held stiffly to the
Establishment scheme of Knox, and the defence of Presbyterianism; and it
did not require any particularly nice perceptive powers to observe that
both his antagonists and himself used at times to get pretty warm, and
to talk tolerably loud--louder, at least, than was at all necessary in
the quiet evening woods. I remember, too, that in urging him to quit the
National Church for theirs, they usually employed language borrowed from
the Revelations; and that, calling his Church _Babylon_, they bade him
come out of her, that he might not be a partaker of her plagues. Uncle
Sandy had seen too much of the world, and read and heard too much of
controversy, to be out of measure shocked by the phrase; but with a
decent farmer of the parish the hard words of the proselytizers did them
a mischief. The retired merchant had urged him to quit the
Establishment; and the farmer had replied by asking, in his simplicity,
whether he thought he ought to leave his Church to sink in that way?
"Yes," exclaimed the merchant, with great emphasis; "leave her to sink
to her place--the lowest hell!" This was terrible: the decent farmer
opened his huge eyes at hearing what he deemed a bold blasphemy. The
Church of which the Baptist spoke was, in Cromarty at least, the Church
of the _outed_ Mr. Hugh Anderson, who gave up his all in the time of the
persecution, for conscience' sake; it was the Church of Mr. Gordon,
whose ministry had been so signally countenanced during the period of
the great revival; it was the Church of devout Mr. Monro, and of worthy
Mr. Smith, and of many a godly elder and God-fearing member who had held
by Christ the Head; and yet here was it denounced as a Church whose
true place was hell. The farmer turned away, sick of the controversy;
and the imprudent speech of the retired merchant flew like wildfire over
the parish. "Surely," says Bacon, "princes have need, in tender matters
and ticklish times, to beware what they say, especially in those short
speeches which fly about like darts, and are thought to be shot out of
their secret intentions." Princes are, however, not the only men who
would do well to beware of short speeches. The short speech of the
merchant ruined the Baptist cause in Cromarty; and the two missionaries
might, on its delivery, have just done, if they but knew the position to
which it reduced them, what they were content to do a few years
after--pack up their moveables and quit the place.