Alexander Raleigh, records of his life

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Prefatory Note

I WISH here to. express my thanks to the friends who have kindly furnished me with letters for this volmne, or contributed personal recollections, or who -have spoken to me words of encouragement in my work. My special thanks are due to my nephew, Mr. Thomas Raleigh, of Lincoln's Inn, who has revised all my MSS., and given me much help in the arrangement of my materials. These pages were in print before the tidings came of the death of Dr. Enoch Mellor. He has taken his place in the unbroken procession which is ever passing from the Church on earth to the Church in heaven. His words about his friend are memorial now in a double sense.

The outlines given here of my husband's life are intended chiefly for those who knew and loved him.

vi PKEFACE.

A book is a poor medium by which to convey a full impression of any life. The shifting lights, — the colours that fade or deepen on the spiritual horizon as the years come and go, — ^may in part be seen and remembered, but can hardly at all be expressed in words. Those who knew him will be able to read between the lines, with the clear sight of affection, something of what cannot be written. A selection only has been given from my husband's letters and papers, in order that the volume might be kept within moderate compass.

I have tried to be true as he was, and while giving — from his own hand as much as possible — enough of details to fill up the picture, I have had a loyal regard to his characteristic reticence.

M. E.

Granton House, Edinburgh, 18th November 1881,

Chapter I Paob

CHAPTER 11.

LiVBBPOOL — Business Life . . . . 12

CHAPTER m.

CHAPTER IV.

Qbbbnock — First Charge . . . .29

CHAPTER V.

Failxjrb of Health . . . . 36

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

PAOB

ROTHEBHAH — MaBRIAQB AND DOMESTIC LiFE . 58

CHAPTER VIII.

Qlasgow . . . . .70

CHAPTER IX.

London — Hare Court . . .89

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XL Ahebioa — Chairmanship of the Union .125

CHAPTER XII.

LETTEB8 OF COUNSEL AND CONSOLATION .148

CHAPTER XIII.

Switzerland. . .171

CHAPTER XIV.

LlCTURIS ON PUULOHINO .189

CONTENTa iz

CHAPTER XV.

Methods of the Pbeacheb .

PAOK

CHAPTER XVI.

Hars Coubt and Stamford Hill — Pbbssubb of Wobk 223

CHAPTER XVII.

JOUBNET TO EgTPT .

CHAPTER XVHL

Kensington .

CHAPTER XIX.

CHAPTER XX.

'' What he could have done m this low^ house, he is now upon that same service in the higher House ; and it is all one, it is the same service and the same Master, only there is a change of conditions. " — Samuel Rutherford.

CHAPTER I.

GALLOWAY — ^BOYHOOD.

" Pure livers were they all : austere and grave, And fearing God ; the very children taught Stem self-respect, a reverence for God's Word, And an habitual piety, maintained With strictness scarcely known on English ground. "

WOEDSWORTH.

Alexander Ealeigh, the fourth son 'and fifth chad of a family of nine, was born at the Flock, a farm-house near Castle-Douglas, in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, on the 3d of January 1817. His grandfather, Thomas Ealeigh, was a man of great integrity and force of character. His powers of mind were such as to command a position of authority among his neighbours. As they made their way from church or from fieldpreaching on the Sabbath-day, discussions would often arise, and on these occasions it was observed that whatever the subject was, Thomas Raleigh would never rest till he had " torn it abroad to the outmost." His son, Thomas Raleigh, the tenant of the Mock, was of a less argumentative disposition, somewhat silent and reserved in manner, of few words, but of fervent spirit. He is remembered to this day in that country-side for his straightforward simplicity and uprightness. '* There was a stem faithfulness in the soul of the man," said one who knew him well ; and the little community amongst whom he lived believed so fully in his impartial discernment that they sometimes referred local disputes to his decision. On one occasion a married couple who had separated on account of incompatibility of temper came to him to ask him to rc-marry them, believing that " Thomas Ealeigh's prayer " might go far to enable them to begin again with better hope of happiness. He did actually marry them, " at a dykeside," although with what result we are not told.

His wife, Isabella Ealeigh, was a woman of brilUant gifts, possessed of a lively imagination, and almost universal sympathy. At the time of her marriage it was said of her husband and of her, by one whose opinion carried oracular weight, "There was not, in twelve parishes, such a couple for sense, cTuiracter, and intelligence."

The Flock was a small farm, and father, mother, and children too as they grew up, had to work hard to make ends meet ; and as may be supposed, a heavy share of the burden fell upon the wife and mother. When, now and then, bad harvests, loss of stock, or other contingencies made the struggle almost desperate, her spirit never quailed. " Mrs. Ealeigh," people said, " was happiest when she had a difficulty to face," and it is certain that she had a heroic joy in the conflict with circumstances. She encountered cheerfully all the difficulties of small means^ a small house, and a large family, and managed to preserve, in spite of many labours and anxieties, her love of reading, and her interest in poetry and speculative theology. She has herself told how, seated at her spinning-wheel (for all the wool for the family clothing was spun at home) with her foot ready to touch the rocker of the cradle at her side, she used to have a favourite book propped up before her, that she might steal a few sentences as she could. Her memory was stored with passages from the Bible, as well as from Milton, Thomson, and other poets, which she loved to repeat to her children as they gathered round the fireside. One of their favourite amusements was to recite single verses from the Psalms, challenging their mother to tell where these were to be found, and also to give the context, and she generally succeeded in doing both* When she went to market in the nearest town, the treasure brought back was often a book, sometimes one in Latin for the boys. It was from her that Alexander inherited his early love of reading; and from her, too, perhaps even more than from his father, came that rugged originality which made his tenderness seem only more tender.

Thomas Ealeigh and his wife were attached, by habit and by conviction, to the small sect which takes (or took till recently) its name from Eichard Cameron the Covenanter — the remnant of pure Presbyterians who, after 1689, continued to protest against the errors of an Erastian Church and an " uncovenanted " State.

4 ALEXANDER KALEIGH.

The Cameronian body was never numerous ; its churches were few, but it possessed, sixty years ago, more than one preacher of exceptional power. Of these the chief was John Osborne of Dumfries, whose sermons combined in a remarkable manner the old-fashioned Puritan fidelity to the letter of Scripture, with a speculative freedom which often carried him far beyond the limits of the Westminster Confession. After the work of the day was over, and the family assembled round the fire in the winter evenings, or lingered in neighbourly talk at the door in the long summer twilight, great questions in theology, suggested by the Sabbath teachings, would be discussed and new views of doctrine considered.

So late as 1873 Dr. Ealeigh, in a note of thanks to a friend for the gift of Reflections and Reminiscences by Dr. M'Leod Campbell, says : — " The book takes me back to my boyhood. I can remember distinctly how the 'Eow Heresy' was talked of at my father's fireside, and also distinctly that my mother and he inclined to it as no heresy, but the truth — thus giving umbrage to some of the stricter sort. I have some remembrance, too, of the way in which the matter touched my first religious thoughts ; it came like a breeze from the hills, blowing away something that I felt even then to be oppressive."

In fields and on hill-sides vast congregations would assemble, even on a winter Sabbath, to hear Osborne or any other of the orators of Cameronianism. These open-air services were long, extending, with two short intervals, from the forenoon of the Sabbath till the shadows of evening fell. In later years Mrs. Raleigh used to express surprise if any one in her hearing complained of the length of a modem sermon, and would describe in fervent language those Sabbaths of solemn worship, the sermons which never seemed too long ; and told how, when the moon had risen, the services of the day used to close with a psalm, which went up " a storm of music from the hill," In fact, the religion of those people was their alL Not only did it bring to them immortal hopes, but it supplied interest and romance and intellectual food to lives that would otherwise have been poor. The distractions of travel, and the interest of the daily press and the public library, were almost imknown, and perhaps on that very account the one great theme had space to live and grow till it filled and covered all their life.

It was at one of the " field preachings " that Alexander Ealeigh was baptised ; and among the memories of his boyhood none stood out more clearly than the open-air communion Sabbaths — the green hill-side, the white-covered tables, and the hushed interest of the hearers, who followed the preacher from point to point of his elaborate discourse. The fifthlies and sixthlies were not always retained by the childish mind 5 but in the air and sunlight, with hills and sky to look at, even the children did not tire. Some phrase of the long oration, some text quoted with impressive elocution, would be caught up and remembered, to be recalled after many days.

One of Osborne's striking texts, " / will not eat tUl I

6 ALEXANDEK RALEIGH.

have told mine errand " (Gen. xxiv. 33), chosen by Dr. Ealeigh, in Canonbury, for a discourse of his own, brought back to him, after long years, these unforgotten Sabbaths.

" I go back nearly forty years, when I was so young that I could remember only this text, discoursed from on a sacramental occasion, by a famous preacher, for well-nigh an hour and a-half. He spoke from a tent in a green field on a clear summer day, the communion tables covered with the linen clean and white, spread out waiting their occupants, who came to sit down at communion after the sermon was over, and during the singing of a psalm. Although the preacher spoke so long, no one seemed to weary, unless it were some of us boys and girls. But we did not weary much. We had the consolation of the green grass -, we had the help of the daisies. We heard the bird sing and watched its flight, and saw the solemn movement of the cloud. And the sound of the preacher's voice was solemn ; and the awe-struck, desiring look of the people — nearly two thousand of them — almost as if they expected a visit on that day and in that place from their risen Lord The whole formed a picture and a scene not likely to be forgotten."

From the Mock it was a mile or more across the fields to Buittle parish school, where Alexander Ealeigh received the first rudiments of his education. But before he had passed beyond the spelling-book stage, in the year 1825, the pressure of hard times forced his father to surrender the farm and to remove with his family to Castle-Douglas ; and the boys were thus transferred to the high school of that town. The programme of a high school was not in those days much more ambitious than that of a parish school. A good knowledge of English and arithmetic, an excellent style of handwriting, and perhaps the elements of Latin — such was the equipment with which the youth of Castle-Douglas began the world. Among his schoolfellows Alexander Ealeigh was regarded as a boy of good but not shining ability. He was a good worker, obstinate, indomitable, eager to lead and to excel ; not always willing to fight, but a formidable enemy when once committed to a quarrel. In after years his brothers and sisters were sometimes reminded of incidents which exhibited his boyish temper ; how, for instance, he nearly made an end of himself by attempting an impossible leap over a " moss-hole." A moss-hole in Scottish speech is the bed from which peat or turf has been taken for fuel. It is often of considerable depth, and is filled with black moss-water. One day Alexander, aged four, and his brother Samuel were jumping over one of these black pools — first from the ground, then from one peat, then from two. " I'U do it from three," shouted the yoimger boy ; but the peats slipped, and next moment nothing was seen of him but two little feet above the water. Providentially, the father was at hand to draw the child out, and to carry him home in his big, blue coat. It is remembered, also, how, after much provocation, he vanquished the bully of the Castle-Douglas school, and how he was suspended over a bridge, head downward, for what seemed a long time, because he refused to submit to the dictation of an older lad who

•wanted him to say a profane word At home he was considered then somewhat deficient in the milder virtues; and his mother has been heard to say that none of her children owed less to nature and more to grace, in the matter of temper, than Alexander, and that in none was the victory more complete.

The home Thomas Ealeigh had to give his children is typical of not a few Scottish homes of that day, and is perhaps less common now than it once was. There were no luxuries there ; the work was hard and the fare was very plain — oatmeal porridge and Scotch broth formed the staple food of the farm, with tea, then very costly, added occasionally. Amusements were few; indeed, the theory of life adopted by the old Covenanters still held its ground, and pleasure was relegated to a very secondary place. Conventional refinements were little regarded, but there was the culture that comes with " thoughts that look before and after" — the elevation of character given by Faith in the Unseen, and the nobility that knows not how to swerve from the path of truth and duty. This hardy nurture of his childhood left its impress unmistakably on Alexander Ealeigh; and although, like his native Galloway in summer, his character came to be touched and softened into beauty, there was always the strength of the granite beneath. He even held that the granite itself had some share in imparting to the character of the men of Galloway a stability and power of endurance like its own. This opinion is supported by the author of Modem Painters. Euskin says, " The quiet streams.

q)rings, and lakes are always of exquisite clearness, and the sea which washes a granite coast is as nnsullied as a flawless emerald. It is remarkable to what an extent this intense purity in the country seems to inlBiuence the character of its inhabitants. ... As far as I remember, the inhabitants of granite countries have always a force and healthiness of character, more or less abated or modified, of course, according to the other circumstances of their life, but still definitely belonging to them as distinguished from the inhabitants of the less pure districts of the hills.'*

Other influences went to mould the growing boy. The country-side was beautiful, and it was alive with memories of brave men and women who gave their lives, as they themselves loved to put it, for " Christ's Crown and Covenant." Their heroic story, lingering among the moors and hills of Galloway, and woven into the religious thought of the people, was of a kind to stir the chivalrous instincts of boyhood. Sometimes the whole district was roused to enthusiasm to do honour to the heroes of the Covenant. Yoimg Ealeigh was present at the great gathering on Kirkconnel Moor, where 10,000 people met to hold a religious service ever the grave of one of the martyrs shot down by Claverhouse. Osborne preached one of his great sermons on the occasion, and every village and hamlet for many miles round sent its stream of people to the place of meeting, only the very old and the little children being left at home.

Memories, too, of a more savage bravery were abundant; for Galloway was the country of the Black Douglas, and young Ealeigh joined in many a holiday expedition to Thrieve Castle, the Douglas stronghold, and knew by heart the stories, some of them horrible enough, of which it was the scene.

Of necessity the elder boys left the home eariy, to make their own way in the world, and many years afterwards Alexander Ealeigh used to recall his feelings when it came to the turn of his favourite brother, Samuel, the one next above himself in age, to leave his father's house, " to seek his fortune." He was to go to Edinburgh, which place loomed then, vast and mysterious, to the imagination of the younger boy. The coach to Edinburgh from the South passed through Castle-Douglas some time after midnight ; and the two lads waited together at a corner of the village street till it should come up. Alexander never forgot the chiU, choking sense of loneliness, and the baflBed consciousness of the unknown, which took possession of him when his brother got on the top of the coach, and passed swiftly into the darkness.

His progress at school must have been such as to satisfy his teachers, for when he left it he obtained by their recommendation the place of tutor in a farmer's family. His tutorial duties were combined with farmwork : many a Scottish student earns in this way, by the labour of his own hands and brain, the money which enables him to enter a university. But young Ealeigh's ambition did not yet soar so high; he returned to Castle -Douglas to be apprenticed to a draper, in

1832, and remained in that employment some three years. Before his time was out another family migration had taken place. Thomas Baleigh, with all his gifts of mind and character, was never a prosperous man; he was now compelled to leave Castle -Douglas and remove to Liverpool. Alexander, left behind alone, ™ nnhapp, ; ^.^nU^U, ^ ^t completed, and his position becoming intolerable to him, he left at last without waiting for his master's permission, and made his way to Liverpool, where he rejoined his family. In course of time a place was found for him in the shop of Mr. White, a draper in Eanelagh Street ; and with Mr. White he remained till he began to study for the ministry.