The Pilgrim Fathers.—There was celebrated on August 1, at Plymouth, Massachusetts, the 300th anniversary of the foundation of the church at Scrooby, in Yorkshire, the original home of the Pilgrim Fathers. In the little American Church, where the anniversary was observed, is a bronze tablet proclaiming that the Church of Scrooby, Leyden, and the “Mayflower,” gathered on this hillside in 1620, and has ever since maintained an unbroken
record and fidelity to its first covenant. Close at hand is a wooden building, bearing the title, “Church of the Pilgrims (Trinitarian),” asserting its fidelity, with great sacrifices to the creed, covenant, and evangelical faith of the Church of Scrooby, Leyden, and the “Mayflower,” organized in England in 1606.
Strange Proceedings in High Places.—The British Weekly publishes the substance of an interview with the Rev. T. Hunter Boyd of New Brunswick, under the heading of “A Canadian Minister’s Recollections of Henry Drummond.” We cull the following paragraph from the above:—”Mr. Boyd spoke of Drummond’s keen sense of humour. He was at his best when out with his students for a holiday. It was his custom to learn every year two or three of the latest music hall songs. ‘I never heard him sing so well as once in a railway carriage when we had been visiting the Beith Quarries and were returning by train. He joined like a boy in the song, “Carry me back to old Tennessee.”‘ At a college meeting he once gravely announced, ‘Gentlemen, we will open the proceedings by singing “Mary had a little lamb.”‘ As if this was not sufficiently damaging to the reputation of a teacher of future candidates for the holy ministry, a correspondent throws further light on the late Professor’s lack of gravity, more evidently by way of commendation than condemnation:—”At the annual ‘spree’ of the Glasgow University Free Church Undergraduates Society held during the winter session, Drummond was present. It was a very lively gathering—almost rowdy in its liveliness. But Drummond appeared to enter fully into the high spirits of the night. One man entertained the meeting by singing ‘The Cat Came Back,’ a pantomime melody very popular at that time. The song was received with thunders of applause, and I remember how enthusiastically Drummond laughed and clapped his hands.” This throws a somewhat lurid light on teacher and students—a theological professor and students of divinity. How could Prof. Drummond carry out the Apostolic admonition, “Young men likewise exhort to be sober-minded?”
Things said in 1896—Would they be said now?—At the annual congregational meeting of the Free College Church, Glasgow, in the spring of 1896, Dr. Rainy thus referred to the Free Presbyterian Church:—”He felt that God had been very good to the Free Church in many ways. There was one movement in connection with their Church which created a certain amount of tension. He meant the secession movement. He was very far indeed from having any unkind feeling to those who had committed themselves to that movement. He regretted that for their own sake. He respected the personal character of many of those who took part in that movement. At the same time there was no doubt at all that the effect of the movement was to disembarass a number of the Free Church congregations of impracticable elements—those elements which from conscientious
conviction led men to set themselves against everything like the active and vigorous developments of Christian life in modern times. He must say that one effect in the Highlands was that they were all to a large extent in the Free Church pulling together, and not disposed to create difficulties for one another or to throw stumbling-blocks in one another’s way.” That was in 1896: since then Principal Rainy has gone the length of saying that “there must be something wrong somewhere,” which is a remarkable confession coming from him. The ecclesiastical wreck and dismembered fragments of what was once the Free Church of Scotland with the burning animosities is the story that 1906 has to tell of how well they were pulling together in the Highlands “after they got rid” of the impracticable elements.