MR BROWN ON A THRONE

Southland Times, Issue 19293, 11 July 1924, Page 8

MR BROWN ON A THRONE

SCOTTISH ASSEMBLY OPENING. A MINER’S DREAMS COME TRUE. I wonder if a young man named James Brown, hewing in a recess of coal far from the daylight of his native village of Annbank, ever dropped his pick and straightened his bent and blackened back for a moment’s rest and thought of the future? (wrote the Edinburgh correspondent of the London Daily Mail on May 15). I expect he did, for James Brown was ever a reflective man. Possibly he thought of himself, grown and aged, as an elder of the Church. Whatever he thought, never, never in all his dreams anil hopes can he have pictured himself, as we saw him here in Edinburgh yesterday and this morning, forty years on. FOUR VISIONS. Four scenes there have been, and to that strong, God-fearing young miner they would have seemed empty visions. Vision 1. —He would have seen the Lord Provost of Edinburgh bending low, and offering him on a cushion the keys of the city of Edinburgh, and he would have seen himself graciously returning those safeguards and symbols of the city. Vision 2.—He would have seen, as we saw this morning, a long line of divines, the ministers of the Church of Scotland, with here and there among them a layman, in scarlet and gold, or blue and silver lace, pacing slowly through the halls of the ancient Palace of Holyrood. And there in front of him he would have seen the great crimson dais of a throne, and on the steps of that throne himself, all alone, in a scarlet uniform with a sword by his side, stretching his white-gloved hand to man after man & the name of each was called, and each came forward and bowed to him. To each he gave a good grasp and true ere he passed out of his levee, the levee of the Lord High Commissioner. Vision 3.—1 think the lamp might almost have slipped from the hand of the young miner as he saw this dream. He would have seen the ancient cathedral of Saint Giles. The light of a fitful rainy day just showed against pillar and tomb. Tattered colours hung from the vaulting; the stained glass windows shone with their spiritual pageant. In the chancel were row upon row, the bailies of Glasgow and the bailies of Edinburgh in their ermine and chains. HIS WIFE. He would have seen himself more exalted still, this time seated on a lofty chair whose Gothic tracery rose to a point and mingled with the obscurity and shadows of the walls. On another such chair a little below him he would see his faithful and beloved wife in dark silks and a plumed hat at her devotions. He would have seen himself, too, standing on the steps of the cathedral, his hand to his brow in salute as the band of the Scotch soldiers drawn up in front crashed in his honour into the National Anthem, and their flag fell in salute to the ground. He would have seen his carriage with the brilliant outriders, and seen the streets thronged as his predecessors had not known them, and heard the welcoming cheers of the crowd. Seeing all this I believe he would have smiled to himself and taken up his pick and said, “Time I was getting to work.” Vision 4.—The final of the four scenes which we have just seen as realities would have been the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland at the Tolbooth Church. A church with benches on either side like a parliament, and a chair like a Speaker’s placed high at one end. THE KING’S REPRESENTATIVE. Again, the young miner would see himself in his now familiam uniform of scarlet with the cross in his breast, but this time he would note the assurance that has come to the Kng’s representative as he rises to deliver his address to the Fathers of the Kirk. The voice, the pure Doric voice, has grown determined and commanding as he inaugurates the deliberations. “His Majesty the King has commanded me, on the opening of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, to assure you of his great sense of your steady and firm zeal in his service, and of bis resolution to maintain Presbyter ial government in Scotland.” The voice has become firmly and deliberately inflected as he delivers himself of his own thoughts. “This Church must not stand aloof,” he says. “She must tread in that great borderland where politics and religion mix. “Yet ordinary politics will never be anything more than a rude handmaiden to the Church of Christ.” As in ringing tones the High Commissioner declares this, he stands straight and erect, and looks in his uniform like a very general. He is on his own ground. “We must have peace in the world; peace politically, peace industrially. We must have the Godlike desire of peace. “The honour of representing our gracious Sovereign is one I value more than words can express. King, Church, and people united in one common purpose. There is the manifestation of the stable foundations on which this great Empire rests.” Amid cheers, bowing with dignity to right and left, the Lord High Commissioner turns away. At which last vision no doubt the young miner would have shaken his head and roused himself, and stuck his pick well into the wall of coal. But it has all come true, and we have all seen it, and if it were not for some unfortunate bad weather, it would have been the greatest Assembly Day Edinburgh has known for years.