, I leave you as well as myself to imagine. Would that I could have seen it at such a time! I saw, however, Ben Lawers rising from the shore of Loch Tay, the hills closing round the loch to a point. You could almost feel as well as see the peacefulness of the moonlight “brooding on” the hills and loch. Every part of the scene had lost the glare imparted by the noonday sun, and the colours were toned down into quietness. Most wonderful of all, a pure fleecy cloud, apart from all the rest, descended the hill, and stretched itself out along the middle, while the clouds above wore gradations of colour, dark and light. The water had that sombre gleam, with moonlight glints of light, which forms its finest appearance. I was then on the brow of a hill, and wandered about a long time, looking at and drinking in the beauty. Such sights always do me good. You feel the purity of God’s creation, the impurity, the vileness, — let men say what they will, — of your own heart; how we, who are able to become, through His grace, the temple of God, pollute OUT sanctuary, and the purity of nature also. ... I have got a piece of news for you, which will but illustrate how I sometimes follow your bad example. I can fancy you start at the intelligence. The Woods have asked me to stay till

Coirespondence after leaving St. Andrews. 8 r

winter with them. ... I think it will be greatly for my good. I shall run no danger of getting again into such bad health as I was in when I left College, and I shall have time to mature my mind before entering the Hall. Unfortunately at the time, fortunately now, I was quite laid up when the Board examination took place, and had to get a medical certificate to qualify me for an examination in November. I’m thankful I sha’n’t need it now. I had been ill with a horrid kind of chill fever, contracted in an expedition to the hills, when caught in a thunderstorm. ... I have been reading Carlyle’s ‘Cromwell.’ It is a grand and noble book. I shed tears, I am not ashamed to say, when I came to the account of his death. ‘So dies a hero,’ says Schiller, May Carlyle die a like death!... I was bothering my head lately about a metaphysical question: Does every cognition involve a judgment? You will be none the wiser for answering it. I heard, a good while ago, Mr. Wilson, of Barclay Church, Edinburgh, preach a mission sermon on the leaven — ‘Until the whole was leavened.’ The earnestness, power, and vigour of thought were very remarkable. I wish you could have heard it. It did me a great deal of good.”

Again he writes to Mr. Forgan, on 20th July, 1871,

from St. Mary’s, Yarrow. An extract will suffice : —

“The Edinburgh people, like Vandals, wished to build a dam across the Yarrow, — that sacred, classic Yarrow! I declare the materialism of our age is alarming! They wanted to cut a sluice between St. Mary’s Loch and the Loch of the Lowes.... Edinburgh bailies came out to investigate, and generally carried away pitchers of water slung under their conveyances. I could have so used them heads and heels in water! I’m thankful they have not got their Water Bill carried. Let them go where they like, if they will stay away from this place. It is too bad, after they have disturbed all the old and revered places in Scotland, they should attempt St. Mary’s! Do you remember that passage

G in ‘Colloquia Peripatetica ‘: ‘We are drifting — drifting into an awfully materialistic age. They will be tunnelling Olympus, and watering the engines at Hippocrene.’ “^ I wonder that any one with any classical reverence could think of tunnelling Olympus, and just equally so of disturbing Yarrow and St. Mary’s Loch. ... If you go to the hall this year you will be a year before me, for I am to be another year at MaghuU. You see I enjoy my teaching immensely. It does me much good; develops and benefits my mind, and gives me such an insight into many things, human nature included, that as I am not old I do not grudge another year. I was twenty-one in June, and so shall be twenty-two next June, so that I shall be twenty-six years old when I am finished with the Hall. ... I am always thinking of subjects connected with my future studies, — generally those questions which arise at the conjunction of philosophy and theology. I have been reading Newman’s ‘Grammar of Assent,’ — a very remarkable book. ... Do you remember once saying that at last one came to think in philosophy independently of all systems, — that one formed a system for themselves. I have found it true. I am independent of all systems. I find myself during my wanderings here indulging in speculations of the most fantastic kind. I have got a theory of nescience or ignorance which I should like to impart to you, if I could have a talk with

* Dr. Duncan’s forebodings remind one of the warning given many years before by the German Von Gerlach: “Be on your guard against materialistic politics and the false liberalism of the infidel French and English of the last century: Voltaire, Gibbon, Rousseau, &c. &c. Compare not only your doctrines, but also your feelings, with those of the blessed Lord, of St. Paul, and of the saints of former times, on the one hand, and with those of the liberals of our own time on the other; but compare thoroughly and candidly, without prejudice, as before the all-seeing eye of the Holy One, and shudder if you disagree with the former and agree with the latter. Alas! that Satan should always prefer to build chapels close beside the churches of God!”

you. I have so much to speak about. If we do not see each other, I may manage to put some of my thoughts on paper about all I have to say. It is a grand thing to look forward to opening life, — to feel that in the future your work lies; to feel that you are to go into it with all the enthusiasm you are capable of. It is true that the opening of life appears very fine to a young man; but I would rather not be one of those creatures who, of lymphatic nature, go into their work, such as it is, without any corresponding change in their character, as it issues from a state of comparative repose, meditation, and reflection, to one of action and trial of capabilities. I feel that I have got a work to do, and I pity any one who does not feel the same. The great fault of many at present is that they think the world is moving on smoothly and pleasantly to some fine goal of the perfection of humanity. Whereas, I would say, ‘The blasphemies of the earth are sounding louder, and its miseries are heaped heavier every day.’ We are not in a state of perfection, or even tending towards it. We are like the nations of Greece and Rome, gliding into the state of life which produces human beings, who have all qualities but those of a man. We are getting corrupted under a delicate, effeminate, and silly civilisation. There is a want of open truth and courage, of moral and Christian earnestness. There is a horrid amount of diplomacy, diplomacy and nothing else, in our character and conduct as a nation. I wish we had some great man like Oliver Cromwell. I even wish we had Bismarck, who would use a strong will. In our public life there is a sort of delicate consideration for all aberrations and sins, which being no longer mere toleration of bad is becoming direct encouragement of it. The eruption of the volcano must come some day. We are living in the crater. ... I am much struck with the view which Froude takes of our present social life. He scorns the idea that all our material prosperity, and our advances in discovery, are encouraging. He desires a return to the pristine simplicity of the Keformation. I have heard it said by some one that people speak as if God had settled all things at the Reformation; I feel inclined to say that He settled many things, but that we do not at all recognise the yiinU, to use the expression, which He gave us for the formation of a basis of society in which religious and secular matters would not come into collison, but work hand in hand. When I read the history of Alfred the Great and his times, I see he was far in advance of us in many things, and had more enlarged views on many points. His rule was one of Truth beloved and encouraged, religion fostered. Our time is one in which while Truth is confessed and believed in, it is not acted on; and fidsehood of every kind is admired, encouraged, and employed — expediency ruling all the aflfairs of our nation. I often try if I can perceive a single act of public character or wide influence done in the direct interest of truth or to the glory of God. As Ruskin says, the present generation believes in a God, but it does not believe that He can rule, — Christianity confessed, and Paganism beloved. I am glad to get some of my ideas put on paper. They have been in my head too long. I don’t think I am taking an extreme view of our state. I wonder what progress your mind is making in religious questions. These never fail in their interest to me. They are tenfold more important.... Did that verse ever strike you: ‘Ye are com’plde in Him.’ The whole man is out of agreement with himself, and there is a jar in his constitution. But the Gospel puts all things right. What a hyperbole ‘Ye are complete in Him ’ would be if said of a man and his opinions! Christ and His gospel is

the only panacea for all the ills of humanity. I could say much about my own state; how I have experienced the gradual and wonderful leadings of God. I turn round and look back on my past life, and wonder at love so free. This is Christian experience. If you ask how we come to such experience, I may say that my custom has been to carry every difficulty, doubt, and sin, to God’s throne in praj-er. Then you are led in a way that you know not.”

Conxspondence after leaving St, Andrews, 85

A short time afterwards he writes to the same friend a most earnest letter, of which the following are the concluding sentences. They show how spiritual things were taking a firmer hold of him, and how earnestly he desired that others should be partakers of the grace in which he was resting: —

“I have long wished and yearned to have a talk with you on religion. It is the all-important and engrossing subject. Our character, as it is being formed now, will decide and influence our future life. ... I daily pray to God on your behalf. The years of recess I have had have been those of trial and discipline amid much sin. Blind, I have been led in a way I knew not. I have been taught to give up my own striving and working, and look to the finished work of Christ. If you cannot say you feel this, pray, my dearest friend, that the Holy Spirit would give you light, and show you the way. That was the way I got it; and that is the only way. Let me be plain, and say that as light is given me, and my eyes are opened to see Christ, and believe, next to the work of preaching to all, the wish that lies nearest my soul is to know that you, my dearest and most valued friend, have found, and are resting in the same Saviour. May we have a ’ strong consolation ’ given us to lay hold on that only hope. Your ever affectionate friend, George T. Dodds.”

Writing once more from “St. Mary’s, Yarrow,” and dating ‘’ Wednesday, June, 1872,” he gives his friend a full and graphic picture of his daily tutorial life. He seems to have enjoyed it much; and of the Yarrow hills and streams he was never weary. We get a glimpse of his philological tastes, and of the way in which he prosecuted his linguistic studies in connection with his teaching. I had frequent occasion in after years to notice this faculty which he had of generalising philology, and looking at each language through the medium of other cognate tongues; also of leading his pupils in the same peculiar road. He familiarised them with all the ramifications of classical tongues, knitting languages together in a most ingenious but natural way: —

“I have learned this in my teaching, that if one is to teach he must be a scholar; and, without conceit, I can say that in several departments of human knowledge, I have made slightly satisfactory progress. Of course, teaching Latin and Greek constantly, one necessarily comes to be expert. But there is a kind of scholarship which, even in teaching, depends on our own personal exertion. I am deeply engrossed with philology just now. I teach the Latin, Greek, French, German, and English, all as cognate branches of the great European Japhetic family; and surpassingly interesting it is to do so. Then I give my pupils lessons on Scripture history. They have read St. Paul’s voyage and shipwreck in Greek, with Conybeare and Howson on the same; they are just now reading the standard work. Smith of Jordanhill’s book, on the same subject. They have done more than 160 deductions on Euclid, and are doing more. They study Heath’s ‘Natural Philosophy ‘; and are fair chemists in the experimental department, ... I am glad Mr. M’Ciindle is to be with you. I should dearly like to be there too. He is a good scholar, and a great friend of mine. I like the man very much. He was out in Africa after his divinity course, as secretary to some Government department. At the Disruption he came home. He preaches here every alternate Sunday; the Established Church minister the other.... My mind is in a curious state. You know how long I was of coming

Correspondence after leaving St. Andrews. 8 7

owi;* and only now are the feelings and affections developing; and I regret to say they are giving evidence that I am to be a nervous, excitable, anxious, and mentally-depressed man. I am never free from depression of some sort or other, and that is not good. Nevertheless, I am in God’s hand; and in dark attire the embassy of grace doth often come. Ah! my friend, we need learning in the lowly school of affliction; we must not blindly obey any human authority, only God’s. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind; that is my feeling; — it is curious you should have come to the same conclusion at the same time. I pray that both of us may be strengthened, and guided, and preserved. ‘Let the entrance of Thy Word give light! ‘Make wise the humble! Humility and truth — let us have these; they are eternal powers, and rule secretly but surely.” t

* Giving utterance to his mind.

+ The story of Hengstenberg’s revolt from rationalism, and the contempt with which he was received in consequence of his avowal of the change, is thus told by Tholuck: “Tholuck says, that Professor Hengstenberg of Berlin was formerly of Bonn, and a very warm and decided rationalist. Although now not more than twenty-five years old, he was already so distinguished that professorships in several departments were in his offer: Greek, Oriental Languages, Philosophy, and Theology. He determined, however, to leave Bonn, and left behind him a strong and open declaration of his principles. Shortly after, he was led to attend a religious service among the Moravians. The discourse made such an impression on his mind, that his confidence in the truth of his own opinions was very much shaken. He betook himself to the simple study of the Bible, and at last came out a firm and practical believer in the great truths of the Gospel. He is now Professor of Oriental Languages at Berlin, and exceedingly bold. In one of his first lectures he said: “It matters not whether we make a god out of stone, or out of our own understanding, it is still a false gody there is but one living God, the God of the Bible.” This declaration was received with hissing and scraping by a large part of the students, by which he was little intimidated. He often asserts that “it is only the heart which doubts.” When Professor Harms of

Two months later he gives the following account

of himself. The depression that he speaks of arose

in great measure from physical causes, temporary in

their nature; though he was perhaps too apt to give

way to such dejections: —

“I was so ill that I did not expect to pass. I have passed, and wondrous to say, was highest in natural philosophy. What would say? — Oh,, you are no judge of a man’s attainments. You could not teach. A teacher needs a discerning eye to find out all the qualities, often latent, of his pupils; to bring them out and cherish them. Education is not so much putting something into a man as bringing something out — turning up the mind to the light. I hope you are prospering in your work, and that a blessing from on high is given you. Your remarks in last letter are identically my own sympathies about the age we live in. Our Christianity is reconciling; but, at the same time, it must be antagonistic always to certain schools. I cannot give credit for an entire absence of moral obliquity to many men. They know what they are doing, but don’t care. We must be aggressive, — given to attack; but the reason of our attacks must ever be love, — love to all mankind. ‘The terrors of the law in love ’ is a grand reason for our work.”

Several expressions in these letters indicate the

grave suspicion with which he regarded some with

whom he was brought into contact. They thought

themselves warranted in continuing to belong to

Churches whose creed they had ceased to homolo-Kiel came out on the side of the Bible, at the tercentenary of the Lutheran Reformation, he was overwhelmed with abuse. At least eighty pamphlets in German and Latin were launched against him. But his protest was not in vain. gate and to teach. His transparent, straightforward character shrunk from such unmanliness. He would not subscribe the standards of a Church if he did not thoroughly assent to them, and if he were not prepared to teach the subscribed doctrine fully and without reserve. We live in a land, certainly, where any one may think what he pleases. And so long as a man does not offer himself as a teacher in a Church, there is perfect liberty to believe and to teach what his own conscience or convenience dictates. But in choosing an official creed he voluntarily curtails this liberty, and he is no longer entitled to promulgate the “diverse and strange doctrines” of modern thought, or to withhold the teaching of those other doctrines, by professing to accept which he had secured his position in one of the denominations wdnch, before entrance, demand such a profession from its teachers. Hence the reference in the preceding letter to “moral obliquity;” and that judgment which he passed on them; “they know what they are doing, but don’t care.”

The last letter of this series which I shall quote is somewhat later than any of the preceding, but it brings us up to his theological studies in Edinburgh, and is dated “St. Mary’s, Yarrow, Tuesday, 23rd June, 1874.”

“Glad I am to be in this lovely spot once more. To lie quiet among the green hills, and beside this fair loch; to hear no city-hum of busy, noisy, perpetual work; only to listen to the wild curlew crying as she sweeps round some heathery hill, or to watch the plover complaining as she sweeps so close to you, luring you, as she thinks, from her young! This place is as lovely as ever. I never tire watching the changing clouds, — and the fading and growing colours on the hills, — how the misty sunlit vapour touches their retiring ridges! You have got something of that down at Eoberton; only your hills are not quite so picturesque — flatter, and not so shut in as ours are. Nevertheless, you have a lovely spot to abide in, specially that Harden Valley of yours, which is more wooded than anything here. I thank God for this opportunity, during my student life, of coming here and resting, and having a time of comparative quiet ere I go out, — where ?* To work more directly for Him, to spend my life for His glory. What a privilege we divinity students have had, of living — merely being alive — to see that work in last winter. It seems to be deepening and spreading over the whole country. You must have returned refreshed for your work at Roberton. I hope we shall have the like blessing next winter when we return to Edinburgh. ... I preached here last Sunday. It was rather an ordeal. If we could just

* In the Life of Dr. Hodge of Princeton, the following note occutr, which the reader may place alongside of the several hints Mr. Dodds gives us of anticipations regarding his own future life: “Young men are sometimes disposed to determine present duty by their anticipations of the future, Mr. Baker told me that he expected to spend his life in preaching the Gospel in the mountains of Virginia; and therefore would not need a thorough theological training. On this account he declined to enter the Theological Seminary. In less than a year after leaving College he was married and licensed, and entered on his work. The first thing we heard of him, was that he was called to be the pastor of an important church in Savannah; then he was called to Washington, where he had Senators and Congressmen for his hearers. He subsequently discovered that God had called him to be an itinerant, and as such he was eminently successful,”

get free of self when preaching, and speak for God, or rather let the Spirit speak in you.... The inclosed hymn is by my youngest pupil, and a translation by myself in Latin.”

To the last he took a deep interest in his fellow-students; referring with much sorrow to some who had turned aside, and with satisfaction to others who were pressing forward. Some curious incidents connected with both of these classes he could tell; and in the letters, from which I have been extracting, there are not a few remarks, interesting and discriminating, but which would hardly bear quotation.

What was the exact import of Dr. Hodge’s (American) impassioned address to the students from the Princeton pulpit, now half-a-century ago, one can only venture to guess. But it is recorded that in the midst of his sermon he turned round to the right hand gallery where the young men were, and conveyed to them a message from the death-bed of one of their number who had just departed, “Tell them from me,” said their dying companion, “to stop; they

ARE MAD.”

“It is young men in dead earnest that we need,” said another, “to fill up the gaps of the ministry.” And the earnestness which the age and the Church need is the earnestness not of unbelief, but of faith; the earnestness of men who have measured time, but found that they could not measure eternity.