Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/222

170 from doing injury to persons or property, next proceeded to pack the meeting-house with a rabble, that a "row" might be created, especially in the dark evenings of the Lord's-days. On one occasion their annoyance took a somewhat humorous turn. Mr. Smith, one of the pastors of the church at Balchristie, about this time came on a visit to his friends, Messrs. Dale and Ferrier. It became known that these three individuals would officiate respectively at one or other of the three services on the following Lord's-day. In the interim, a punning placard, in imitation of a country blacksmith's sign-board, was posted on the large entrance door, having the following inscription:"Preaching here, by David Dale, Smith and Ferrier." It may be readily supposed that such a ludicrous advertisement would not fail to bring together a rabble for mischief or merriment. Mr. Dale and his friends outlived all this, and it may be here noticed, as an evidence of the fugitive nature of popular censure as well as of popular applause, that he who, in 1769–70, was mobbed in the streets for daring to preach without a presbyterial license, was, little more than twenty years thereafter, conducted to and from the same place of worship by the officers of the city corporation, with all the paraphernalia and pomp of a magisterial procession. In 1791, when Mr. Dale was elected a city magistrate, his brethren on the bench were all staunch churchmen. It was then, and for long afterwards, the practice of the magistrates and other civic functionaries to walk in procession to the parish church, escorted by city officers in uniform, with halberts, and other tokens of authority. Mr. Dale could not, of course, accompany the procession to the parish church, but rather than allow a magistrate to go unescorted to any place of worship, it was arranged that a portion of the city officers should, in livery and with halberts, attend him to and from his own place of worship, and wait on him while there. This it appears he submitted to, though rather inconsistent like with his religious principles.

The church over which Mr. Dale presided, though relieved of hostility from without, was, at no very distant period, tried by the withdrawal from its communion of one after another of its elders, and of many of its most respected members. Mr. Ferrier seceded on Glassite, and soon afterwards, Mr. Robert Moncrieff followed, on Baptist principles. It appears that Baptist principles had agitated the body from a very early period of its history. A pamphlet, the joint production of several of the members, in favour of infant baptism, was published in 1776. In the course of the following year it produced a reply from the pen of Mr. Archibald M'Lean. one of the pastors of the Baptist Church in Edinburgh, entitled, "Believers' Baptism in opposition to Infant Sprinkling." This reply staggered the faith of many of Mr. Dale's friends, for one of their own number of that day writes that "many of them left the church and were baptized, and amongst these was the chief compiler of the pamphlet in defence of infant baptism, which he had boasted of as being sufficient to confound all the Baptists in the world." Soon after this, Mr. Robert Moncrieff's secession from the church took place. This individual, brother of the late Rev. Sir Harry Moncrieff, Bart., who had been educated for the medical profession, which he practised in one of its branches for some time, is described by the writer quoted above as "a young man of considerable knowledge of the Scripture, and has a talent for communicating what he believes in a plain, easy, and agreeable manner, having a great command of language, and fluency of words." With Mr. Moncrieff, many of the members of the church seceded, and joined the Baptists; amongst these was Mrs. Dale, who continued in that communion to the end of her days. Mr.