OLD DAYS IN KNOX CHURCH.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13859, 23 March 1907, Page 5

OLD DAYS IN KNOX CHURCH.

By True Blub.

Dr Stuart had a wonderful faculty for remembering individuals and their circumstances. It is especially valuable in clergymen and teachers, and is possessed in a high degree by his succcssor. But in the doctor it almost amounted t-o a special gift. He would stand at the door as the children passed out of Sunday school, speaking to each child byname and asking after the various members of the family—grandmother, father, mother, baby, or whoever among them was the especial object of interest at the time. He seemed to know all' about them, and was interested in all. And the interest and affection were mutual. One little fellow stopped him in the street one day and said, "I pray for you every night, doctor." Of course there were occasions when this power of remembering faces and names played him false, as it does lo all of us. But this was only noticeable in the later years, when memory recalls vividly the things of earlier days, but later impressions are more transient. I was standing with him one day on the Mosgiel Station platform when a young man came up and shook hands with him cordially. " How are you getting on, and how are father and mother, and all the rest of the family?" The questions and answers followed one another rapidly. Then the train came up, good-byes were said, we stepped in and took our seats, when the doctor immediately turned and said, "Who is that young man?" I said, "I thought you -knew him quite well." "Not I," he said. " I can't recall him at all, but I expected him to say something to give me a clue as to his identity. No, I have no notion whatever." I look the

opportunity of telling him, by way of warning, a story of a certain well-known bishop of an English see. A gentleman came up to him on a railway platform and politely shook hands with him. After the usual compliments the bishop said, "How is your mother?" "She is very well, thank you." "And I hope your father is well?" "You forget, my lord, that my father is dead." "Oh, I beg your pardon, I had quite forgotten the fact." After a bow and another hand-shake, the young man moved away, and the bishop, turning to anothor clergyman beside him, said, "Who is that young man?" "The Duke of Connaught, my lord." Dr Stuart thoroughly enjoyed the story, but I don't think he profited by the warning. It was probably the same power that attracted children which made him so much the friend of all animals. Do«s lie was especially fond of, but cats came in for a share of this friendship. Many of his old friends remember two very fine cats at the manse, that rejoiced in the names of Matthew and Thomas Henry respectively. Mrs D had a great fierce mastiff, the terror of all who came near"'the house; indeed, few would .venture to approach the house if he Was of! the chain. One day she saw the doctor coming up the path, and as he reached the steps the great animal bounded up with a roar and bristled in a most threatening manner.- Mrs D ran to the rescue, thinking the doctor would be alarmed, but to her surprise he just put j his hand on the great head, saying quietly, " Tuts, tuts, man," and the do° subsided, and lay down quite subdued. 0 Many will recall, too, when his sons wished to introduce a bulldog of very unecclesiastical appearance into the manse, how they did so with fear and trembling; but after the first shock—for he was an ugly brute—the doctor took him to his heart, and they became firm friends. Manse Bully, as he came to be called, was known and appreciated by i all who were privileged to enter the ' study. The doctor once said to a dear I young friend of his, "I would be the ! loneliest man 111 Dunedin if it were not 1 for Bully." !

_ To most people the doctor was known in connection with his pulpit work, and those of his own congregation an deirele knew well his strong and his weak points 111 this connection. He certainly was able to do and say things which would have been resented in other men. but from him they gave no offence. On such occasions as the ordination or induction of elders and deacons, but more especially when receiving young communicants into the membership of the church for the first time, Dr Stuart's wonderful command of language and diversity of utterance used to astonish and delight all his hearers. He not only gave to all collectively a suitable and soul-stirring address, but to each individual—and there were frequently a dozen or twenty—he spoke a few words of exhortation, welcome, and encouragement. On such occasions he. never repeated himself, but always had something to say to each, original, appropriate, and in remarkably well-chosen language. I have heard many men, and many able men, giving such addresses, but 1 never knew anyone who was his equal in this respect.

It has often been said that lie was a poor preacher, and it may seem strange that he should be so, if he possessed such powers of language and expression, lint the fact is that he was an extremely able and effective speaker, only he did not give the time t.o his pulpit work which it required, and depended 100 much upon his stores of information and

his ready wit. He did such an amount of pastoral work in addition to his engrossing duties as the leading clergy, man of his denomination in the colony, and to those which devolved on him as a leading citizen in this community, that he did not get the time for reading and pulpit preparation which his duty as a preacher demanded. I remember a short period, when a sprained ankle or other slight accident to a limb confined him to the house for some few weeks. Tho effect on the quality of his preaching was almost immediate, as in his enforced retirement from meetings and visits ho had time to read and prepare. Some of his office-bearers used to suggest afterwards the desirability of periodically laming him, so that he might be a prisoner for a time, and the congregation might get the benefit in his improved sermons.

After the secularisation of our primary school system—for in the early days of Otago Bible lessons formed part of the daily work—the necessity of Bible-read-ing and study and its recognition by the Church appealed very strongly to the doctor, and he sought to .meet- the need first by lessons in the public schools, and later by " catecheticals" in the church. The latter were based 011 the old methods used by Presbyterian divines when they were the lenders not only of religious, but of all thought, in the community. Dr Stuart sought to adapt the lessons to the young in the altered conditions in which he lived. These "exercises" came off every two or three weeks, and took the place of the sermon at. the evening service. The young people—nearly all Sunday school scholars—took their seats in the body of the church in front of the pulpit, the girls on the right and the boys 011 the left of the preacher. The subject, was generally a discursive exposition of some passage, frequently from the early historical books of the Bible, and this was interspersed with questions and with anecdotes. The quaintness and frequent oddity, both of the remarks and of the questions, often upset the equanimity of the congregation, and even caused some of the office-bearers to remonstrate with the minister on the subject of discontinuing these discourses. But though one of the, most reasonable, and obliging of men, the old doctor had a remarkably stiff backbone when he chose to straighten himself out, and when opposed in any scheme 011 which he had set his heart he could be wonderfully rigid. So the catecheticals survived for some few years, and died of exhaustion rather than from opposition. They were a source of great delight to many, both young and old, on account- of the unexpected things which were said, and the possibilities which they unfolded, and I am afraid a good many visitors came from curiosity, and then came back to laugh. Others stayed away, l'gr Mie-sam^reasos,

because they felt rather pained nt the humorous turn that things sometimes look. I. wonder how far it is possible to recall some of the quips and oddities of these catecheticals. Many of the comic incidents arose more from the expression and manner of the doctor than from merely wh.it he said, though the latter was often funny enough. One evening the lesson was on Jacob's wanderings from home into the land of Mesopotamia, and as he spoke of how he set out, he leant forward and demanded of the children, " What *did he travel with?". No answer came. "Did lie cany a portmanteau!" Still 110 answer, the youngsters having no experience to guide them in the matter of Eastern travelling. After a second or two of silent suspense and expectation he exclaimed, "No; he had nothing but a stick and a plaid!" Those who knew the stalwart figure of the old man wrapped in his grey-check plaid, and grasping a huge stick in his hand, as he strode along George street, easily recognised the source of- his description; but the idea of Jacob wandering in the desert girt with a Scotch plaid was inimitable. It was long before some of his audience recovered from this stroke. ' Later in the same discourse he added, "As lis wandered along towards the end of his journey" [in Mesopotamia] "he heard the bleating of sheep, and he looked over the hedge," etc. His mental picture was drawn from the Taieri Plain, not from the treeless wastes of the Euphrates Valley. It was to this mingling of the present with the past that much of the (juaintness of his remarks was due.

On another and later occasion the plagues of. Egypt were under discussion, and he gave his hearers a most astounding description of the flics of that country—the flies that flew and the flies that crawled, the flies that hopped and the flics that, sprang. The sources of his information used often to exercise the minds of those of his hearers who were readers, but on this occasion the facts adduced were new to all, and were a source of wonder and astonishment.

A favourite expression of his was to aslt the young people some question, often a very difficult one, and then bribe them to attempt a response by such a remark as—"A Bible to the boy or girl who can answer that first! Aha! I thought yoyi couldn't do it. Why, even my old friend Mr " [who was probably sitting up on the pulpit platform at the time] " couldn't answer it." Sometimes his questions were answered, and that promptly, and then tho dear old man would say, " Aha ! well done now! Come to the manse to-morrow, and I'll give you that Bible," and he kept his promises well. No wonder that he lives in the memory of many who were brought up at his feet!