"Rainy wi'oot the Principal". XXVII.
Rainy had successfully piloted the United Free Church through her first crisis, and all seemed well. Things seemed to be looking up, even in the Highlands. Rainy seemed to be about to settle down to a quiet life as a Church leader. He was able to turn his attention to all the various matters that were concerning the Church and the wider world.
One of the matters that came to his attention was the Boer War. Maybe his thoughts on that war would be of interest today:
"I was against the war as clearly not justifiable, but once it was decided and entered on I regarded further discussion as vain. The thing had to go through; and it must be settled in such a way as to avert the risk of the thing breaking out again."
Rainy's son George, having graduated wth a first from Oxford, went on to take the Indian Civil Service Examination. He came first and so he went out to India, where he was quickly promoted to an under-secretaryship.
Rainy took a keen interest in his son's career, noting that some quarters of the Civil Service seemed to attach high importance to certain qualifications that were less than academic. Rainy commented wryly in a letter to George Rainy:
"Why is there not an exam in dancing along with the others - two or three papers and a demonstration? It seems comforting to refelct that while other posts may be swamped by natives, under-secretaryships will continue to be a British preserve, for what self-respecting native - Mohammedan especially - would dance?"
Principal Rainy was concerned, of course, that the culture of the British Indian Civil Service was not one in which evangelical faith was encouraged. Far from home and from his father, George Rainy would be tempted to enter into the usual round of dances, tiger-hunts and other social affairs.
Even more dangerous was the temptation to keep up Bible reading and prayer in a purely formal manner. Mindful of this Rainy wrote:
"So much alone as you are and pressed with work, it is perhaps difficult to keep sight of the main things. If you had only three minutes for Bible reading, I would give one to reading and three to thinking about it in God's presence. It is the same with prayer: shorter prayers, if it must be so, but let us think a little before we begin."
In 1901 Rainy was able to attend the 450th anniversary of the University of Glasgow. Indeed, in the years immediately following the Union, he seemed to be everywhere. He was also able to do some of the literary work that he had not been able to engage in. While it was too late for him to write his biography of Augustine, he was able to turn some of his lectures on Church History into a book giving an historical survey of the life and thought of the early centuries of the Church from the accession of Trajan to the Fourth General Council. Of the book Alexander Whyte said, "I know of nothing else like it." There is nothing else like it. Although the information in the book is rather old now, I still know of nothing else like it. It goes by the name of The Ancient Catholic Church, and there are usually a few dozen copies available on ABE books. Rainy sums up men and movements in a few pithy sentences. Tertullian, for example, he says, "combined in himself the Puritan and High Churchman, with even a touch of the Fifth Monarchy man thrown in."
The other books Rainy published at this time were an expository commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians and a volume of sermons entitled Sojourning with God. Both represented his pulpit ministry. Rainy was before the public as an author as ever before.
Rainy was enjoying a brief period of peace - a peace that would prove to precede a great storm.
But next time, God willing, we shall continue for a while in that peace.
One of the matters that came to his attention was the Boer War. Maybe his thoughts on that war would be of interest today:
"I was against the war as clearly not justifiable, but once it was decided and entered on I regarded further discussion as vain. The thing had to go through; and it must be settled in such a way as to avert the risk of the thing breaking out again."
Rainy's son George, having graduated wth a first from Oxford, went on to take the Indian Civil Service Examination. He came first and so he went out to India, where he was quickly promoted to an under-secretaryship.
Rainy took a keen interest in his son's career, noting that some quarters of the Civil Service seemed to attach high importance to certain qualifications that were less than academic. Rainy commented wryly in a letter to George Rainy:
"Why is there not an exam in dancing along with the others - two or three papers and a demonstration? It seems comforting to refelct that while other posts may be swamped by natives, under-secretaryships will continue to be a British preserve, for what self-respecting native - Mohammedan especially - would dance?"
Principal Rainy was concerned, of course, that the culture of the British Indian Civil Service was not one in which evangelical faith was encouraged. Far from home and from his father, George Rainy would be tempted to enter into the usual round of dances, tiger-hunts and other social affairs.
Even more dangerous was the temptation to keep up Bible reading and prayer in a purely formal manner. Mindful of this Rainy wrote:
"So much alone as you are and pressed with work, it is perhaps difficult to keep sight of the main things. If you had only three minutes for Bible reading, I would give one to reading and three to thinking about it in God's presence. It is the same with prayer: shorter prayers, if it must be so, but let us think a little before we begin."
In 1901 Rainy was able to attend the 450th anniversary of the University of Glasgow. Indeed, in the years immediately following the Union, he seemed to be everywhere. He was also able to do some of the literary work that he had not been able to engage in. While it was too late for him to write his biography of Augustine, he was able to turn some of his lectures on Church History into a book giving an historical survey of the life and thought of the early centuries of the Church from the accession of Trajan to the Fourth General Council. Of the book Alexander Whyte said, "I know of nothing else like it." There is nothing else like it. Although the information in the book is rather old now, I still know of nothing else like it. It goes by the name of The Ancient Catholic Church, and there are usually a few dozen copies available on ABE books. Rainy sums up men and movements in a few pithy sentences. Tertullian, for example, he says, "combined in himself the Puritan and High Churchman, with even a touch of the Fifth Monarchy man thrown in."
The other books Rainy published at this time were an expository commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians and a volume of sermons entitled Sojourning with God. Both represented his pulpit ministry. Rainy was before the public as an author as ever before.
Rainy was enjoying a brief period of peace - a peace that would prove to precede a great storm.
But next time, God willing, we shall continue for a while in that peace.
Labels: Principal Rainy
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