DRYBURGH ABBEY AND SIR WALTER SCOTT1 Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honourable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. -PHILIPPIANS iv. 8 (R.V. 1881). I Do not need to tell you-you must have felt it for yourselves as I was reading them-with what singular precision these words of the Apostle describe the manifold virtues which shone in the life, and are for ever mirrored in the writings, of the great bard of prose and verse, whose mortal part found so appropriate a restingplace in this sweet and sacred spot. There lies Sir Walter, beneath those fine first-pointed arches of the Lady Aisle," surrounded by the dust of many a White Canon and many a Border knight, amid the ashes of his own rough clan, in the heart of the scenes he sung,' within reach of that sound which of all others was most delicious to his ears in life, the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles.' Better, says the wise man, is the day of death than the day of one's birth; and the grave of a good man is at once more holy and more powerful than his birthplace. It is so in the chief case of all. Dear and sacred beyond words, as is the stablecave at Bethlehem in which our God and Saviour first drew human breath, yet dearer and more sacred still, more eloquent of the love of God, and therefore more central to the heart of Christendom, is the Holy Sepulchre, nigh unto the place where He was crucified, wherein they 1 Preached on the occasion of the gift of Dryburgh Abbey to the nation, May 14, 1918. laid His lifeless body, and He vouchsafed to rest till the third day. That brief occupancy has hallowed the grave for ever: it has turned it for the believer from a charnel-house into a sleeping-place: 'O may the grave become to me Cheered by this hope, with patient mind, I'll wait Heaven's high decree, Till the appointed period come when death shall set me free."; Such was the Christian faith and hope in which our poet died; in which also (as his biographer is careful to remind us), he was buried: with the words read over him: 'In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ; Who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto His glorious body, according to the mighty working whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself.' More than the loveliness of the situation, more than the 'fair sanctity' of the Abbey ruins, it is the grave of Scott that makes the gift of Dryburgh an event of national delight and of world-wide interest. The noble donor has the thanks to-day, not of Scotland alone, but of all mankind. For to the whole race Sir Walter was a gift—a gift of God— to charm at once and to instruct humanity: to think, himself—as the Apostle bids of whatsoever things are true, of whatsoever things are honourable, of whatsoever things are pure, of whatsoever things are lovely, of whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise-to revolve those things in his own mind, and then to pour them forth, with profuse and living illustration, first in volume after volume of easy, unaffected, and delightful verse; and then, with a profusion richer still, in hardly less poetic and more manly prose in that marvellous series of clean, generous, humorous, noble, and inspiring fictions-the Waverley Novels. The taunt has been urged against Scott that he was not a prophet. Certainly he was far too modest to assume the pose of one. Certainly he did not (in Zechariah's phrase) wear a rough garment to deceive. He was too reverent to 'stale with ordinary oaths' his regard for sacred things. But the regard was there, and it was operative. You see his life-long attitude towards religion in the lines with which, at the end of his first great poem, he introduces the hymn we have just been singing: 'Then mass was sung, and pray'rs were said, And solemn requiem for the dead; And bells toll'd out their mighty peal For the departed spirit's weal; And ever in the office close DIES IRAE, DIES ILLA, SOLVET SAECLUM IN FAVILLA; While the pealing organ rung. Were it meet with sacred strain Oh on that day, that wrathful day, When man to judgment wakes from clay, Be Thou the trembling sinner's stay, Though heaven and earth shall pass away.' I There, surely, speaks the prophet. These are the first notes of the great reconciling movement which was to revive, ere long, both in England and in Scotland, the very idea of the Church Catholic; to reveal the treasures, so long despised, of old devotion; to give back something of the beauty of holiness to the sanctuary and its services; and to teach us at once the continuity of the Church on earth through all the periods of its outwardly changeful history, and the glorious Lordship over both the living and the dead of our Saviour Jesus Christ. Dr. Pusey used often to dwell on Scott's 'indirect relation to the Oxford Movement '-a relation which (he said)' consisted not only in the high moral tone which characterised Scott's writings, and marked them off so sharply from the contemporary popular works of fiction; but also, and especially, in the interest which he aroused on behalf of ages and of persons who had been buried out of sight to an extent that to our generation would appear incredible.' In Scotland Sir Walter's influence undoubtedly contributed to that revival of the evangelical aspects of our religion which became so conspicuous in the year after his death. He hated the so-called culture which, sometimes, in the eighteenth century had turned (so he said) 'the pulpit of the Gospel into a school of heathen morality.' He praised the sermons of Dean Swift for their dogmatic faithfulness; nor, with all his pride in Joanna Baillie's tragedies, would he tolerate her when she published a work of a Socinian tendency upon the Person of our blessed Lord. 'What has she to do,' he indignantly exclaimed, 'with questions of that sort ?' and 'he refused to add the book to his library.' Alike the Oxford Movement and the Revival of Scottish Evangelicalism had 'the defects of their qualities,' but both of them contributed to the larger outlook which is ours to-day, and lent powerful aid to that work of Christian and Catholic reunion, whereof the mere initial stages are bearing among us such healing and refreshing fruit. Scott (as we have said) gave a powerful impetus to both movements; while the remarkable balance and sanity of his judgment condemned before hand the excesses and mistakes of both. We count him securely as a Prophet of Christian Unity—of unity, I mean, between the different sections of the Church of Christ. II But there is another form of Christian Unity not less-nay, even more-essential: the unity between high and low, between rich and poor, between young and old. No schism could be more disastrous than that which puts jealousies and enmities, instead of confidence and brotherhood, along lines like these. And here, again, I claim for Scott the praise of having ' prophesied against those errors, and preached the contrary truths and virtues-preached them, moreover, on principles confessedly and definitely Christian. I illustrate my point from a passage in Marmion, in the introduction to the sixth canto, which he dates from this parish, from 'Mertoun House, Christmas' (1808). It is in praise of another good thing we have since revived in Scotland-a keeping of Christmas religious at once and social: 'And well' (he sings) 'our Christian sires of old And brought blythe Christmas back again, Domestic and religious rite Gave honour to the holy night; On Christmas Eve the bells were rung; Then open'd wide the Baron's hall |