VERSES ON THE LATE MR. HALL.
in lucted in 1817. It will appear from the following lines that Mr. Hall, of Rose Street, seems to have been the first minister of the Secession who wore the gown. The lines are very curious, as shewing the feelings and prejudices of the time, and the estimation in which the writer held the Secession. We believe a copy of this piece is very rare; it appears never to have been printed in any other form previously than on a broadside.
"Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity."
HA, ha! Seceders! brag nae mair
O' your pretended zeal and care;
You ha'e o' pride as large a share
Your priests wear bands and pouthered hair,
And sic vain troke!
And now your vanity to crown,
Your great gun, Hall, has got a gown;
Which cleeds him a' baith up and down,
And by the same,
A clatter's raised through a' the town
Nought to his fame.
Oh! what wad Ralph and Eben say,
Had they been leevin' at this day,
To see him clad in sic array,
Wi' gown and bands?
They wad exclaim (as weel they may),
Oh, sinfu' lands!
Now pastors (wha should plainly show
The way in which we ought to go)
Are buskèd up like ony beau,
The truth o' which we see and know,
But ministers should lead the way,
Wi' humble lives and plain array,
And no like actors in a play,
Wi' braw dressed hair!
And a' their tassels vain and
gay,
To mak us stare.
A gude grey plaid o' Maggie's mak
Would better far become his back,
When he gaed to the kirk to crack
O' holy things,
Than bands and gowns, like Popish pack,
Wi' belts and strings!
Sic trappin's do but ill adorn
The mean proud hearts by whom they're worn,
But aff their backs they should be torn,
Wi' just disdain,
For meekness is man's uniform
In his mean frame.
Harm in the gown tho' there were nane,
Yet surely he is much to blame
When o' his hearers mony a ane
By it's offended;
He might hae lettin it alane,
For weel he kenn'd it.
It wad hae been some sma' excuse,
An' what we couldna weel refuse,
Had he ne'er read the dismal waes
In Holy Scripture,
And a' the ills which them pursues
Wha breed a rupture.
But he his vanity to feed,
Doth scatter them he ought to lead,
And unto such his help as need,
To clear the way,
He proves a stumbling-block indeed
This conduct of the Reverend Hall
Is widely different from Paul,
Who, rather than offend at all,
From eating flesh at nature's call,
Or drinking wine.
VERSES ON THE LATE MR. HALL.
Our Saviour lowly was and meek,
Whose great example a' should seek,
Laid down His life for elect sheep,
While Mr. Hall
His idiot gown resolves to keep,
Spite of them all!
Sic stiffness in a Popish priest,
Or those who at religion jest,
Might be excused (or we at best
Made less to wonder),
But in a minister of Christ,
'Tis a great blunder.
Some o' his folks are to be pitied,
For, waesucks! they are sadly cheated,
After collections aft repeated,
An' ither burdens on them heaped,
To offend them sae.
If I were them, I wad be clear
To stop him o' his vain career;
Speak bauldly out, and dinna fear
Though he may brag;
Tell him your conscience canna bear
That Romish rag!
And no about his testimony blast,
For now he is conforming fast;
He first wore bands, and now that's past-
He wears a gown!
Reading comes next, and then at last
His zeal fa's down!
I SING of Tinto and the Upper Ward,
Whose pleasing scenes demand our due regard;
And richly would my muse deserve the ban,
Did she o'erlook the village of Quothquan.
A straggling clachan! houses here and there,
With no attempt at order anywhere,
And yet a place, as clearly may be seen,
Where larger population once had been ;
For there a ruined church attracts the eye,
Enclosed within an ancient cemetery,
Whose frequent graves and tombstones clearly show
What multitudes of dead must lie below.
I take a special interest in Quothquan,
From a remembrance of a worthy man,
A native of the place, a man of mark-
John Thorburn-long the village patriarch.
Blest with the higher attributes of mind,
He was sagacious, simple, social, kind,
With touch of the romantic, yet withal
Solid, exact, and intellectual;
Or if the epithet you would prefer,
He was a thorough-born philosopher.
None ever knew the man, who had a doubt
He was our Scottish Socrates throughout;
The two in many things how much the same,
And yet with what diversity of fame;
But had the two been in each other's place,
Each would have acted with becoming grace.
Had Socrates been native of Quothquan,
And worthy John the Athenian,
The Greek his humble part had well sustained,
And John the fatal hemlock would have drained;
Yes, drained it to the very dregs had he
Believed he died for truth and verity.
But to the Scottish sage one praise is due
Which neither Greek nor Roman ever knew
He was a Bible Christian to the core,
Deep read and deeply skilled in saving lore;
But here his type is no old heathen sage,
A nobler type he had in later age-
That type he found in the apostle Paul,
Like whom he made the cross his all in all.
Till eighty years of age the worthy man
Seemed quite a part and parcel of Quothquan-
A plant indigenous, sprung from the ground,
Like any of the aged trees around;
Nor did I deem uprooted more could be
Of that old man than of the olden tree;
And yet he was uprooted at the last,
And far from Clyde his future lot was cast.
That day he left Quothquan no cheek was dry,
Loud sobbed the young, the old stood silent by,
All grieved to think the place should never more
Resume the blythsome look it had before.
Ah! how he strove his feelings to repress,
To hide his own and lessen their distress.
Right cheerfully he went on board the ship
Without complaint expressed by look or lip;
And when a long and stormy voyage threw
A damp and discontent among the crew,
His happy, hopeful look served to illume
Their sinking spirits and dispel the gloom.
When ten long years of residence abroad
Saw him, like Enoch, walking with his God,
When no Canadian heats nor wintry snows
Could sour his mind or spirits discompose;
When loving and beloved by all around,
'Mong strangers he a second home had found,
How like himself came on the closing scene—–
The tree decaying, yet the leaf still green.
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