The Scottish Reformation | Page 7

found in the Report of the
Proceedings of the Council, pp. 969-984. When in America he also
delivered a course of lectures at Alleghany. His connection with the
Alliance brought him into close contact with some of the leading
Presbyterian divines of Britain and America, with whom his opinions
on the history of the doctrine, worship, and government of the Church
carried great weight; and Dr Schaff has acknowledged his obligations
to him, among others, in his well-known work entitled 'The Creeds of
Christendom.'
In 1885 the Church showed her appreciation of the Professor's
character and work by electing him to the Moderatorship of the General
Assembly, an office which he filled with a union of dignity and
authority which reflected honour upon the Church. If there are parties
in the Church of Scotland, he never identified himself with any of them,
and had learned to call no man master but Christ. He knew his own
mind, and could give forcible expression to his convictions when
occasion required. Naturally of an unassuming disposition and
unobtrusive manners, he never courted popularity nor sought to thrust
his opinions upon others; and it was for this reason, perhaps, that he
was deferred to even by those whose views were in some respects
widely divergent from his. It was doubtless for this reason also, as well
as for others, that he wielded so great an influence in the counsels of

the Church, and probably few men had more to do than he with the
shaping of her policy in recent years. In paying a tribute to his memory
at a meeting of the Presbytery of Edinburgh a few days after his
decease, the Very Rev. Dr Scott of St George's said that "by Professor
Mitchell's death the Church had lost a laborious, faithful, successful,
and honoured minister and professor, and perhaps one of the soundest
and wisest counsellors that the Church ever had. He was a man who
had friends in all the Churches. He knew how powerfully his influence
had told in the Church--always for conciliation, not only so far as those
without their own Church were concerned, but those within the Church
also. Had it not been for Dr Mitchell's influence the relaxation of the
formula regarding the subscription of elders would never have been
carried through."
A man of a very catholic spirit, and a lover of peace and concord, the
Professor, like many others who longed for a comprehensive union of
the Scottish Churches, would willingly have made all reasonable
concessions for the attainment of so desirable an object. But he was too
loyal a son of the Church of Scotland to consent to any unworthy
compromise, and in the hour of danger no one was more ready than he
to exert all the influence at his command in her defence. Readers of Dr
Boyd's 'Twenty-five Years of St Andrews' may remember the account
there given of the impression made by the Professor's sermon in the
Town Church in the height of the contest in 1885, when the question of
Disestablishment was brought so prominently before the electors of the
St Andrews Burghs. Dr Boyd says: "It had been intimated at the
services during the day that Dr Mitchell, our Professor of Church
History, would lecture in the parish church in the evening on 'Some
aspects of the Church Question deserving of consideration in the
present crisis.' Dr Mitchell was that year Moderator of the Kirk: and he
very seldom preaches. The church was filled by a great congregation. I
should not in the least degree have been surprised to hear Dr Mitchell
preach wisely and devoutly: that is his usual way. But it did surprise me
to find that man of calm and well-balanced mind fire up into a pathos
and vehemence which I have rarely seen equalled and never surpassed.
The question of disestablishment had been raised: and one was made to
realise how it stirs the blood of good men here. And not merely were

there this evening a fire, a keenness, a power of stirring a multitude to
the depth of their nature, which are rare indeed, but an incisive severity
of denunciation which few had expected from that calm, cautious man.
And if the preacher was at white-heat, so was the congregation long
before he was done. Several times there would have been loud applause,
had it not been hushed."
The attitude which the Professor maintained in regard to the doctrine
and worship of the Church was a strictly conservative one, and may be
best described in his own words, taken from an article included in the
list of his minor works. In that article, after quoting the advice tendered
by an eminent minister of the Church of England to a minister of the
Church of Scotland--"Stick