1867-1872

INDIA—THE APEX—THE END

The vision of millions upon millions in the far East worshipping idols had long haunted Macleod’s imagination, and, with his sense of apostleship waxing as the years went on, heathendom became more and more to him a mystery and a horror. The Asiatic was a man: reach his heart, it was the same as ours, and must open to the religion of humanity. To Macleod’s stamp of Christian the whole idea of foreign missions was peculiarly congenial; every enterprise in that field, whatever Church had the credit, he hailed with enthusiasm. In 1858, when Angell James was appealing for a hundred missionaries to go to China, Macleod sent forth, in the Edinburgh Christian Magazine, a voice to the British Churches:—

Let us say in justice to our own deep conviction as to the momentous importance of this subject—to the grandeur of the cause which our revered father advocates—to the sense we entertain of the clear and imperative duty of the Church of Scotland at this crisis—that we bid him God-speed with all our hearts; and express our firm faith that these hundred missionaries and many more will soon be in the field, with some contributed by our own Church, to take part in this glorious enterprise about to open for the establishment in China, so long enslaved by Satan, of that blessed kingdom which is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

The Church of Scotland had a footing in India, and it was there that his interest was fixed. There be rosy thousand-pounders whose eloquent wails over the dearth of missionaries draw handkerchiefs in the ladies’ gallery, and if the cynic says that the command is not ‘Get others to go’ but ‘Go ye,’ it is good exegesis and a palpable hit. But Macleod was busy among the heathen at home, and from 1864, when he was made convener of the India Mission, his mind was possessed with the thought of an embassy to Hindostan. The Sabbath question arose, and, expecting ostracism, he gave up his prospect; indeed, a section of the committee, as he afterwards learned, moved for his resignation. The General Assembly, however, in 1867, upon advices from Calcutta, requested him to visit India. ‘How strange and sudden,’ he wrote, ‘that I, who two years ago was threatened with deposition and made an offscouring by so many, am this year asked by the Assembly to be their representative in India!’ Among his acquaintance far and near, high and humble, the news that Norman Macleod was going to India created a sensation. The Queen wrote: ‘his life is so valuable that it is a great risk.’ He received letters from Stanley, Helps, and Max MÜller. The presbytery gave him a dinner, at which the chair was taken by the chief Sabbatarian. Fifty private friends, including ministers of all denominations, entertained him at a feast. He in his turn held a luncheon, in the course of which he perambulated the tables, speaking the befitting word to each of thirty guests. Portraits of himself, his wife, and his mother, painted by Macnee, were presented to him; and four hundred working men gave Mrs. Macleod her husband’s bust in marble. There was a general feeling that he might never return. ‘Come life or death,’ he said of his undertaking, ‘I believe it is God’s will.’ For several weeks he had worked so hard, and gone through so much excitement, that when he started he was utterly worn out; and throughout the tour, from first to last, he was afflicted with a swelling of the limbs.

Fortunate he was in having for his fellow-deputy Dr. Watson, the minister of Dundee, who thought with him on religious matters (though pawky to the point of genius) and was kin to him in spirit. To hear these two in the parts of Highland drovers was, by all accounts, the greatest treat in the world. After a short stay in Paris, where Macleod preached, and got a collection for the expenses of the deputation, on the sixth of November they embarked at Marseilles, having chosen the overland passage. Macleod was charmed with the coast scenery about Toulon; Corsica and Sardinia reminded him of the Western Highlands; but in all the Mediterranean there was no sight that affected him so much as the house of Garibaldi. At Alexandria he learned from his old dragoman, whom he happened to meet, that travellers, ever since the advice given in Eastward, were examining the backs of horses and mules before they bought them, so that Meeki, able to cheat no more, had taken to another trade. Thus Macleod had for certain done one good thing in his life. On the voyage down the Red Sea, having once preached for an hour with the thermometer at 90°, he got a warning of what might be in store for him in India. ‘At the close,’ says Dr. Watson, ‘he was almost dead; his face was flushed, his head ached, his brain was confused, and when he retired to his cabin the utmost efforts were required to restore him.’ Old Indians poured jugs of iced water over his head. Yet, referring to the heat, he could write home, ‘I just thaw on, laugh and joke, and feel quite happy.’ One morning he got up at three o’clock, and in ‘a white Damascus camel-hair dressing-gown’ sat on deck, sneering at the Southern Cross. According to his wont he was taken up with his fellow-passengers, among whom were soldiers who had fought in the Mutiny, young officers on their way to Magdala, civilians who had governed provinces and spent years among the remotest tribes, politicians, journalists, and adventurers. Unlike his companion, he had a cabin to himself, and, in the course of the voyage, it was more and more like a pawnbroker’s shop. One day Watson perceived in the chaos a decent silk hat with its sides meeting like a trampled tin pan. ‘Man,’ said Norman, by way of explanation, ‘last night I felt something very pleasant at my feet; I put my feet on it and rested them—I was half asleep. How very kind, I thought, of the steward to put in an extra air cushion! and when I looked in the morning, it was my hat.’ In the bustle of the preparations for landing at Bombay he was heard crying, ‘Steward, did you see my red fez?’ ‘Is it a blue one?’ ‘No!’ roared Norman, ‘it’s a red one. If you see it, bring it, and if any fellow won’t give it up, bring his head along with it.’ So Watson writes to Mrs. Macleod. Macleod, for his part, complaining to Mrs. Watson of her husband’s inextinguishable laughter, declares, ‘But for my constant gravity he would ruin the deputation.’ He was presented with an address, signed by the captain, the officers, and the whole of the passengers, ‘expressing their grateful sense of the peculiar privilege they had enjoyed in his society and his ministrations.’

At the first sight of India, a land so full of romantic and mysterious interest, Macleod as a Briton, and still more as a Christian, was strangely moved. The working plan of the deputies may be stated in a dozen words: Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, with a loop of travel at each. In one city as in another Macleod had much the same round of triumphs and of toils. He conferred with missionaries of different Churches; inspected colleges and schools; and, accompanied by the highest aristocracy, both native and English, delivered sermons and addresses to enormous crowds. The Brahman worship he took pains to study, and made a point of quizzing the most cultured Hindoos. Socially he was treated as if he had been the special commissioner, not of the General Assembly, but of the Crown. Governors, military commanders, and bishops gave dinners and receptions in his honour. He was never well, but the killing fatigue at the centres was relieved by the trips to inland stations. From Bombay the deputies went to Poonah and Colgaum, whence returning they visited the caves of Karli. Sir Alexander Grant—afterwards Principal of Edinburgh University—at whose house Macleod met a select party of educated natives, has left this testimony: ‘He talks to them in a large, conciliatory, manly way, which is a perfect model of missionary style. I had the most charming talks with him, lasting always till 2 a.m., and his mixture of poetry, thought, tenderness, manly sense, and humour was to me perfectly delightful. I had no idea his soul was so great.’ At a bungalow on the road to Colgaum he had what he calls a dangerous encounter with a snake. He had wished to see a real cobra, and Dr. Watson reported that there was one outside basking in the moonshine. So off went Norman with his Lochaber crook. ‘Slowly and cautiously I approached, with uplifted staff and beating heart, the spot where the dragon lay, and saw him, a long grey monster! As the chivalrous St. George flashed upon my mind, I administered a fearful stroke to the brute; but from a sense of duty to my wife and children rushed back to the bungalow in case of any putting forth of venom, which might cause a vacancy in the Barony, and resolved to delay approaching the worm till next morning. Now, whatever the cause was, no one, strange to say, could discover the dead body when morning dawned. A few decayed branches of a tree were alone discovered near his foul den, and these had unquestionably been broken by some mighty stroke; but the cobra was never seen afterwards, dead or alive.... Why my friend laughed so heartily at my adventure I never could comprehend, and have always avoided asking him the question.’ Their route to Madras was by sea to Calicut, and across country by rail from Beypore. In their excursions from Madras they went two hundred miles, as far as to Bangalore. At Calcutta, where they arrived about the middle of January, Macleod, for the first time, received the impression of the imperial power of the British. Thinking of Government House, he says: ‘I have trod the gorgeous halls of almost every regal palace in Europe, from Moscow to Naples, and those of the republican White House at Washington, but with none of these could I associate such a succession of names as those of the men who had governed India.’ He got on terms of friendship with the Governor-General, Lord Lawrence, but a State dinner, given on account of the deputies, he had to forego. His health was giving way, as was inevitable from the high pressure at which he had been working in a burning climate. Nevertheless he went about the business of the embassy. One day, when he had been three weeks in Calcutta, he spoke at a morning meeting; held an examination in the General Assembly’s Institution, and addressed the students in the great hall; was the chief guest at a luncheon; and in the evening, at the most brilliant public dinner ever held in the city, delivered a great speech. That night ‘the bull,’ which had been ‘after him all day,’ caught and tossed him, and there was a sudden end to his work in India. From a kind of noble vanity he had, Macleod could never bear to have the appearance of shirking a task. Next morning, tolerably well with his way of it, he telegraphed home, ‘Off for the Punjaub’; but at a conference of doctors it was decided that ‘it would be attended with danger to his life should he persist in his intention of continuing his tour to Sealkote.’

Before quitting India he took a holiday excursion. He had seen the Red Indians in their encampment, he had been on the summit of the high tower at Moscow, he had sat on the Mount of Olives, he had floated in a raft upon the Danube; and now, behold him threading the lanes of holy Benares, mounted on an elephant! He saw the marble glories of Mohammedan Agra, and examined all the famous scenes of the Mutiny, especially Delhi, where his heart glowed as he remembered Nicholson. From Delhi he returned direct to Calcutta; whence, on board of an old man-of-war, in company with Lady Lawrence and her daughter, he sailed for Egypt. One little incident of the voyage is worth remembrance. He had been very attentive to the sailors, not only preaching in the forecastle on Sundays, but at other times reading to them selections from his sea stories. Now at Aden they had shipped an African boy who had been taken from a slaver, and when Macleod was about to leave the vessel, a deputation of the crew approached him, leading the little negro by the hand. ‘And now, your Reverence,’ said one, ‘I hope you won’t be offended if we name this here nigger boy Billy Buttons.’

Cairo and the Pyramids once more; then home by Malta, Sicily, Naples, and Rome.

Notwithstanding many predictions, he had come back, and in apparent vigour; but his health was undermined, India had done for Norman. Though to a certain section of the clergy he was still an object of suspicion, his magnificent services could not be denied, and, besides, in the Indian undertaking—his years and his physique considered—there was a gallantry, a derring-do, that stirred men’s spirits finely. So, on his first rising to speak in the General Assembly, after his return, he received an ovation. His speech, giving the results arrived at by the deputation, lasted for two hours, and, in an intellectual point of view, is perhaps the highest of all his works. There is a thorough grasp of the whole problem of the conversion of the Hindoos, with splendid ability in the presentation. Of the contest against the system of caste he says:

I hesitate not to express the opinion that no such battle has ever before been given to the Church of God to fight since history began, and that no victory, if gained, will be followed by greater consequences. It seems to me as if the spiritual conquest of India was a work reserved for these latter days to accomplish, because requiring all the previous dear-bought experiences of the Church, and all the preliminary education of the world, and that, when accomplished,—as by the help of the living Christ it shall,—it will be a very Armageddon: the last great battle against every form of unbelief, the last fortress of the enemy stormed, the last victory gained as necessary to secure the unimpeded progress and the final triumph of the world’s regeneration.

He shows how the evangelising methods with which we are familiar at home are inapplicable in India. ‘One of the noblest and most devoted of men, Mr. Bowen of Bombay, whom I heard thus preach, and who has done so for a quarter of a century, informed me in his own humble, truthful way,—and his case is not singular except for its patience and earnestness,—that, as far as he knew, he had never made one single convert.’ In insisting on education as the first means all authorities are now at one with him; but his other idea, that in India the various Christian sects should forget their differences, and aim at a native Church, which should be independent of Western creeds, is still a devout imagination.

Is the grand army to remain broken up into separate divisions, each to recruit to its own standard, and to invite the Hindoos to wear our respective uniforms, adopt our respective shibboleths, and learn and repeat our respective war-cries, and even make caste marks of our wounds and scars, which to us are but the sad mementoes of old battles?[7]

He foresaw a time when for idols would be substituted Jesus, the divine yet human brother; for the Puranas the Bible; for caste Christian brotherhood; and for weary rite and empty ceremony the peace of God.

The Moderatorship, which is the presidency of the General Assembly, is the highest office in the Church. The appointment lies with the members, but in practice the retiring dignitary, on the opening day, names his successor, who has in fact been chosen six months before at a secret conclave. Some such arrangement is necessary, as the Moderator has to wear an antique and elaborate scheme of apparel. Supposing the General Assembly were to reject the nominee, picture the situation! There behind the door would be the proud one, giving the last touch to his ruffles, casting a final glance at his buckled shoes, while a gentleman in mere coat and trousers was marching to the Chair! On the whole the college of Moderators has proved an excellent body of electors, and seldom has it done itself more credit than in promoting Norman Macleod. In 1869 he was, to be sure, the chief man in the Church, but the old Moderators were just the persons who would be most shocked by his view of the first day of the week. In offering to so recent a culprit the greatest honour which the Church had to bestow, they showed no little magnanimity, even were the idea of muzzling him not altogether absent. ‘I should like to be at the head of everything,’ Norman had said in his youth, and though too good a man to sacrifice any of his moral being to ambition, undoubtedly he was fond of power. The Moderatorship he at first, both by word and letter, refused, chiefly on the ground of his desire for freedom in the expression of his opinions. But of course it was all right!

During the session of the General Assembly the Moderator has an exciting round of social duties. Every morning he entertains a number of the clergy and their wives to breakfast, and at the dinners and receptions in Holyrood Palace he is the principal figure, next to the representative of the Sovereign. But the great event for the Moderator is the closing address, which he delivers about midnight to a mixed crowd. After that comes the most impressive scene of all, when they stand and sing—

‘Pray that Jerusalem may have
Peace and felicity;

Let them that love thee and thy peace
Have still prosperity.’

Speaking of the creed Macleod was so vague (mindful of the old hands after all) that he might as well have passed the matter off with one of his favourite quotations—

‘I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me!’

But of his oration there is one part that, were it only known, would grow in importance the more the cry for disestablishment was heard. The age, he says, is against, and rightly against, monopolies of every kind. To defend a State Church on the ground of treaties is idle; the question is whether it satisfies the nation. Nor does he argue for the preservation of the Establishment on any such ground as the need of a placard on the nation’s door, Religion recognised within. Voluntaryism is not only insufficient to meet the spiritual wants of the country, but involves the dependence of the clergy. On the other hand, the Church exists for the people, and has no interests apart from theirs. When it ceases to have the general confidence it loses its right to the endowments, which are held in trust for the common good. A national Church should therefore be comprehensive, and that to the furthest limit compatible with its existence as a Christian institution. Every ecclesiastical question, whether of government, of worship, or even of doctrine (provided only that the essential faith be kept) should be decided with a single eye to the national interest. Were he living now, Macleod would probably advocate the union of the presbyterian Churches at any cost to the Establishment except the loss of the teinds.

He was no sooner released from the General Assembly than he was off to Berlin, where he fixed missionaries for the aborigines of India. Home again, he resumed his peregrinations in the country, with ‘a fire in his bones for a Mission and a Church on the point of perishing.’ Oh it is wonderful, after his so strenuous day, to see the passion and hurry with which, in spite of the burden of the flesh, he struggles onward in the falling of the eve. His religious feelings and aspirations grew more and more absorbing and intense. As his life seemed not for long in this world, he thought the more of the next. Education beyond the grave, progress everlasting, was the favourite conception of his closing years.

In 1871, having an acute attack of gout, he was ordered by Sir William Jenner to take the waters at Ems. Towards the end of the year he owned to himself, for the first time, that he was unequal to his tasks. The least thing exhausted him, he could not sleep. Early in the following spring he went to St. Andrews to address the students. ‘We were all struck,’ wrote his old friend Shairp, then Principal of the University, ‘by his worn and flaccid appearance.... After describing very clearly and calmly the state of the mission and its weakness for want of both fit men and sufficient funds, his last words were—“If by the time next General Assembly arrives neither of these are forthcoming, there is one who wishes he may find a grave!”’ A few weeks later his infirmities had so increased that he was compelled to give up the India Mission. One more effort to rouse the Church he was resolved to make, were it his last. When in the ensuing General Assembly he rose to speak, the House was crowded and as still as death; it was clear to all that the warrior of God would soon enter into rest. His utterance was so rapid as to beat the reporters, but the speech was said to be the finest he ever made. The most striking passage is one rounding off his argument that the Westminster Confession was not for India:—

‘Am I to be silent lest I should be whispered about, or suspected, or called “dangerous,” “broad,” “latitudinarian,” “atheistic”? So long as I have a good conscience towards God, and have His sun to shine on me, and can hear the birds singing, I can walk across the earth with a joyful and free heart. Let them call me “broad.” I desire to be broad as the charity of Almighty God, who maketh His sun to shine on the evil and the good: who hateth no man, and who loveth the poorest Hindoo more than all their committees or all their Churches. But while I long for that breadth of charity I desire to be narrow—narrow as God’s righteousness, which as a sharp sword can separate between eternal right and eternal wrong.’

On his birthday he wrote to Shairp: ‘As I feel time so rapidly passing, I take your hand, dear old friend, with a firmer grip.’ That day, by his express desire, his family were all gathered round him. As husband, father, brother, son, never man was more devoted. After two weeks of restlessness and want of sleep, suddenly the end came. About midday on the sixteenth of June, reclining on the sofa, he uttered a cry. As his wife sprang to his side, he sighed and passed away.

The news that Norman Macleod was dead sent a thrill through the nation. His funeral was the most imposing ever seen in Glasgow. At the services, which were held in the Barony Church and in the Cathedral, ministers of different denominations took part. There were between three and four thousand in the procession, including magistrates, sheriffs, and professors, all in their official robes, and two representatives of royalty. As far as to the outskirts of the city the route was thronged with spectators. An old woman, blinking in the brilliant weather, was overheard saying to herself, Eh, but Providence has been kind to Norman, gi’en’ him sic a grand day for his funeral! He was buried beside his father in Campsie. There are monuments: a tablet at Loudoun; a statue near the site of the old Barony Church; and two stained windows at Crathie, the gift of Her Majesty the Queen.