ROBERT and JAMES HALDANE: By REV. D. M. MACDONALD, Edinburgh.
THE period from 1750 to the year 1800 has been described as the midnight of the Church of Scotland. With a few exceptions, it was in the parishes of the Northern Counties that the Gospel was faithfully proclaimed. Under the preaching of those who were called Moderates the people became careless and godless. An eminent minister of the Gospel, Dr. Hamilton of Strathblane, describes them in the following terms:—”Many of the clergy were genuine Socinians; many of them were ignorant of the teaching of Scripture. They seemed miserable in the discharge of every ministerial duty. When they preached, their sermons generally turned on honesty, good neighbourhood and kindness. To deliver a Gospel sermon or preach to the hearts and consciences of dying sinners was as completely beyond their power as to speak in the language of angels: their discourses were destitute of everything a sinner needs. The congregation rarely amounted to a tenth of the parishioners, and the one half of this small number were generally, during the half-hour’s soporific harangue, fast asleep.”
When God has a work to do He raises up suitable instruments to accomplish His purposes. In His infinite mercy He was to awaken the people to a sense of their spiritual needs, and He raised up the Haldane brothers to revive His cause in Scotland. They did more than all the Moderate ministers in the Church to keep alive true evangelical religion in the land. They are not as widely known as they should be, probably because they were forced by circumstances to leave the Church of Scotland.
There were two brothers, Robert and James Haldane. Robert, the elder, was born in London on the 28th of February, 1764. His younger brother, James, was born at Dundee on the 14th July, 1768, within a fortnight after his father’s death. They were descended from an ancient Perthshire family, and their father was a captain in the Navy. He was noted for his attention to moral discipline, and particularly for putting down profane swearing. When asked, shortly before his death, as to his hopes for eternity, his reply was, “I have full confidence in Jesus.” This showed the simplicity as well as the sincerity of his faith.
Their mother, from their infancy, laboured to instil into their minds a sense of the importance of eternity, particularly impressing upon them the necessity of prayer and teaching them to commit to memory and understand Psalms, portions of the Shorter Catechism, and of Scripture. The early impressions made on their minds were never completely lost, and were made use of by God to show that all below was vanity without a saving interest in Christ. One of the great defects of this generation is the neglect of religious training in the home, and this is largely responsible for child delinquency, all sorts of crime amongst adults, and contempt for religion and Gospel ordinances. The seed sown by this godly mother in the minds of her sons and her earnest prayers on their behalf brought forth fruit in due time, and from the account given it is evident that they underwent a sound Scriptural conversion.
Robert Haldane entered the Navy and rapidly made a name for himself as a brave officer. He served his country with zeal and faithfulness in its efforts to overthrow the French Emperor Napoleon, who was the scourge of Europe for 20 years. Two British Admirals under whom he had served predicted that he would have a renowned career owing to his brilliant qualities, but it was not to be distinguished by naval victories or worldly honours but as a good soldier of Jesus Christ fighting against the powers of darkness and spiritual wickedness, finally to receive the palm of victory and crown of righteousness from Him who redeemed him by His own precious blood shed on his behalf.
Soon after being converted Mr. Haldane left the Navy, and both he and his brother resolved to devote their time and means to the advancement of the Cause of Christ in the world. He sold his estate—Airthrey—valued about £70,000, in order that he might have more freedom to travel and means at hand to expend on the Cause. Both brothers had inherited ample fortunes which they made use of for the glory of God in the employment of Scriptural methods for the salvation of their fellow sinners. They were self-denying Christian men and very zealous for the advancement of Christianity. As good and faithful stewards of Christ they made excellent use of their talents and wealth in His service.
Robert planned a mission to Bengal, but in consequence of the opposition of the East India Company, and others then in power, the design had to be abandoned. The majority of those who ruled in India displayed the utmost hostility to the propagation of the Gospel in pamphlets and periodicals. They professed to be Christians, and at the same time were a disgrace to the Christianity they affected.
Seminaries were founded by the brothers to train and qualify godly young men to preach the Gospel in needy places. These institutions were undenominational and the students were taught by qualified men. It is of interest to know that one of the men trained was first sent to Breadalbane to read the Scriptures to the poor and uneducated people there. The district was at that time destitute of evangelical preaching. There were actually no Bibles, scarcely any Testaments, and the people lived without prayer. So great was the opposition to the devoted catechist when he commenced his labours that in the circle of 32 miles round Loch Tay every inn was shut against him and there were only three families that would offer him hospitality. But it often pleases the Lord to work by the feeblest instruments and “to choose the weak things of the world, and things which are despised, to confound the things that are mighty.” Despite opposition and neglect he went from village to village during the winter reading the Bible and speaking the words of salvation to all who would listen. In the spring of 1801 there was some awakening, and early in 1802 so great a revival took place that in a very short time there were about one hundred persons, previously ignorant of the Gospel, who seemed to be truly converted. These conversions created a great sensation and much opposition. It produced in these Highland glens a kind of religious persecution.
It was this worthy and faithful missionary, Mr. Farquharson by name, who was sent to Skye by the Haldanes to preach the Gospel there. In 1802, when preaching in Braemar, he was arrested and sent as a prisoner to Aberdeen. Like the great Apostle Paul, he had to face opposition and imprisonment for making the way of salvation known to his fellow sinners. He had not been many hours in gaol before a lawyer waited upon him and put a book into his hand, stating that a part of it was written in the very cell in which he was confined. “Read it,” said the gentleman, “and you will soon be liberated,” and immediately retired. To his no small surprise, Mr. Farquharson found it to be Rutherford’s Letters. This led him to muse on the sufferings of the godly author—the famous Covenanter—and he thought his own but light in comparison. Mr. Farquharson was soon released in consequence of the intervention of his friendly visitor who was better acquainted with the Toleration Act than Mr. Farquharson’s bigoted and ignorant persecutors.
The time had now come when the Sun of Righteousness was to arise on the benighted Island of Skye with healing in His wings. In 1805 Mr. Farquharson visited the Island, and his services roused the people to consider the things that belonged to their eternal welfare. It is reported that he itinerated for a considerable time in Portree, Snizort, Kilmuir, Durinish, and Bracadale, and that his sermons consisted of powerful and faithful testimonies against the abounding sins of the country, clear and energetic illustrations of evangelical truth, solemn protests against the soul-destroying doctrine of justification by human merit with affectionate and solemn warnings and invitations addressed to his hearers as lost sinners. His appeals excited great attention and produced no small inquiry among the people. It was this excellent missionary who brought the Gospel to Skye during the dark reign of Modernism, and who was the instrument in the hand of God of the conversion of that eminent Christian, “Blind Donald Munro.” He in turn became an instrument of good to many.
Another dark place visited by one of the Haldanes’ missionaries was Strathspey. Mr. Laclan Macintosh was sent there, and began to hold services in Grantown. He soon gathered local sympathisers, and through the week kept meetings in the homes of local supporters. On one particular Sabbath he was driven off the street and refused even the hire of a room. He then went outside the village and preached in a sand-quarry. One, who afterwards became well known as a preacher of the Gospel and who resolved to hear him that day, says, “I was a little ashamed to ask where they were but by their singing of Psalms I found them out, and their being thus persecuted attached me the more to them. The passage would often strike me, ‘Be thou partaker of the afflictions of the Gospel.’ As he approached and lay within earshot among the bushes that crowned the sheltering park they were singing—
This is my rest, here still I’ll stay,
For I do like it well.
The preacher rose up and addressed the people in streams of evangelical truth, every word of which sank into the heart of the new hearer and flashed the light of truth clearly into his soul, so that he went away saying in his mind, “This is my rest; here I’ll stay.” The man who heard and said these words was the Rev. Peter Grant, whose Gaelic hymns, so sweet and full of the very marrow of the glorious Gospel of Christ, have edified and comforted the people of God in the Highlands, especially since the year 1809, when they were first published. In due time he became pastor of the Baptist congregation in Grantown and laboured in the Gospel for 60 years. It can now be seen that the work of the Haldane brothers, through the workers they sent forth to preach, was bearing abundance of fruit.
We shall now deal more particularly with the various activities of Mr. Robert Haldane, the elder brother, on behalf of the Cause both at home and abroad. For many years he had cherished the idea of going to France with the aim of doing something to promote the knowledge of the Gospel in a country in which he had been three times before as a traveller. When peace had come after the battle of Waterloo he found his design practicable and went to Paris. He found the city in Egyptian darkness and saw that he could not further his object in the great metropolis. Unexpectedly he met an American gentleman who gave him information about the Protestant ministers in Geneva and Montauban, where there had been a French theological Protestant faculty founded by Napoleon. As there was no opening in Paris, he proceeded at once to Geneva. In conversation with a pastor there he learned that Geneva was in deplorable spiritual darkness and was an unbroken field of labour with a “fallen Church.” Calvin, once its chiefest boast and ornament with his doctrines and works, had been set aside and forgotten, while the pastors and professors were in general Arians or Socinians. He visited several Swiss towns and then returned to Geneva in order to meet a young pastor, M. Gaussen, who lived in a little village five or six miles from the city. This young pastor benefited greatly by Mr. Haldane’s talks with him, and says, “I had already submitted my faith to the great doctrines of the Word of God, but the quality of Mr. Haldane, the authority with which he always appealed to the Scriptures, and his profound acquaintance with them made an impression on me never to be effaced, and that just before the time when the Lord, by a sudden stroke, took from me all the joys of this world. His visit to Berne was blessed to M. Galland, and his visit to Geneva was blessed to us all. I visited only occasionally, but I make bold to number myself with those who cherish his memory with the fondest and most affectionate gratitude.”
Geneva was the city where John Knox, with other British exiles, found an asylum from which he took that form of Church government to which Scotland has firmly adhered. At a later period many noble confessors who fled from bitter persecutions found refuge there. “Geneva, it has been well said, was indeed the glory of the Reformation, the battlefield of light and darkness, the Thermopylae of Protestantism, from whose Alpine heights the light of Gospel truth once streamed forth with brilliant lustre athwart the blackness of Papal superstition.”
In the course of time Geneva fell from her ancestral faith, and it was made clear that historic names, orthodox creeds and Scriptural formularies disappear when the Holy Spirit departs. There had been considerable backsliding from the faith and only a lifeless form of Protestantism was maintained. Theatres were opened on Sabbath evenings, and the pastors on solemn festivals dismissed their congregations earlier, in order that they might themselves participate in the festivities of the Lord’s day, which was closed with fireworks and the discharge of cannon. These were the conditions that existed when Mr. Haldane entered Geneva. There were some souls in the city hungering for the bread of life and meeting together to converse about the things that belonged to their eternal peace. They would be praying for help and their supplications were soon to be answered for the instructor who was to prove to them, and many others in Geneva, a messenger of everlasting peace had arrived.
Here is a glowing description of the event by M. Guers, who appears to have been one of the students taught by Mr. Haldane:—”But at that very moment the Lord, touched by their prayers, sent them one of his most eminent servants: Robert Haldane was within our gates. The chosen instrument in the hands of God to confirm the faith of Pyt and his friends, he was destined to become the source of blessing to many others. In a very short time a striking revival, effected by his means, was manifested in the school of theology. Around the venerable Haldane, their true professor, there gathered habitually more than 20 pupils of that auditory, converted by the instructions of that blessed Word, which they immediately began to distribute at Geneva or, at a later period, to carry to neighbouring countries, and amongst the latter may be named Henry Pyt, Jean Gonthier, Charles Rien, who died pastor at Frederica, Denmark. He knows the Scriptures, says Pyt, like a Christian who has had for his teacher the same Holy Spirit by whom they were dictated. He spoke in English: first M. Rien, then M. Fred. Monod of Paris, or M. James of Breda interpreted. Never, we venture to say, since the days of Francois Torritine and Benedict Pictet of holy and happy memory—never had any doctor expounded the whole counsel of God with such purity, force and fulness—never since that period had so bright a luminary shone in the city of Calvin.”
(To be continued.)