THE NOVEIST. PETER GENTLE.

Saturday Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 112, 1 September 1877, Page 3

THE NOVEIST. PETER GENTLE.

BY HIS SON AMOS GENTLE.

(Written expressly for the SaTtjbdAt Advebtibeb.)

lij.il/uvu v -“ir v “J • Y. But I must draw tliis very imperfect sketch to a close by furnishing some particulars of my father’s Church life and connexion. I never knew the precise date of his conversion, but that it was known to himself, and borne in sacred remembrance, I gather from an expression in his diary, where he makes reference to an occurrence prior to the great change having taken place ; he uses the phrase “ before my conversion.” He must have been very young, for the testimony of all who remember him so far back, would justify the declaration that “he feared the Lord from his youth.” But unusually reticent on all personal matters, it especially needed the sympathetic touch of a truly kindred spirit to elicit from him statements regarding personal religious experience and then they were made through a tissue of reserve that an habitual doubt of the purity of his motives, and jealousy of God’s honour raised up. Had his supreme and grateful thoughts ever b een _“ l have been redeemed, made a child, and now enjoy rest and peace ” —had he had that assurance, the want of which is distrust and dishonour—his spiritual life would have been less occasionally darkened by clouds. But we must not forget that unimpressible stoicism characterised professing Chris- - tians in his young days. They were especially a dry, hard, severe, legal lot, among whom he was brought up—the Associate Burgher Seceders. Divinity and doctrine they alone valued, while every manifestion of heart religion, of “ being constrained by the love of Christ,” they regarded with very doubtful feelings, and rather scowled than looked upon with satisfaction and thankfulness. Presbyterians number among them to the present day, a large class who remain to a great extent in legal bondage, and among whom the joyous declaration of “ Christ having made an end of the law,” is never heard. At that time, earnest, glowing, evangelical discourses were spoken from few pulpits. He was soon to enter a warmer region, but what was truest and best in old Calvinism he continued to cherish ; and (as witness the catechising of his household), what was most excellent in their practice he adopted and rigidly carried out. He was early “ sucked in by the vortex of the Tabernacle,” and when only twenty-two years of age, in the year 1806, deserted, though with a pang, the Church of his fathers, and united himself to the second formed church in Glasgow, of the newly sprung up sect of Independents, in the membership of which he continued for a period of forty-one years, having during a large portion of that time, filled with conscientious faithfulness the office of deacon in the church—equivalent to that of elder in Presbyterian bodies. The causes which led to the rise of Independency in Scotland, are variously and graphically portrayed in the memoirs of the various eminent men who were instrumental in infusing life into the “ dead bones ” of the period, and in bringing about, by the breath of the Almighty, a marvellous revival of living Christianity. It was the age of Moderatism, of the Blairs, Robertsons, _ Carlyles, and Moodies, accomplished and influential men, who wore the garb and took the pay of the Church, but whose fellowship was in the world, with the Humes and the Homes, and others of the cultured semi-infidel literati of that time. It was the period among the “common people” of sluggish and sottish ignorance and immorality. The late Dr. Hamilton, of Strathblane, the father of the late well-known minister of the Scotch Church, Regent Square, London, says : “ The congregations rarely amounted to a tenth of the parishioners, and one-half of this small number were generally, during the half hour’s soporific harangue, fast asleep. They were free from hypocrisy. They had no more religion in private than public.” John Campbell, of Kingsland, known to our fathers as the John Campbell of “ Campbell’s Travels in Africa," recounting in his homely fashion his remembrances as a boy of six years old of a journey made with a female servant from Edinburgh to Pennycuick to attend a penny wedding, gives us this :—“A table on which stood a large vessel like a tub, full of whisky-punch, was placed at the end of the barn, the guardians of which were the parish minister and three or four elderly relations of the married people. These supplied every dancer with a glass of punch when they chose to apply, male or female.” It needed, indeed, that such a state of apathy and deadness should be disturbed ; and as the Wesleys were made the means to this end in England, so were the Haldanes,Messrs Ewing, Aikman, Rate, Innes, Rowland Hill, Matthew Wilks, and others from the South, made the instruments of effecting a similar great good in Scotland. Besides the freshness and warmth of the new sect, the simplicity with which the Gospel was put, and its practical bearings enforced by the great and good men its founders, and which had won upon his susceptible heart, there was existing a further attraction for him in the young minister himself, who had just opened chapel and to whom he speedily became attached.

This young cleric was Ralph Wardlaw, the son of a Glasgow magnate and Bailie, who had studied under the venerable Dr. George Lawson at the theological hall of the Burgher Synod at Selkirk. His family stood hereditarily connected with the Burgher, or Associate Secession Church, and his deliberately considered adoption of Independency occasioned quite a social excitation among his large and influential circle of- friends. He was a young man of ability, was deeply pious, remarkable for unassuming simplicity, exact and elegant in his tastes, lively, natural, refined, and graceful. His sermons were winning and powerful, his eloquence being heightened by a voice, the silvery tones of which, elicited in after • days—when he had attained to a world-wide reputation as the learned, eloquent, and elegant preacher, theologian,, and scholar—’the admiration of all who heard him ; and the remembrance of which enables’ me to form an idea of how very, loveable and attractive he must have been when crowned with all the graces of a handsome youth. It is easy to understand how all this wrought upon and enchanted my father, himself possessing all the heart qualities, and a mind capable of appreciating in his chosen spiritual guide, taste, earnestness, and zeal. As a brother in Christ he the more tenderly loved him for his refinement and culture. But his shrinking disposition proved a barrier to the growing up between them of close or intimate friendship. It is not indispensably necessary that the constituents forming mutual friendships should intellectually be the same, or nearly —they are often diverse in degree. And in his case the difference would not have been found in the way. But his shyness was ; and the relation that on his side was one of lore, admiration, and respect, remained in consequence on a more distant footing than the circumstances naturally led to, or would have warranted any one in expecting. The evangelical zeal of the young evangelist won of itself its way with my father, it went so entirely with his feelings and desires as to have proved sufficient to have drawn him to him with the cords of a strong sympathy. Like all the early Independent preachers, full of evangelical, earnest zeal for the salvation of souls, Mr Wardlaw took to village and street preaching; and in the early years of his career, long ere the localities had so completely changed as they have lately done, there were few of the suburbs or outskirts of Glasgow that had not their reminiscences of the young minister of Albion-street preaching at cross-roads, in fields, barns, schoolrooms, and kitchens. A regular station during many years was the top of Balmannostreet, where on Sabbath evenings, mounted on a chair, he proclaimed the unsearchable riches of Christ. Bridgeton was then separated from Glasgow, and the Independents, constrained by a feeling then running strong against their principles, kept much to themselves. On Sabbath mornings they were accustomed to meet to “go up” in company to Albion Street, and in the same manner to return : their departure causing quite a sensation in their quiet neighbourhood, and evoking the remark as they passed along, “There goes Wardlaw’s brigade!” Of the church, as originally formed, a large proportion were weavers from this and other surrounding villages. And when Mr Gentle, after a peiiod of eighteen years, in the year 1824, at the urgent request of the pastor, although on his own part with characteristic “fear and dread,” was set apart to the office of deacon —there were then remaining many weavers in the membership, some of whom were his own workers. His “ diocese,” a 3 was fitting, was made to include the weaving villages of Camlachie, Parkhead, Tollcross, Bridgeton, &c., and it was in no perfunctory style that he performed the duties of his office. His plan was, in an easy, unofficial, entirely friendly and brotherly fashiou, to wend his way of an evening to the homes and weaving shops of his scattered parishioners unannounced, and as a friend whom they were always glad to welcome—a privileged visitor. And often might he be seen on a summer’s evening, little one of his own in hand, persuing this happy mission for the Master. There he was, pacing the straight walk of the yard or garden of the good man, who, by his craft was a weaver, earnestly engaged in conversation upon things concerning the kingdom ; the knight of the shuttle,only stopping and stooping now and agaiu, in his floral enthusiasm, to Bhow, with excusable pride, his spiritual overseer some favourite tulip or rose. Or he might be discovered seated at the end of a loom enjoying a few minutes’ easy conversation with laugh and joke before entering the home sanctum of the good man’s but-an-ben. But that consummation attained, he got seated amidst the congregated family—the guidewife smiling and pleased, yet with a delicate modesty peculiar to Scottish females, sitting just slightly back, slightly out of line ; Sandy himself in an easy posture on the chair opposite to Mr Gentle, (who filled a rough built seat in the cosy corner) regarding the visit as a real treat, and desirous of its being prolonged; his apron tucked up and twisted round his waist, a sign of work put past; his coat donned and Kilmarnock coul pulled off; two of the bairns at mammy’s knee, one wee laddie holding on to daddy. The visit weuld not be a long one, and no affectation of superiority in any way would be discernible during it; the effect being, as a consequence, all the deeper and more beneficial. As regarded

himself, there can be no doubt, that in this ministry, undertaken entirely for the glory of God, he found more thorough enjoyment than in any engagement that he ever undertook. It was a,.work in which his whole soul entered ; and the day alone will reveal what has been the fruit of his labour. ■(To be continued?)