"Rainy wi'oot the Principal" IV.

Robert Rainy was called to the Free High Church, Edinburgh, in 1854. The Free High Church was then located in the New College complex on The Mound, on one side of the New College Quadrangle (the old Free High Church tower is the small tower on one side of New College in this photograph. Today the old Free High Church is the New College Library, as seen to the left. But in 1854 its walls resounded to the sound of psalm-singing, and of Robert Rainy's preaching.
The Free High was the third of the great Edinburgh Free Churches, but Rainy was 'diverse from' his neighbours, Dr. Guthrie of Free St. John's, and Dr. Candlish of Free St. George's. Some found Robert Rainy's preaching heavy and dry, but the intellectual weight of his preaching was suited to what was in effect the College Church. His aphorisms were celebrated and, for the benefit of our readers (we are assuming that we still have any), we supply a few:
"There are those who make progress in adjusting the practice of sin to the use and even enjoyment of religious ordinances. We may wound the conscience with sins and swear it with repentances."
"If we perish, our greatest curse will be that we must take with us for evermore - down -down to the depths of hell, the image of God."
"What Christ will be to you in time, is set forth in the bread and the wine. What He will be to you in eternity, earth has no symbols to declare."
"Our whole heart and conscience have become miserably stunned by the fall."
"The pleasure which sin gives is the lying earnest of the promises it is never to perform."
"We trust in Christ - the answer to all possible questions. Who would look further who has looked so far?"
"Judgement to come is one of those things that need only to be wisely asserted. It does not need to be proved. Conscience will do that."
"We have justified ourselves and refused to justify Thee: we have forgiven ourselves and have shrunk from being forgiven by Thee: we have added yet this to all our sin that we have approved of all our sin."
"As sure as sin strikes up against law, so sure will law in the end strike down sin.
"Men do not believe that religion could ever be pleasant - that the God who made them can make them happy."
"It was never a lie that spoke the Gospel to human needs: It is far too good to be false."

It was searching preaching that made people think about God and about Christ. He preached Christ, and therefore made up for whatever his preaching might have lacked.
Based in Edinburgh, Rainy was able to study voraciously. He developed a great love of the Church Fathers, and especially Augustine (Dr. Haykin will sympathise here). Through his life Rainy treasured a desire to write a biography of Augustine, but God intervened in providence, and it was a task that he never performed, to the regret of many, including the present writer. His general reading increased too, and he started to grapple with the problems of the Higher Criticism.

During the Free High Church ministry another, more pleasant change came into Robert Rainy's life. On December 2nd, 1857, he married Miss Susan Rolland, a young member of the Free High Church. Rainy was nearly thirty-two, his bride was twenty-two.
In 1859 Rainy first began to take an interest in the Assembly. The occasion was the 'Glasgow Students Case', in which a professor at the Free Church College Glasgow had charged some of his students with heresy. Rainy's speech was said by some to have been "the best for years delivered in the Assembly." Young Free Churchmen began to look to Rainy as a leader.

In 1861 Principal Cunningham died, and the Assembly of 1862 came to make up the loss. They appointed Robert S. Candlish to the post of Principal, and Rainy was elected to fill the post of Professor of Church History. This time Rainy accepted. His interest in the early Church had convinced him that it was in the College lecture-hall, not the pulpit, that his life's work lay.

Next time, God willing, we shall see how Rainy began that life's work.