THE Town Council of Margate some time ago permitted the playing of tennis, bowling, and golf after 2 p.m. on Sabbath, and in connection with this decision the following letter by Mr W. Scott Sisteron, D.Litt., appeared in the “Margate Gazette”:—”It seems to me that this is the time to discuss the subject, as we stand between the temptations to break the Sabbath by excursions and the other temptation which is right ahead of us of going to concerts, tennis, golf, and other amusements on the Lord’s Day. We hear a great deal about the people’s rights, but it seems that the Lord has some rights. A father is at the head of his family, and he has a right to govern them. The Governor is at the head of the State, and he governs it. The President or King is at the head of the nation—he governs the nation. The Lord God is at the head of the universe, and He has a right to lay down an enactment, ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.’ Whether popular or unpopular, I declare that the people of Margate have no rights except those which the Lord God Almighty gives them, and I am opposed to this secularisation of the Sabbath, because it is an attempt to import a foreign ‘Sunday.’ I speak from some observations of a Continental ‘Sunday’ which I spent in Paris a few years ago. I was awakened by a loud shouting in the street, and asked ‘what the matter was.’ They told me that ‘it was “Sunday.” All the vehicles of the city came out for a holiday—great crowds of people surging through the streets with baskets and bundles to catch the trains. There was a mob of pleasure seekers, football matches, punch and judy shows in scores of places, each one with a shouting audience; pedlars hawking their knick-nacks through the streets; hand-organs grinding, cymbals clapping, and all kinds of racket, musical and unmusical. Then at eventide I saw the people come back fagged out—men, women, and children—a great gulf-stream of fatigue, irritability, and wretchedness. The men looked cross at the women, and the women looked cross at the men, and they both looked cross at the children. If the people of England allow the Sabbath—the day of rest—to go down, the British Empire will fail. Sabbath-breaking is dissoluteness, and dissoluteness is incompatible with self-government. If this bad work of secularisation of the Sabbath goes on, the sun of our prosperity will go down.”—”Lord’s Day Quarterly.”
Noted Preachers of the Northern Highlands.
Rev. Alexander Stewart, D.D., Dingwall.
“At Moulin, a village four miles from Killiecrankie, I called,” says the Rev Charles Simeon, “to see Mr Stewart, to whom I had a letter of introduction; and it was the day of preparation for the Lord’s Supper, which in Scotland is observed with peculiar solemnity and long public services. I agreed to visit the Pass, and return for his services, and spend the Sabbath with him. Mr Stewart, the minister, was a man of high repute, both for amiableness of manners and learning; but he was very defective in his views of the Gospel and in his experience of its power. When we were all retiring to bed, I had him with me alone in my chamber, and spoke such things as occurred to my mind with a view to his spiritual good, and it pleased God so to apply them to his heart, that they were made effectual for the opening of his eyes, and bringing him into the marvellous light of the Gospel of Christ. From the moment he changed the strain of his preaching, determining to know nothing among his people but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and God has now for these fifteen years made his instructions most eminently useful for the conversion and salvation of many souls.” The Mr Stewart referred to above was the Rev. Alexander Stewart, youngest son of the minister of the neighbouring parish of Blair. He had been ordained at Moulin in 1786, at the age of twenty-two years. He had been minister of the parish for ten years before the important change referred to by Mr Simeon took place. It is right to point out, however, that the change was not so sudden as Mr Simeon’s words would lead us to believe. Mr Stewart himself says:—”I think, however, I was in a state of preparation. I was gradually acquiring a knowledge of divine truth. It was given me to see that such truths were contained in the Scriptures; but I did not feel them. . . . I know nothing to which I can so fitly compare myself as to Ezekiel’s dry bones, when they were covered with flesh and skin, but were without life or sensation. It was reserved for Mr Simeon to be the man who should be appointed to prophesy to the wind and say, “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon this dead body, that it may live!” It would appear it was through the rehearsal by a brother minister, the Rev. Mr Black, St Madoes, of the death bed experiences of his sister that the first serious questionings were awakened in Mr Stewart’s mind. He felt there was something seriously lacking in his religion and he set himself to read his Bible with greater interest than ever and also such books as Scott’s “Force of Truth,” Newton’s “Letters,” and Haweis’ Sermons. In a letter to Mr Black we get a glimpse of the struggle going on in his heart. “Your answer to my complaints of insensibility to divine truths seems perfectly just. Steady, resolute obedience, or the conformity of the will to the will of God, is no doubt the most unequivocal and therefore the most satisfactory evidence of faith and love. But still, we are told that ‘with the heart man believeth.’ This expression has always struck me strongly as marking the difference between speculative belief and operative faith, that faith which worketh, either by love or by any other passion which it awakens and puts in motion. Perhaps, however, this same interval of insensibility may have its use. When those emotions and desires, of which I now find the want, come to be felt, I may be the more strongly convinced, that however belief might be supposed to be a natural act of the understanding, yet faith in its full extent must be confessed to be the immediate gift of God.” When the great change came Mr Stewart in a letter to his friend tells of his new experience. “I have little other news to tell,” he writes, “or subject that I care to write about, except of the Lord’s goodness to me, and how He has been multiplying His favours. Ever since the blessed period of Mr Simeon’s visit, my thoughts have continued more steadfastly fixed on divine things and my communion with God has been more lively by many degrees than I can remember to have experienced before. . . . My views of the Lord’s goodness and mercy in the work of redemption are clearer—at least they are much more impressive than they used to be. Indeed, they quite confound and overpower me at times.”
There was now a new note in his preaching and he taught his hearers “that all men are by nature enemies to God, disobedient to His law, and on that account exposed to His just indignation and curse.” The change in his preaching awakened attention and made the people think more of what they heard from the pulpit, but Mr Stewart adds: “I did not yet know of any deep or lasting impressions having been made.”
The day of blessing, however, was near at hand. In a neighbouring village there dwelt a pious, infirm woman who was unable to attend the public means of grace. Two young persons, awakened to concern for their soul’s salvation, used to visit her and thus originated a prayer-meeting which was ultimately joined by Mr Stewart, and from this humble home there went up earnest pleadings to God for a blessing. The first sign of the coming blessing at Moulin, was similar to that at Uig, Lewis, in Rev. Alexander Macleod’s time, there was a very noticeable decrease of communicants. The new preaching was pricking the consciences of unworthy communicants and they dreaded eating and drinking to their condemnation. There was now unmistakable signs of a religious awakening. The concern manifested itself chiefly among the younger people under twenty-five or thirty. “A natural shyness often hindered them long,” says Mr Stewart, “from discovering to others what they thought and felt. . . . One might observe now at church, after divine service, two or three small groups forming themselves round our few more advanced believers, and withdrawing from the crowd into the adjacent fields, to exchange Christian salutations and hold Christian converse together.” In March 1799 Mr Stewart began a series of sermons on Regeneration, and these were instrumental in bringing about a more general awakening than any which had yet been experienced. In regard to the effects produced Mr Stewart writes: “The work of conversion has been begun and carried on among this people in a quiet manner, without any confusion, and without those ungovernable agitations of mind, or convulsions of body, or shrieking, or fainting, which have often accompanied a general awakening in other places.” In reference to the results he adds: “Of those truly enlightened with the saving knowledge of Christ, I find, as I think, about seventy. The greater part of these are under thirty years of age; several above forty; six or seven above fifty; one fifty-six; and one above seventy. Of children under twelve or fourteen there are a good many who seem to have a liking to religion; but we find it difficult to form a decided opinion in their case.”
In 1805 Mr Stewart was presented to the parish of Dingwall and laboured there until 1820 when he was translated to the Canongate, Edinburgh. Here there was not the same manifest tokens of blessing. The religious condition of the people was far from encouraging—”Irreligion, indifference about spiritual concerns, attachment to the world, the intemperate use of spirituous liquor, prevail to a melancholy extent.” Still he laboured on and set an example before his people and he was not without seals to his ministry.
Mr Stewart was one of the outstanding Gaelic scholars of his time. While at Moulin he had translated the Shorter Catechism into Gaelic. He also gave assistance in the revisal of the metrical Psalms in Gaelic and helped in comparing the Gaelic translation of the prophetic books with the original Hebrew. He was also the author of a Gaelic Grammar which was long recognised as a standard authority. In recognition of his scholarship the University of Aberdeen conferred on him its doctorate of divinity in 1819.
Owing to ill health he was compelled in 1820 to seek medical advice in the south, and the incident is commemorated in one of Dr Macdonald’s Gaelic poems. It was while he was on this visit to Edinburgh that he was offered the charge of the Canongate. He was translated from Dingwall to Edinburgh in July 1820, and occupied the charge about nine months, dying in March 1821, aged fifty-seven years.
A volume of sermons with a memoir was published after his death, and a small book on “Hints on Faith and Hope,” by Alexander Stewart and John Brown, D.D., was published in Edinburgh, in which his views on the nature of faith are set forth. These were similar to those afterwards held by Dr Thomas Chalmers and Dr John Brown of the United Secession Church, and are known as Sandemanianism. It is right that this should be pointed out as some who may have read the above mentioned book may be misled by the views on faith set forth in it.