Memoir of Norman Macleod (Volume 4)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XII. LAST YEARS AT DALKEITH. 1848--1851. AS this chapter must embrace the close of his ministry in Dalkeith, it affords a fitting occasion for forming an estimate of the influences which then affected his views and character. It was a time of mental growth more than of literary or public work. He had more leisure for study than he ever afterwards possessed. His travels in America and on the Continent, and his intercourse with representatives of almost every variety of Church, had enlarged his sympathies, and given him a living grasp of the questions at that time affecting Christendom. His spiritual life also, chiefly from the care with which he cultivated devout habits, became higher and more even in tone. The two men who had most influence on his opinions were Thomas Arnold, and his own relative, John Macleod Campbell. Arnold's Life had just been published, and the manliness, the healthy common sense, the unswerving truthfulness and Christian faithfulness of the great Head Master of Rugby, touched him profoundly; while the struggle which the book recounted against the sacerdotal pretensions of the "Young Oxford" school, on the one hand, and against the narrower section of the " Evangelicals," on the other, had more than a historical interest for him; for these two extremes, under different outward forms, were equally loud-voiced in Scotland, and in Arnold's writings he found a copious armoury for the defence of his own position at home. John Macleod Campbell was in many respects a contrast to Arnold. If the latter was clear and trenchant, the former was meditative, abstract, profound, almost to obscurity. Even when Norman was a student, Campbell used to have long and earnest conversations with him in his lodgings. He was then minister of Eow, and...