The Scottish Reformation. Alexander F. Mitchell
with Professor Mitchell's writings may know little or nothing of his personal history, it has been suggested that a short biographical sketch of him would form an appropriate introduction to this posthumous volume. The particulars woven together in the following narrative have been collected from various sources, some of them having been furnished by members of his own family.
Alexander Ferrier Mitchell was born on 10th September 1822 in the old ecclesiastical city of Brechin, with which his ancestors had had an honourable connection for several generations. His grandfather, Alexander Mitchell, and his father, David Mitchell, were both known as Convener Mitchell, probably as having succeeded each other in the convenership of the local guilds. On the maternal side he was descended from another Brechin family, some of the members of which had in their day served in various capacities abroad, one of his granduncles, Alexander Ferrier, after whom he was named, having been a doctor in India, and another, Captain David Ferrier, "a brave and bold sailor,"—in memory of whom there is a tablet on the east door of the old Cathedral—having made a voyage round the world in the Dolphin, in which also he ran the blockade in time of war into some of the French ports. Elizabeth, daughter of James Ferrier at Broadmyre, the Professor's mother, was a woman of good judgment and deep piety, and from her he seems to have inherited some of the most prominent features of his character. He was one of a family of three, his brother and sister having died, the former at Bloemfontein in South Africa, many years ago. In childhood he had a narrow escape, a cart having run over his body. He was picked up and carried home by the minister of the Episcopal church. As a boy he passed through more than one severe illness, and when taken for a change to Glenesk one summer he was described by a sympathetic friend as "a deein' laddie." To a mother's unwearied care and attention he owed, under the divine blessing, the recovery of his health, and to a mother's religious training he owed in no small degree that knowledge of the Holy Scriptures and that pious disposition by which he was distinguished from his earliest years. His elementary education he received at the grammar-school of his native town, and when fifteen years of age he proceeded to St. Andrews to prosecute his studies with a view to the Christian ministry.
In those days the journey thither was not made with the comfort and facility with which it is now accomplished; and the Professor himself has told how, on landing from the North off the ferry-boat at Newport, he walked all the way to St. Andrews—a distance of eleven miles—along with the carrier's son by the side of the cart which conveyed his luggage to its destination. Widely different as were the future careers of those two youths, there were various interesting points of contact in their lives, the one becoming an eminent doctor in the University, and the other filling the honourable position of a magistrate in the ancient city, while both were associated as members of the kirk-session of the Town Church.
At the very outset of his career at St. Andrews the young student from Brechin gained the highest distinction, having won the first bursary open to students entering the University, as the result of a competitive examination in classical scholarship. Throughout his course, both in Arts and Divinity, he maintained a highly honourable place in all the classes, distinguishing himself particularly by proficiency in Hebrew and other Oriental languages; while he won the commendation of his professors and the esteem of his fellow-students not more by his attainments in learning than by the sterling integrity of his character and the example of his consistent Christian life. Among his contemporaries at College were not a few who in after-life rose to prominent positions in the Church, one of these being his future colleague, the late Principal Tulloch, with whom he continued to have most cordial relations during a lifelong friendship.
On completing the usual curriculum of study at the University, Mr. Mitchell was in 1844 licensed to preach the Gospel, and after acting for some time as an assistant, first to the minister of the parish of Meigle and then to the minister of the parish of Dundee, he was in 1847 ordained by the Presbytery of Meigle to the pastoral charge of the parish of Dunnichen in his native county.
The Professor had been no passive spectator of the exciting and momentous events which were taking place in the Church of Scotland in the years which immediately preceded and followed his entrance on the work of the ministry; and in his address as Moderator of the General Assembly, four decades afterwards, he gives a graphic account of the impressions made upon him by his visits to the Supreme Court of the Church during that period of acrimonious controversy and painful separation. He says: "My first view of the General Assembly was gained in 1840, where from the public gallery of the Tron Church, in near proximity to Dr. John Ritchie, of the Potterrow (whose thoughts were already running in the same direction as those of his successors are now), I listened to the thrilling eloquence of Chalmers, and the calm, thoughtful utterances of Cook, and witnessed the first of those titanic encounters between Cunningham and Robertson, which the pen of Hugh Miller and the histories of the period have made classical. My next glimpse of the Assembly was in 1843, when, from the students' gallery of St Andrew's Church, beside my friend William Smith, afterwards of North Leith, I witnessed that sad sight which was never to fade from our memories, nor cease to influence the course of our thought and action—the scene when Welsh, Chalmers, Gordon, and many more good and devoted ministers, abandoning in despair the contest of ten years, withdrew from the Church of their fathers, to rear another in which they hoped to enjoy greater freedom and peace. My next view of the Assembly was in 1848, when, along with Dr. Tulloch, and two or three other college friends, I took my place for the first time as a member of the House, and when my old preceptor, then Professor of Church History in St. Mary's College, filled the chair. The Church at that time was but slowly recovering from the staggering blow she had received in '43, and the great Dr. Robertson was shaping out the splendid scheme which was to constitute her mission for the immediate future, and give to her the consciousness and confidence of reviving life. There were plenty of aged men there, whose lives had been honourably worn out in her service; a goodly band of young men, with not a little of the ardour and enthusiasm of youth; not a few of riper years, who, after weary waiting, had at last been promoted to pastoral charges. But that class which is the mainstay of a Church—the men who have attained to experience by years of labour in her service, and are still able to bear the burden and heat of the day—was more scantily represented."
The young minister, with so many conspicuous gifts and graces, was not allowed to remain long in the quiet pastoral charge at Dunnichen, where his ministry had been very acceptable; and in 1848—only one year after his ordination, and when not more than twenty-six years of age—he was appointed to the chair of Hebrew in St. Mary's College, St. Andrews, through which he had so recently passed as a student. He has himself told of the cordial welcome which he received from the venerable Principal Haldane and the other members of the professorial staff, and of the harmony with which they co-operated in the work of the College.
It was not then a common thing that so young a minister should be called to occupy such a position of dignity and responsibility, nor was Hebrew then so popular a branch of study as it has, for various reasons, since become in our Divinity Halls; but the ability and success with which the Professor discharged the duties of his chair, and the salutary influence which he exerted in many ways upon the students, more than justified the appointment. He was one of the first in Scotland to introduce a scientific method in the teaching of Hebrew, and his class-room became a place of very real work, necessitating careful preparation on the part of the students. Some of these, perhaps, thought him rather exacting, and the strict discipline which he enforced was not altogether to their liking; but there were very few who did not value his good opinion, or who would not have considered it a kind of degradation to incur his displeasure; while many, imbued with something of his own spirit, attained under his guidance to such a degree of proficiency in the knowledge of the sacred tongue as made the reading of the Old Testament in the original a source of interest and pleasure to them in subsequent years. Dr. William Wright, one of the greatest of Orientalists, was one of his students, and two others of them are occupants of Hebrew Chairs in Scottish Universities.
The appointment of the Professor to the Convenership of the Committee on the Mission to the Jews in 1856 marked a new era in its history, in respect both of the method of its operations and the field in which these have ever since been carried on. One of the results of the Crimean war, which had then but recently closed, was the opening of the Turkish empire for evangelistic enterprise; and it may be said that the Professor laid the foundations of the Mission in the Levant at