BY THE REV. D. BEATON, WICK.
“GENTLEMEN,” said Dr. Duncan to his students on one occasion, “there are three great books in the world—Augustine’s Confessions, Halyburton’s Memoirs, and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.” That Halyburton’s Memoirs should have such a high place assigned to it by one so competent to judge, is high praise indeed. That it well deserves the praise will be readily admitted by all who feel the remarkable ability it manifests, and the fervent piety that breathes throughout the book. Possessed with mental gifts of the highest order, Halyburton’s delineation of spiritual experiences are most powerful and searching. The keen metaphysical bent of his mind and the gracious dealings of the Spirit on his heart made him a teacher at whose feet many generations of the pious-minded people of Scotland were willing to sit. The Memoirs, which were written by Halyburton a few years before his death, are composed largely of the ups and downs of his spiritual life. The temptations he endured, with the deliverances he had, are all here narrated with candour.
The book is divided into four parts. The first part relates the state of matters with him from the time of his birth until he was ten years of age or thereby. The second part contains an account of the rise, progress, interruptions, and issues of the Lord’s strivings with him during the ten or twelve ensuing years of his life. The third part deals with the progress of the Lord’s work for the space of about three years—from August, 1696, to June, 1699—the dreadful straits he was brought to, and his deliverance. The trying experience to which he here refers is described in the first chapter of the third part. “By the extremity of this anguish,” he says, “I was, for some time about the close of 1697 and beginning of 1698, dreadfully cast down. I was weary of my life. Often did I use Job’s words: ‘I loathe it; I would not live alway.’ And yet I was afraid to die. I had no rest; ‘my sore ran in the night,’ and it ceased not in the day. At night I wished for day, and in the day I wished for night. I said, ‘My couch shall comfort me’; but then darkness was as the ‘shadow of death.’ When I was in this case I was often brought to the brink of despair. ‘He filled me with bitterness; He made me drunk with wormwood. He broke all my teeth with gravel stones; He covered me with ashes.’ He removed my soul far from peace: I forgot prosperity. And I said, ‘My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord,’ remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul had them still in remembrance, and was bowed in me. Now I was made to think it a wonder that I was not consumed; and though I dreaded destruction from the Almighty, yet I could not but justify Him if He had destroyed me. ‘Righteous is the Lord, for I have rebelled.’ I was made to fear that the Lord would make me a Magor-missabib—a terror to myself and all round about—and that He would make some dreadful discovery of my wickedness that would make me a reproach to religion, and give the enemies advantage; which put me upon the Psalmist’s prayer—’Deliver me from all my transgressions; make me not the reproach of the foolish.’ I was made to wonder that I was not already cut off; and indeed this was sometimes reviving—’It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.’ This I recall to my mind; therefore have I hope. But this hope was easily clouded. It amounted to no more than this: ‘Who can tell but he may be gracious.’ And to this my fearful heart suggested the greatness of my sins as above the reach of pardoning mercy, and Satan daily urged me to give over and take some desperate course—to say, ‘There is no hope.’ Thus I walked about, dejected, weary, and heavy laden—wearily of my disease and weary of the vain courses I had taken for relief, and uncertain what to do—what course to take. ‘I took counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily.’* Thomas Halyburton, it is evident, found the gate that leads into the way of life strait indeed, and in obedience to his Lord’s command he agonised to enter in. But it was not a hopeless struggle, for relief came at last, and in the second chapter he tells of the “outgate” he got. Another interesting chapter in this section is the seventh, where he tells how he came to be satisfied that the Scriptures are the Word of God, and how temptations in reference to them were repelled.
* Memoirs, Part III., chapter i.
The fourth part gives an account of his ordination to the holy ministry and his conduct therein. The same seriousness and high concern characterise this part of the Memoirs. That the work of the ministry was a momentous work to him stands revealed on every page. Like the great apostle of the Gentiles it was his supreme concern to present his hearers as a chaste virgin to Christ, and from remarks made in the Memoirs it is evident that his was no fruitless ministry. Printed along with the Memoirs are his remarkable deathbed sayings. Here is one of these seraphic utterances having reference to the preceding subject—the work of the ministry. “Now, brethren,” he said, addressing some ministers who had come to see him, “give diligence: for the Lord’s sake, ply your work; ‘hold fast what ye have.’ I must have a word to you, my brethren: it is on my heart. I am young, but I am near the end of my life, and that makes me old. It becomes me to take advice from you. However, it is only to exhort to diligence in the common salvation. I repent I did not more, but I have peace in it that what I did I did in sincerity: He accepts of the mite. It was the delight of my heart to preach the Gospel, and it makes me sometimes neglect a frail body. I ever thought, if I could contribute to the saving of a soul, it would be a star, a crown, and a glorious crown. I know this was the thing I aimed at; I desired to decrease, that the Bridegroom might increase; to be nothing, that He might be all; and I rejoice in His greatness.”
The Memoirs have been repeatedly published. The first edition appeared in 1718, with a preface by Isaac Watts. In Collins’ edition, published in Glasgow in 1824, there is a valuable introductory essay* by Dr. Young of Perth. The Memoirs will also be found in the complete edition of Halyburton’s Works, published in 1835, with an introductory essay by Dr. Burns of Paisley. A cheap edition was brought out by the Free Church Publication Committee; it has a useful appendix on the history of the Church of Scotland during the times of Halyburton.
Thomas Halyburton, of whose Memoirs the preceding short account has been given, was born in Duplin, in the parish of Aberdalgy, 25th December, 1674. His father was descended from the family of Pitcur, in the county of Angus, and was minister of Aberdalgy in the Presbytery of Perth. In 1662, when so many of the best of the Scottish ministers were ejected from their churches and homes, because they would not conform to prelacy, George Halyburton suffered eviction at the hands of a namesake and near kinsman. The Bishop of Dunkeld, George Halyburton by name, who himself had been a zealous Covenanter, to begin with, was particularly zealous in ejecting his former brethren, among whom was George Halyburton, the father of Thomas. His mother was an eminently pious lady and like-minded with her faithful husband in siding with the Covenanters. There were eleven children in the family, all of whom died young, with the exception of Janet, the eldest daughter, and Thomas. But the stricken parents had this comfort, that even some of the youngest gave singular evidence of dying in the Lord.* To escape the Episcopal persecution after his father’s death, his mother went to Holland, where they remained for some time. After the usual preliminary school training he proceeded to the University, and when he had finished his course, he acted as a tutor in a noble family where a person that had been a school-fellow had imbibed Deistic opinions. It was the discussions with this old schoolfellow that made him make a careful study of the controversy which, we may depend, was the foundation upon which his masterly Natural Religion Insufficient and Revealed Necessary to Man’s Happiness was published in 1714, two years after his death. The work is written in confutation of the Deism of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and is the ablest work in Scottish theological literature against the Deists. Dr. MacCosh of Princeton describes it as one of the outstanding books of the age.† In June, 1699, the Presbytery of Kirkcaldy licensed him to preach, and in May of the following year he was ordained minister of the parish of Ceres. He was not long settled in his charge when his health failed, and it was with difficulty he could attend to the duties of his parish. After ten years of pastoral labours in this place he was appointed professor of divinity in the New College, St. Andrews. In the following year, 1711, exactly a year after his appointment, he was seized with a dangerous sickness from which he afterwards partially recovered though he never regained his wonted strength, and on 23rd September, 1712, Thomas Halyburton fell on sleep.
* In this Essay Dr. Young truly says of the Memoirs: “Scarcely is there a position which was ever taken up by the enmity of man against the mercy of his Maker, but was occupied by him and resolutely maintained till it was driven from under him; and scarcely, we think, can a refuge of his be entered by those who came after him, but was previously entered by him, and made his resting place till he found it to be no shelter. In short, the history of his advance towards Christianity, solely in its direction, so full of incident, and so frequently obstructed by relapses, with the repose which he tasted on his arrival at it, and the growth of character in his after years, all opening upon us so graphically, so richly interwoven with scriptural references, and coming in so aptly on our past or present experience is a treasury of instruction which ought by no means to be shut up from the present generation.”
He was only 38 years of age, but he had made good use of his day, and his departure was memorable for the heavenly frame of mind in which he awaited his end, and for the seraphic words in which he gave utterance to his hopes. He that can read these sayings of this saint and not feel his soul stirred with strong emotions must be hardened indeed.
* In one of his seraphic deathbed sayings he gives expression to his hopes in these words, “O blessed be God that ever I was born! I have a father, a mother, and ten brothers and sisters in heaven, and I shall be the eleventh. O blessed be the day that ever I was born!”
† Scottish Philosophy, page 3.
He has also to his credit “The Great Concern of Salvation,” “Whether Regeneration or Justification has the Precedency in the Order of Nature,” “Nature of God’s Act of Justification,” and “An Essay concerning the Nature of Faith or the Ground upon which Faith assents to the Scriptures.” The three last mentioned were published together in one volume in 1870. The Essay on the Nature of Faith has been described as by far the ablest work in existence on the self-evidencing power of Holy Scripture.*
* British and Foreign Evangelical Review.