SCOTTISH DIVINES

It may astonish my friends who know me for my sometimes abrasive atheism, but a fact is a fact. In my final school year in Edinburgh, aged 17, I carried away the prestigious Rogerson Prize for Divinity, for which an essay on a religious subject was required. My essay was on Presbyterianism, the main form of church government in Scotland, and my effort was the usual mishmash of prejudice, expatiating on the merits of the Scottish way with many an unecumenical dig at Anglicans and Catholics. I did not move on to take holy orders – The Church of Scotland rather lacks the requisite pomp and while I hardly qualified as an embryo Cardinal, I would have enjoyed lolling on the red cushioned benches of the House of Lords as a mitred Anglican Bishop with lawn sleeves – but, alas, it was not to be. Yet I retain an interest in ghostly matters and my native Scotland has produced over the centuries a talented bunch of divines, some of whom I here recall.

My first divine is certainly obscure: William Kethe (died 1594) was a Scots Protestant clergyman, of unknown provenance, who lived for many years in exile in Germany and Geneva. His fame rests on his translation of the Psalms into English; he is credited with the words of the famed Old Hundredth (Psalm 100), to the tune by Louis Bourgeois, later updated by Ralph Vaughan Williams:

All people that on earth do dwell,

Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.

Him serve with mirth, His praise forth tell;

Come ye before Him and rejoice.

The long-enduring Scottish Metrical Psalter of 1650

Calvin’s Geneva church introduced the idea of congregational hymn-singing, hitherto the preserve of chanting clergymen. Kethe also translated Psalm 104 but his version was adapted and popularised in the 1830s by another Scotsman Sir Robert Grant, (1779-1838) a prolific hymn-writer and member of the evangelical Clapham Sect who became Governor of Bombay. His hymn is thought by many to be the very finest;

O worship the King all-glorious above,
O gratefully sing his power and his love:
our shield and defender, the Ancient of Days,
pavilioned in splendour and girded with praise.

O tell of his might and sing of his grace,
whose robe is the light, whose canopy space.
His chariots of wrath the deep thunderclouds form,
and dark is his path on the wings of the storm.

A more intellectually challenging Scottish Divine was Thomas Reid (1710- 1796). He was born in Strachan (pronounced “Strawn”), near Banchory, Deeside and, (like me!) attended Aberdeen Grammar School. He became a Church of Scotland minister and taught philosophy at Aberdeen University. He succeeded Adam Smith as Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow in 1764. His Inquiry into the Human Mind and the Principles of Common Sense was a major contribution to the remarkable 18^th century Scottish Enlightenment and he was the founder of The Scottish School of Common Sense. This philosophic school remained influential, especially in the United States, throughout the 19^th Century.  

Thomas Reid, looking pinched

Reid was impatient with the paradoxes of Locke, Berkeley and Hume; he did not accept Locke’s notion of “ideas”, no more than Berkeley’s idealism and rejection of the familiar world and Hume would dispute his distinction between sensation and perception. Reid was technically “an epistemological externalist” accepting the reality of the world as generally perceived. He was later attacked by Kant and most European philosophers turned their backs on him though Schopenhauer praised him and he enjoyed a revival in the writings of G E Moore. He saw no contradiction between debating the finer points of perception and a craggy belief in the Christian God.

A decidedly odd religious enthusiast was Alexander Cruden (1699-1770). Born into a well-to-do merchant family in Aberdeen, he was yet another alumnus of Aberdeen Grammar School and graduate of Marischal College, Aberdeen. Cruden published his famed Concordance in 1737. The Concordance cross-references every word in the Bible (there are 777,746 words in the King James Version). The amazing fact is that Cruden completed this task in less than 2 years, working entirely alone without patron or financial support. To produce such a work has been described as scaling “a Himalaya of tedium” and in medieval times would have employed some 50 monks but Cruden was an obsessive type and applied himself entirely to this task. His work has never been out-of-print and still graces many a clerical library.

Obsessive Alexander Cruden

Sadly Cruden was unbalanced and was confined to asylums on four occasions. He paid wholly unsolicited addresses to several unmarried ladies or widows, in a manner we would now call “stalking”. His Sabbatarian beliefs were fanatical and he carried a sponge about him to erase graffiti he found offensive. He was litigious and wanted to stand for Parliament – a sure sign of madness! Although often a figure of fun, he was honoured by his old university and endowed a modest bursary there, which happily is still awarded.

The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want;
  He makes me down to lie
In pastures green; He leadeth me
  The quiet waters by.

I end with everyone’s favourite Psalm, the 23^rd. It is usually sung to the tune “Crimond” and it is attributed to Jesse Seymour Irvine (1836-83) whose father was a Church of Scotland minister flitting between the parishes of Peterhead, Dunottar and Crimond-the-Town, all in my native North-East of Scotland. How the memories flood back at this great psalm!

SMD

28.12.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015