Memoir of the Rev. E. Henderson, including his labours in Denmark, Iceland, Russia, etc., etc

Front matter

Iff.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

MEMOIR or THE

Preface

from his friend and fellow -labourer, he appears at times to have kept notes for Dr. Paterson's inspection. When left in solitude, he compensated to himself for the want of Christian fellowship by pouring out his heart on paper. But, generally speaking, he was too much employed in working to spend his time in writing down the labours in which he had engaged, or in metaphysically analyzing the causes, and scrupulously registering the variations, of those ebbs and flows of feeling that may have attended the prosecution of his toil.

Of the anecdotes he was wont to relate, a richer store might doubtless have been accumulated, had we listened to the advice repeatedly given us by his friends, and had we carefully taken down the details from time to time. But we recoiled from the idea of pursuing such a course. We were told, indeed, that we owed this to the Christian world, but we felt that we had a prior and paramount duty to discharge toward himself. We were sufficiently alive to the espionage practised under despotic governments abroad, to have contracted a peculiar distaste for all that could seem like an invasion of the sanctities of home. It is one thing for memory lovingly to retrace the past, as it fondly gathers up the recollections of the departed, and quite another thing for the eagle-eye of vigilance to be on the perpetual look-out for every casual incident or oif-hand phrase that may serve to "point a moral or adorn a tale " of individual life.

A third channel of information was in a great measure closed to us by the fact of my father's having survived the majority of those who were the associates of his early youth. The biographies of his departed fellow-students have been consulted, and some of the contemporaneous serials examined, in order to supply deficiencies, and

VI PREFACE.

maintain the continuity of the narrative. Thanks are hereby tendered to relatives and friends, who have cordially given all the information in their power. An especial acknowledgment is due to the Rev. Doctors Steinkopff and Ferguson, and the Rev. Messrs. Allon and Charlton, for the valuable communications which they have furnished, and which will be found greatly to have enriched the volume ; — to my cousin, Dr. Ebenezer Henderson, of St. Helen's, for the interest and the diligence he has evinced in corresponding with Scotland, as well as the care with which he has sifted all particulars communicated in reply, so as to determine what was doubtful and what reliable; — to Mrs. Baxter of Dundee, for valuable letters addressed to her late father, the Rev. Dr. Paterson ; — and, finally, to various friends who have lent helpful books, or have allowed free access to libraries, in which could be consulted those bygone Scottish periodicals that are rarely to be met with in the South.

The best portrait of my father was taken by the late Mr. Room, for the Evangelical Magazine. From the painting, which was ably executed by that artist, Roger Fenton, Esq. kindly supplied a photograph ; and from the latter, the likeness in the present volume has been prepared.

MORTLAKE, '

Contents

PAGE

Birth-place— Family — Name— Baptism — Home-training— School - education — Business-pursuits — Conversion — Volunteering — College Life — Fellow-students— Tutors— Doctrinal Views— Visit to the Orkneys— First Sermon at Dunfermline — Appointment to Missionary-work — Ordination — Departure ............ 1

II.— First Journey. 1805—1810.

CHAPTER I. " Cor nostrum inquietum est, donee requiescat in Te."

Among the towns that derive lustre from their repeated mention hy the British annalists, there is one which claims remembrance as the favourite abode of Malcolm Canmore, and of his Hungarian bride, the sister of young Edgar Atheling. It was on her way from Queensferry, that the amiable and devout Margaret, with her mother and sister, rescued from the perils of the deep, and made welcome to the court of Scotland, first caught sight of the pleasant ravine in which stood Malcolm's Tower. It is from the south-east, and from the same highroad, that the traveller, who takes his stand at the " Spittal Cross-head," may still obtain towards eventide his most pleasing view of Dunfermline's ancient burgh, as it stretches along the slope of a continuous but undulating declivity. Amidst the mass of irregular buildings which form its outline, stands forth with imposing prominence the Abbey, — in part old, and in part new, — the boast of the " Civitas Fermiloduni" as the burying-place of monarchs, and queenconsorts, and royal princes not a few, though specially

£ EARLY LIFE.

celebrated as enshrining the grave of King Robert the Bruce, whose name, lettered in hewn stone, adorns with more of historic interest than of artistic beauty the balustrade of the large square tower erected to his memory. The antiquary will also take delight in surveying the ruined wall of a Palace, in which resided King James's consort, Anne of Denmark, "Ladye of Dunfermlyne," and which became the birth-place of King Charles I. and his sister, Elizabeth of Bohemia.

The city, however, is not one which founds its claims to notice on the merely shadowy remembrances of a departed greatness. Its thriving trade in linen received a new impulse on the introduction of damask-weaving, and its annual manufacture now rates at £450,000.* " The people," says Chambers, in his Picture of Scotland, "display that activity of intellect usually found in manufacturing communities, and are noted amongst the surrounding population for their advanced views in political and religious questions." The country around is fertile, and luxuriant crops tell of the vigour with which farming-operations are carried on. This is the case especially in the southern part of the district. Northwards the soil is not so favourable, though even there much of the wild muirland has been reclaimed by persevering toil, and made available for the growth of no despicable harvests.

About four and a half miles N. W. from the city, in the Dunfermline parish quoad civilia, but in the parish of Saline quoad sacra, stood two cot-houses with heatherroofs, which, from the generic name for the little brooklet

* Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eighth Edit., art. " Dunfermline." — An interesting account of the looms and their produce is given in Chalmers's History of Dunfermline (first Edition), pp. 353—382.

that ran past, were called "The Linn." It was here that toward the close of the last century there lived an agricultural labourer, George Henderson by name. In 1766 he had married one Jean Buchannan, three years his junior; and it was while they were residing at The Linn, in the year 1784, that their youngest son was born. The family-register, as preserved in the father's handwriting, contains seven names, — John, William, Margaret, George, Elspit, George (the second), and Ebenezer.

The last-named, the new comer, was not to be welcomed by the entire group. John and Margaret were the sole survivors of the six. The hand of death had twice invaded the cottage-home ; and each time it had borne away more than a single treasure. The year 1777 had seen William, and the elder George, consigned to the grave within a month's brief space ; and when the summer of 1783 had but just overpassed the sixth anniversary of this long-remembered grief, the storm-cloud burst with renewed and redoubled force, — Elspit, George the younger, and their aunt who was resident beneath her brother's roof, being carried in succession to the tomb; and that, within a ten days' interval.

The second blow was yet more desolating than the first had been. The lambs of the flock were all gone. The toys had to be laid aside, for none were left save such as had long outgrown their use. No infant-form lay in the now empty cradle. No lisping tongue beguiled the hours with its prattle. The hearts of the parents, ready to sink within them for heaviness, were sustained only by those rich consolations which the word of God's grace holds out to His mourning people. It was after this season of calamity that on November 17th of the following year, the subject of this narrative was born. A ray of hope shot across the gloom. "Jean, woman," said the father, " ye see God has not forgot us : He has helped us hitherto, and He will support us, and be our strength in a' times comin' ; sae we'll jist ca' the child, Ehenezer."

Such is the family-history connected with the giving of the name. Many have been under the impression that the appellation was bestowed in honour of the late Rev. Ebenezer Brown, the highly esteemed minister of the Secession Church in the neighbouring parish of Inverkeithing. The latter, it is true, often spoke of Dr. Henderson as his " namesake," but he may not have meant to use that term so literally as to imply that he regarded, or thought he had reason to regard him as a namesora ; nor in writing to him did he make any allusion of the kind.

The import of the Scriptural appellative was one which was not forgotten by the bearer. If he could not boast of its euphony, he nevertheless, like the celebrated Ebenezer Erskine, rejoiced in its significance. For the device on a seal, which he frequently used during the earlier years of his residence abroad, he adopted a memorial -pillar, surrounded by the Hebrew inscription, taken from the original of 1 Sam. vii. 12. To the sentiment of the text he made frequent reference : —

" Here I would erect a fresh monument to the praise of Divine goodness" — so he writes on his return from Iceland, " and inscribe upon it my usual motto, ' Hitherto hath the Lord helped me.' "*

There was an incident in his life, on which he often dwelt, as having brought what the Germans would call his name-lesson peculiarly home to his heart. It was at the time when he had completed his first and second series of

* Owen's Hist, of the British and Foreign Bible Society, vol. ii. p. 403.

wanderings in Northern Europe, and had returned to take another passing glimpse of his father-land. At that date, no public stage-coach had begun to drive either to or through Dunfermline. Alighting, therefore, at the nearest point, he proceeded to walk along the paths, and across the fields, which he had been wont to traverse in bygone years. His thoughts were busy with the past, the present, and the future. It had been his to cross ocean and sea ; to visit not a few of nature's sublimest wonders ; and to hold intercourse with the great and the good in many a distant land. Yet now, brought home once more in safety, his eye rested again on familiar scenes, and his ear was charmed with the familiar echoes of Scottish accent and of Scottish song. He seated himself on a stile, as he listened to the carolling of the shepherd-boy, whose notes had arrested his attention. He caught the singer's words. " True, true!'' he thought within himself, " ' the days are a' awa' ! the days that I hae seen!' and those with whom I spent my childhood and my youth, where are they? these glens remain, but those with whom here I roamed, where, oh ! where are they ?" The remembrance that both parents had passed away from earth since last he had visited his home, — the recollection of associates and friends, scattered or deceased ; — the sense of isolation, — the consciousness of being indeed a stranger and a pilgrim, truly (though for his Master's sake, willingly) without a home; — the uncertainties of the future, as to where his lot might be cast, or who might be the sharers of his duty and his destiny, — all these things pressed upon him with an overwhelming force. But after an interval of absorbment in such meditations, he was again roused to the cognizance of external impressions. The tuneful voice was not yet silenced, but the melody had been changed : — b EARLY LIFE.

"Our hearts unto despondency we never will submit, For we've aye been provided for, and sae will we yet ! And sae will we yet, And sae will we yet, For we've aye been provided for, and sae will we yet !"

The remainder of the song was probably unheard by the traveller; certainly, it was unremembered. But these words had proved a timely cordial. He had heard enough to revive his drooping spirits, enough to suggest trustful, hopeful thoughts. He was one who could use this wholesome truth without abusing it and so converting it into a deadly poison. He went on his way with a lightened heart, resolving that he would never again be unmindful of his baptismal name. He " thanked God, and took courage." Nay, throughout the entire course of his after-life, he was ready, in every time of sorrow expected, or of suffering experienced, to look upward for help, and to cheer the hopes of others by saying, " We've aye been provided for, and sae will we yet."

The rite of baptism was performed, Nov. 21st, by the Rev. James Husband,* minister of the Queen Anne Street Church. The actual building has since been taken down ; but near the same site, has been erected a new one, which is conspicuous even from a distance by reason of its lofty position and its old-fashioned gable roof. A fitting emblem it is of the important part which its founders designed it to occupy. Reared after the Secession had gained a firm footing, it stands proudly forth to view, as if to say, Think what you will of my beauty, none can gainsay my stability ;

* Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Husband continued to labour at Dunfermline till May 17, 1821, when he died at the age of seventy, after a ministry of fortysix years. The present occupant of the Queen Anne Street pulpit is the Rev. James Young, who entered on the charge in 1831, and by whom a copy of the baptismal register was kindly forwarded to my cousin.

Question my taste, if you will, but deny not my possible usefulness. The Seceders, it must be remembered, were not theoretically Anti-Establishment men. The union of Church and State was to them no stumbling-block, but, contrariwise, a thing which they approved. They saw in the system manifold advantages, so long (that is to say) as the State was of one mind with the Church, but not when civil power trampled on ecclesiastical rights, or when worldly policy prevailed against spiritual interests. Oppressive measures, however, were enacted from time to time through the influence of Erastianism; and among them none were more galling- than those connected with the law of patronage. Accordingly, when the General Assembly framed an act in 1732, to the effect that in case of a patron's failing to exercise his right of presentment, a parish-minister should be chosen by the majority of the elders and Protestant heritors, — thereby depriving of an elective voice* such as had no landed property, while conferring the privilege on men who might possibly be altogether disaffected to the cause and kingdom of Christ, — the induction of preachers, on such terms, was vehemently resisted. Votes of censure were passed upon those who were known to have been active in the resistance. The non-intrusionists, in self-defence, drew up protests, representations, statements of grievances ; to which, reproofs, citations, and suspensions were the summary mode of reply. Synods met; Commissions were held; sentence of deposition was passed against the little band who persisted in opposing the unpopular movement ; and thus in 17o3 the measure of secession was forced upon

* The Patronage-act of 1690 had ordained that "the heritors propose (not present) a person, to be approvenor disapproven by the congregation.'"

them, — a secession which they declared to be "not from the principles and constitution of the Church of Scotland," but solely " from the prevailing party in the ecclesiastical courts." At the head of the seceding company was Ebenezer Erskine of Stirling; and not less zealous in the cause was his brother Ralph, then parish -minister of Dunfermline, in which town as well as in other parts of Scotland, the favourers of this the "Associate Presbytery" widely and rapidly increased.

It was to the Secession-body that George Henderson of The Linn belonged. Of the Queen Anne Street Church he was for many years a member and elder. He was superior to most in his station as to culture of mind. He was, moreover, a man of undoubted piety. Hence there is no room to question that he sought, after the good old Scotch fashion, or rather the good old patriarchal custom, to train his children from their earliest years in the knowledge of religious truth.

While his youngest son was still of very tender years, Mr. George Henderson removed with his family to Waukmill (or Waulkmill), situated to the S.W. of the town, at no great distance from the Firth of Forth. From the minutes of Session, kindly extracted by the Pev. Dr. Johnstone, it appears that he acted as elder in Limekilns congregation for nearly two years and a half. It was probably toward the latter end of 1790 that he moved by special request to Lochend, three miles due N. of Dunfermline. Here he continued for the remaining threeand-twenty years of his life, taking the entire oversight of the farm and its concerns. Thomas Purvis, Esq., to whom the property belonged, often spoke, in the highest terms, of his sagacity and integrity. The following is the testimony which, in later years, his son was able to give as to his Christian character. It was written from Copenhagen, after the news of his decease had been received: —

" The firmest conviction, never ruffled by the smallest doubt, that he was a child of God and an heir of glory, — that he had served his day and generation to purpose on earth, and was as a sheaf fully ripe for the eternal harvest in heaven, — always soothed my mind when I realized the period of his removal, and I was at all times fully persuaded that my loss and that of the rest of the family would prove his unspeakable and everlasting gain. Still I flattered myself last summer, while noting down what occurred to me respecting the wonders of Iceland, that should it please the Lord to carry me back, I should have great satisfaction in reading my notes to him, and conversing with him on subjects which must have interested him the more as they were what he never perhaps knew were in existence. Blessed be God, the greater wonders of redemption, which chiefly employed his thoughts while here below, now eclipse everything else ; he now partakes of a more sublime joy, a more permanent and unalloyed satisfaction. May we be followers of him and all those who now through faith and patience inherit the promises."

It is generally admitted that the home-discipline of the past age was characterized, especially beyond the Tweed, by a somewhat undue severity. The "taws" were in frequent requisition ; and, for the ruling of a Scottish household, the fasces of the lictor would have been a meeter ensign than the golden sceptre of love. The result attained was often far different from the effect desired. The wayward spirit was made restive by the very curb intended to restrain it ; and the yoke, which was made too heavy, served to provoke resistance rather than to induce submission. There were several instances of this in the early career which now comes under review. Though trivial in themselves, they may illustrate the unwise though well-intended mode of treatment, formerly pursued by parents and guardians'; and may also serve to indicate in the child that determinateness of spirit which,

EARLY LIFE.

when subsequently directed into a right channel, and kept within due bounds, helped to secure consistency of character and firmness of purpose.

On one occasion, when between seven and eight years old, the little Ebenezer — despite his having been promoted not many months before to the dignity of " best man" at his brother's wedding — was caught in the act of perpetrating some childish mischief. Words being deemed an insufficient corrective, his mother laid hold of a stick ; and thus armed, she chased the young delinquent into the house. Less disposed to yield than at the first, but finding his last chance of escape cut off, he turned suddenly round to face his pursuer. The intended defiance met with a severe and unlooked-for check. Making a retrograde movement as he turned, he came in contact with the edge of a cog that stood behind him, full of boiling whey. Into this he fell backward, and so terribly scalded both his legs, that when able again to venture out of doors he had to go on crutches, with every prospect of being a confirmed cripple. His only occupation now was that of keeping guard over the sheep; his best amusement, that of conning over all the picture-books that came within his reach, — such as were illustrative of Natural History being his chief delight.

Happily, the penalty was not life-long. One day he met a stranger, an old woman of the vagrant, if not of the mendicant tribe, who compassionated his misfortune, and inquired as to the cause. " Puir bit laddie," she said, " it's a pity til see ye ganging about on stults ; gang hame, an' tell yer mither til tak the cog ye fell intil, — the same cog, mark ye, — an' fill it wi' boilin' water, an' tell her til pit yer legs our't, an 5 than kiver thame oure wi 5 blankets til keep the steam in, an' than let her stritch out ae leg, an' than the tither, betimes till they come stracht," This being reported at home, his mother acted on the principle that the attempt could at least do no harm, and might be worth the making. Day by day she repeated the experiment ; and, either distrustful of so literal a " similia similibus curantur," or else wishful to maintain the credit of a favourite remedy, she added to the prescription a supplemental rubbing of the limbs with hog's lard. The gradual relaxing of the contracted muscles encouraged her to persevere, and after the lapse of several weeks the cure was complete.

It was a coincidence, not unworthy perhaps of notice, that at this very time there was a little girl, scarcely three years old, whose parents were sending her from London to a country-school at Clapham, yet with the express injunction, " Let her have plenty of air, and food, and amusement, but do not trouble her with learning, for the poor little thing will never live." Who would not have been scorned as false prophets if they had ventured to predict that the crippled boy at Dunfermline was to extend his travels from Hecla to Vesuvius, and from Tornea to Tiflis,— or that the infant-invalid in the metropolitan suburb was to be his survivor, after a union of exactly forty years ? The realized improbabilities of any single century, if they could be gathered into a collective record, would form a singular volume ; nor would it be an uninstructive one, if it tended to confirm our faith in Him who so wondrously holds in His hand all the threads of every individual life, adjusting each to each, now intertwining and now crossing them, yet ever approximating or distancing, lengthening or shortening them " severally as He will/' while as continually and as truly what He wills is what is best.

It must have been soon after his recovery that the child, who had thus shown himself a little beyond his mother's management, was sent to what is termed a "road-side school." The distance of a parochial school* from many* villages that were comprised within the same parish, led frequently to the establishment of inferior schools upon adventure ; but the teachers, being dependent entirely on the very small payments made for the children, and finding the amount to be barely sufficient for the scantiest maintenance, few (if any) well-educated men were found occupying such a post, so that the tuition given was exceedingly meagre in quality as well as stinted in quantity. The merest rudiments would probably be all that could, at least in those days, be picked up at the Dunduff School, a mile eastward of The Linn.

About the year 1794, the young pupil was transferred to a school in Dunfermline itself, and there also he attended daily. It was kept by Mr. John Eeid, Precentor in Queen Anne Street Church, who had been one of the witnesses to his baptism, and who is said to have been in some respects a man of note in the district. f Here he

* Dunfermline had no parochial school, but in lieu of it a burgh-school, which was endowed by Queen Anne in the beginning of the 17th century.

f The school was kept in what was then called Rotten Row, which was a continuation of Queen Anne Street, and has now merged its name in that of the latter. Mr. Reid, who was a teacher in Dunfermline for nearly half a century, was an excellent mathematician, and well versed in the science of Navigation, always holding a special class in wintertime that was numerously attended by sailors from the Limekilns, Inverkeithing, and Burntisland. He died Dec. 23, 1816, aged 70 years, and a marble monument in the churchyard was erected to his memory " by his scholars, as a testimony of their high sense of his abilities and moral worth." For a long while after his death, his pupils kept up an annual meeting at the " New Inn." In 1818, Dr. Henderson, when on a visit to his native land, attended one of these anniversaries by special invitation. The practice has now died out, owing to the dispersion or death of most who had been wont to assemble.

must have acquired some knowledge of writing, English, arithmetic, geography, and so forth. One of his surviving schoolfellows states, that he was of so retiring a disposition, as to have formed few acquaintances among his class-mates. Another, however, who is still living, has a vivid remembrance of joining him after school-hours in many a search for linnets 5 nests on the braes at Lochhead and the Blackloch, It is stated, but only on one authority, that he also attended the Grammar School in the afternoon of the day ; that there he was under the tuition of Mr. Peter Ramsay ; and that he steadily maintained his place as dux of the Latin class. If he entered the school at all, it is not likely to have been at so early an age. He may possibly have joined the class at a later period, when anxious to attain a knowledge of the language, and able to bear the expense for himself.

Two years at Dunfermline, after one year and a half at Dunduff, formed the sum-total of his schooling. At twelve years old, it was time he should be trained to something in the way of handicraft. After a few months spent in helping at the farm, and diversified by sundry boyish escapades which are not worth recordal, a good opportunity offered for giving him a fair start. His brother John, his senior by fifteen years, having set up as a clockand-watch-maker in the town, it was agreed that he should be initiated into that trade beneath the fraternal roof. To fraternal discipline he was by no means disposed to submit ; and he took an early opportunity of showing his independence, or as he himself in w r iser years would have termed it, his wilfulness. He had a strong desire to attend the races, which had for two years past been held on the Carnock Road ; and being now freed from the trammels of school, he had set his heart on gratifying the

14 EAULY LIFE.

wish. His brother-guardian, fearful lest he should fall into evil company, peremptorily forbade his going; but, despite all prohibitions, the truant found means to get away. The equestrian competition was followed by footraces and other rustic amusements, which were kept up in exciting succession till nine in the evening. It was ten o'clock before he could reach home, to give (no doubt) a conscience-stricken knock at his brother's door. The window was opened. " Wha's that?" "It's me, it's Ebie." " Gang awa'," was the sole response ; " ye wuna get a bed here the nicht, sae ye maun jist gang home til yer faither's." Barefooted, in the guise of a true Scotch lad, off he set, bravely encountering the three miles' walk, and presented himself at his father's house on the verge of midnight. His parents, strict though they were about " elder's 'ours," gave him a ready admission, but blamed him for his disobedience, and sent him back the next morning with due admonitions as to his future conduct. Mindful also of the saying that " a man's gift maketh room for him," his mother took care that, instead of going back empty-handed, he should carry with him a pound of butter by way of peace-offering. The watchmaker, and Janet his wife, showed themselves disposed to forgive and forget; yet they could not refrain from asking whether he had not been afraid to run past " the witch's plantain." c< 'Deed, no," was the reply ; {l I jist pu'd my bannit oure my e'en, and keekit (peeped) through a wee bit hole that wis in V*