Archibald Hamilton Charteris
Minister New Abbey 1859 – 1864
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A leading figure of church reform, he later became a Professor of Biblical Criticism at the University of Edinburgh and was later chosen as the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. He is credited as being the father of the Woman's Guild.
This text is an abridged and edited selection from “The Life of the Very Rev. Archibald Hamilton Charteris” by the Rev. Hon. Arthur Gordon, 1912.
‘My ministry in St. Quivox ended in 1859. I had been only thirteen months there. Dr. Robertson's care for my health made him advise me to accept the offer of New Abbey, which was made to me by the Crown, Mr. Charles Baillie, afterwards Lord Jerviswood, being at that time Lord Advocate. The parish (New Abbey) was in a state of unrest; some of it comical enough. The chairman of a public meeting of the congregation reported to the Home Secretary that different motions had been made and voted upon; and added a private note that in his opinion the Home Secretary would do well to disregard the contending motions proposed at the divided meeting. The Home Secretary answered that “he quite agreed with Mr. Copland”; and this answer led to inquiries and information which divided the people still more. The humour of the thing, however, touched the parish; and fun, not fury, prevailed. But it was not a united petition to the Crown that was presented or intimated.
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On his deathbed my grand-uncle, the Rev. James Hamilton (minister New Abbey 1813-1859) had told me that he would like me to be his successor; and, though with a heavy heart, I bade farewell to St. Quivox.
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Dr. Charteris' narrative resumes: — ' It was a great change to come in July 1859 (as the fifth minister since 1090) from the sea-board of Ayrshire and the sight of the beautiful hills of Arran to the foot of Criffel. St. Quivox was full of mines, and had great people dominating its social life. New Abbey is a purely rural parish, and there was only one resident heritor, who was not a member of the parish church. There was no one to offer luncheon on the day of my induction to the Presbytery, the members of which had come from considerable distances; therefore I asked them to the manse, hastily furnished so as to be ready. This showed how different were the circumstances from those of St. Quivox.
‘There were few incidents in my life during the five years of my ministry, but there was a steady current of occupation, and in no other five years of my life have I existed without a doctor's prescription. This was probably due to my being much on horseback. The parish is about eleven miles long with a village at each end, and the village of New Abbey itself, three miles from one end and about seven from the other. It did much for my health: and my riding was among charming scenery, by hill and loch and the green shores of the Solway. It is the loveliest of parishes. The sea is half a mile from the manse when the tide is full: eight miles when the tide is out. Sweetheart Abbey, where Devorgilla, Lady of Galloway in her own right, interred the heart of her husband, father of the unfortunate Scottish King John Balliol, is exquisite even in its ruins. Devorgilla was a remarkable woman, and as builder of Balliol College, Oxford, of the Old Bridge of Dumfries, and of this Cistercian Abbey, showed her zeal in promoting education, commerce, and religion. The inscription on her tomb ran: —
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“In Devorgil, a sybil sage doth dye, as
Mary contemplative, as Martha pious;
To her, oh deign, high King! rest impart,
Whom this stone covers, with her husband's heart."
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‘One of the first things I did was to call a meeting of friends interested in such matters to try to preserve the sacred ruins from falling to pieces through the action of the weather. A very hearty meeting assembled in the manse, among them Thomas Aird of the Dumfries Herald, and W. R. MacDiarmid of The Courier. We raised about £400 that day, and soon after were beginning to stop gaps in the walls with cement, and to restore some damaged mullions in the windows, when Mr. Oswald (the chief heritor in New Abbey as he had been in St. Quivox) offered to carry out our programme, if we would entrust him with the funds. A question of property arose, as he knew. Inside the walls the ground belonged to the kirk-session, but up to the walls outside it belonged to him and another. It seemed best to let him take up our proposal, though I have never been sure that in so doing we were acting wisely, or that enough was done for the venerable shrine. Decay, however, was arrested, the broken mullions were restored, and Sweetheart Abbey will remain for generations the gem and the centre of the lovely valley where the wise and saintly lady planted it in the thirteenth century. Principal Shairp and Dean Stanley were among the many Balliol men who came to see it in my time, and Shairp's lines remain. They begin: —
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“In grey Criffel's lap of granite,
Rests the Abbey saintly fair,
Where the wise heart that did plan it.
Found its sacred lodgment there."
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*My parish work did not begin with any elaborate plans. The Ayrshire labours had so exhausted me that for many months my mind rested in the new manse. Meanwhile I systematically visited my parishioners, many of whom I had known in my uncle's time. Almost everybody belonged to the parish church, and the few who did not were, if anything, more eager to welcome me than “my own people." Up at Beeswing, six or seven miles away, there was a small Free Church, serving a useful purpose for the three parishes which met there, but in the lower and more populous part of the parish the Free Church never had a footing. Mr. James Hamilton was an unwavering man, in ecclesiastical politics a Moderate, in doctrine and work a decided Evangelical, and his faithful ministry of forty-five years left no ground of dissension or dissent, so that I found a united parish. He was a stern Protestant, teaching Protestant catechisms in his Sunday school and Bible-class; but one of my first visitors, an old Roman Catholic woman who asked help, said of him quite truly, “They say he didna like my kind of folk, but he was aye kind to me."
‘There had always been Roman Catholics in the parish, the mason, the joiner, and the tailor, and their ancestors for generations had held by the “old faith”; but they were parishioners first and Papists second. They called for my visits in their illness. I officiated at their funerals. My colleague the Roman Catholic priest, trained in Spain, was my intimate friend; and the only letter to the parish, announcing his early death when on a distant journey, was sent to me. His successor, trained in Ireland, was a man of different stamp; an able, but narrow and ambitious man, who had once been in a prominent charge elsewhere: and he gradually altered all the relations between his flock and the parish minister. He passed away, and I believe things have largely fallen into their former conditions. At a mission sale in this manse garden in my successor's time, ten years ago, I met as one of the interested parishioners the retired priest of the parish. I was aware that more than a score of my young Roman Catholic parishioners were in attendance at the parish schools, and I believe that something like this number had been in attendance since first a parish school was established, without one single case of proselytism or violence done to conscience during all the generations of the past. The parents told the teacher what part of the teaching they wished their children to be exempted from, and in all cases it was done as they desired.
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* I not only visited my parishioners regularly, but called them at least once a year to catechetical meetings at schools and large farm-houses. In these meetings I expounded a portion of the Shorter Catechism. I asked the children to occupy the front seat, that they might be catechised, and I expounded the doctrines for the older folks; but several excellent old people, who knew they were strong in the catechism, insisted upon sitting among the youngsters, that I might question them in their turn. In that well-taught parish there were few who chose a back seat in order to avoid questions. It was easy to expound the splendid system of doctrine where everybody knew the words, and I always heard that the people were glad of those meetings. In my next charge I found a mighty difference when I wished to teach doctrine.
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‘I had a happy time riding up and down the long parish on my pony. It followed me like a dog if I left my saddle and walked a bit. I remember when calling on a farmer, an Original Seceder, who dwelt full seven miles from the manse, that when he learned I had come afoot, he said : "You walkit, sir, I did not think you were such a predestinarian!"
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'I ought to say that I was sustained in all my work by three faithful elders, wise counsellors of a young minister in every difficulty, and. always willing to share his responsibility. It was impossible not to grow in one's opinions when brought into close contact with things hitherto seen at a distance. For example, one of the farmers took me to see a field of oats, about ten acres in extent, into which he said it was of no use to bring a scythe, for the rabbits had eaten all that was worth taking.
He also told me of a clause in his lease which bound him not to complain of rabbits. No wonder that the Scottish farmers voted for their own burning question of ground game, and so helped to compass the destruction of the Irish Established Church. I then learned a lesson in tenant right which I have kept through life.
'In a country parish we can often see things in their naked reality which are not seen, or not remarked, in a town. There was an old man, possessed of considerable means, who made me one of his trustees, a charge which I took for the sake of his grandchildren. I have never seen such a case of absolute slavery to avarice. His only daughter died next door to him, and when the water came through the roof and fell upon her bed, I suggested to him to mend the roof; and he said, “Na ! na ! many a woman as good as her has had to come on the parish." Her funeral day came, and he and I were next to the hearse. Just when the little procession was about to start he cried out, “Bide a wee," and went into the house where the coffin had been lifted. I followed him, thinking he might be ill, but I found him drawing with both hands the fragments of the funeral bread into a heap which he carefully locked in a chest. Poor old man, his own time came soon after, and I did my poor best to comfort and prepare him. Within a few minutes of the end, he was earnestly trying to speak, and I bent over him to hear his last words. I thought he would be saying something that showed he was softened. What he did say was: “Tell them to buy the murnins in Dumfries; it’s a hantle cheaper than at K’s “(the village shop).
‘I have said that the people were a thoroughly trained and thoughtful people. Yet there were times when one found that even among them the religious testimony was not clear. On one occasion when the neighbours were gathered for a little prayer meeting I asked for a New Testament, and the man and wife rushed hither and thither to find one. We thought they were looking for a particular copy, but at last we heard him say: “Jean, where can it be? I saw a Bible when we were flitting." This was in August, and the flitting had been in the previous May.
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‘These stories rather tell against my dear old parish, but as I look back, there come to my mind a thousand proofs of true religion as ruling in New Abbey. I think every man and woman in the parish subscribed for the Endowment Scheme. My housekeeper, a Free Church woman, gave £5; the farmers from £20 downwards. The resident heritor, though an Episcopalian, came to swell our little heap. In the same way, when the distress of the Lancashire cotton operatives made pathetic appeal to everyone, the parishioners formed themselves into a committee, and in twenty-four hours gave me (I think) £80 to send to the sufferers. The givers were all farmers and cottars and tradesmen. They were good and honest people, to whom it was my privilege to minister for five years: many, indeed, of my wishes they unhesitatingly carried out: many of them were anticipated. It was a great pleasure to me when they unanimously chose James Stewart Wilson as my successor, and under his long, faithful, and devoted ministry they have grown to better things in support of missions, home or foreign, than those with which they gladdened me.
‘I sometimes tell a story which often amused me when it came to mind. Two excellent old sisters, who owned a small property within the “precincts," said to me on my first visit to them, " Dinna waste your time, sir, calling on the neighbours, but gie us aye a look in when you go by." I remember when I decided to go to the Park Church one of them charged me, more in sorrow than in blame, for having misled them the previous Sunday by asking the congregation to sing : —
“This is my rest, here still I’ll stay.
For I do like it well."'
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Some still alive in New Abbey remember Mr. Charteris, and recall the cheery effervescence of humour which blended in his speech with the seriousness of his high aim. ‘Every man has corns, if you tramp near enough his feet,' was one of his sayings. Catching an old parishioner in the act of scattering Indian corn to her poultry, he hailed her with chaffing praise: ' The hand of the diligent maketh rich.' But one day in the commonplace church which Carlyle called ' a Presbyterian dog-kennel,' built on to a portion of the grand old ruined Abbey, in commencing his sermon he very solemnly announced that he would preach ' as a dying man to dying men ' ; and then went on to preach a sermon which one hearer at least never forgot.Again, in New Abbey, we find Mr. Charteris throwing his strength into the pastoral care of the young, giving special addresses to them and fostering the Sunday School; his Bible-class was largely attended by adults as well, in which he made immense use of the faculty of description. He often made sacred topography the scaffolding on which to rear the edifice of religious teaching, utilising Stanley's Sinai and Palestine and all available kindred works. A lecture on Dr. Samuel Johnson and addresses such as that on Big Bad Boys and Sabbath Schools were much in request at the Dumfries Association and elsewhere.
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When he preached in Dumfries churches, crowded congregations filled the pews, and sometimes many were even turned away. He writes, ' Would that I were fitter to address such numbers. Sermons of the “high pressure " kind, which evening congregations demand, are not my natural style.'
