Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/294

242 which must be all or nothing, would be contented with only a part; and that when its present demands were conceded, the question would be settled to all future time, and a vexatious controversy for ever laid to rest. His prophetic declarations upon this occasion, while they have been but too well justified by succeeding events, were very different from that uncharitable sweeping condemnation with which it is so much the fashion to condemn every item of Popery, and every individual holder of its tenets. Addressing the Presbytery of Edinburgh, who had for the most part become enamoured of the soothing system, he said:—"I know nothing in the history of Popery, and I have been able to discover nothing in the manifestations of its spirit, that will warrant me to hope that the removal of Catholic disabilities will induce the priesthood of the Romish Church to remove the seal which they have dared to put on the Word of God, and to permit us to carry the Bible, without let or hinderance, among the multitudes from whom they have hitherto excluded it. I give them credit for a deeper and a stronger attachment to their faith, than to suppose that any political boon, or, as they think it, any act of political justice on our part, will have any weight with them in rendering them more willing to see their flocks transferred to the guardianship of Protestant pastors; nor can I conceive that they will do otherwise than smile at our simplicity when we avow a hope, that by conceding to them the privileges which they now demand, we shall have disarmed their hostility to our tenets, and drawn them over to what they think our heresies and our delusions. I should be disposed to draw the very opposite conclusion. It is by their fidelity to their common cause their determined, persevering, united efforts—such efforts as a religious union alone could make—that they have compelled Government to adopt the measures now in progress for conceding to them certain privileges. I say, compelled; for, after all the attempts to explain it away, this is in reality the acknowledgment of the highest political authority in the empire. And are they so unskilful either in spiritual or political tactics—so little able to avail themselves of the vantage ground on which this measure, if successful, will place them—as to be less careful of the union which has secured so important a step towards the attainment of what must be the wish and ultimate object of every consistent Catholic—the supremacy of their system?" Such were his sentiments upon the question of Catholic emancipation in 1829, and the events of the present day but too well attest their soundness.

After this decided stand, which Dr. Gordon made in opposition to the most esteemed and talented of his brethren, events succeeded of still more imperious urgency, which dragged him from his peaceful seclusion, and sent him into the arena. These were, the preludes to the disruption of the Church of Scotland, and finally the disruption itself. Still, however, his gentle spirit predominated, and throughout the storm of controversy that raged for years, his words were like oil upon the troubled waters when their commotion is at the fiercest. So high, however, was his intellectual standing, and so well understood the uncompromising conscientiousness of his principles, that this very gentleness which, in an inferior or doubtful person, might have gone for nothing, only seemed, in the case of Dr. Gordon, to give his opinions greater weight and ascendancy. The public, that looked on in doubt and uncertainty, were compelled to respect a cause which had such a man for its advocate, and even the wavering of his own party were confirmed, when they saw his hearty zeal in its behalf, and remembered his well established character for wisdom, circumspection, and