John Calvin: By J.P. Struthers

[In commemmoration of the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, Free St George's is pleased to be able to reproduce the following article and its accompanying illustration from The Morning Watch Vol. 2. The Morning Watch was the children's magazine of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and was published from 1888 to 1915 under the editorship of Rev. J.P. Struthers of Greenock. The illustrations for the magazine were produced by the lady who eventually became Mrs. Struthers.]

You all know the name of John Calvin, but I am not sure that you have ever seen a picture of him before. You are far more likely to have seen one of Luther. Calvin was a very different man, and a great many people do not like him as well. They do not like him often because they do not like what is called ‘Calvinism.’ But Calvin would have been very sorry to hear his doctrines going by his name. He did not think them Calvinism, but Christianity. He found them in the Bible.

He was a Frenchman, and the ablest Frenchman who has ever lived. He was born in 1509, and so was just a little boy when Luther kindled the fire that ended in the Reformation. What Calvin had to do then was not to begin to protest against Popery, but to prove to the world that the religion of the Protestants was the religion of the Bible. Ignorant priests were telling the ignorant people that the New Testament was a wicked book that Luther had discovered, and with the new ideas that the Reformation was bringing into men’s minds there was a danger that they would be loosed from the superstition of the old Church without being won to the faith of the new. Calvin was brought by what he himself calls ‘a sudden conversion’ to the knowledge of Christ. Driven from Paris by persecution he came to Geneva, where, though he little thought it, his life work was to be done. Here he wrote, when he was only twenty-six, his great book, ‘The Institutes of the Christian Religion,’ perhaps the most powerful statement of the faith that has ever been given to the world.

Geneva was in a very corrupt state under Popery, and Calvin tried to reform it. He was so eager about the purity of the Church, kept godless people so strictly from the Lord’s Table, that he was driven from the city. But things there went from bad to worse. They could not get on without him, and so after three years they sent for him and brought him back in triumph. He became practically the ruler of the city for more than twenty years after this, till his death.

Luther pulled down the old fabric of Popery, but it was Calvin who built up and strengthened the new church. He was the master-mind, the statesman of the Reformation. Though he was the ruling influence in Geneva, he could not do everything as he wished it, and he has been held responsible for a great many things he could not hinder.

He studied and worked so hard that he hardly ever had a day’s health. He had many sorrows, he lost all his children young, and he had on him, like Paul, ‘the care of all the churches.’ But, often sad, and always ill, he wrote one of the greatest commentaries on the Bible, and was the guide and adviser of nearly all the Protestant leaders of the time. His great work, The Institutes, is divided into four parts, and yet the ‘heads’ of it all are Christ and His Church. He gathers everything round God and the love of Christ.

Calvin lies buried in Geneva, but we cannot be certain of his grave, for he ordered that no monument should mark it. This was like the man. The motto of his books, and of his life, might very fitly be, ‘To Thy Name be all the glory.”

J.P. Struthers: The Morning Watch Vol. 2 (Greenock, James M’Kelvie and Sons, 1889) Pp. 55-6

JPS again!

Another of J.P. Struthers' jocular notes to Charles Jerdan. It reads: "It WILL come next year. J.P.S., Prophet."
This is from the Morning watch volume for 1913. And it did come next year. The volume for 1914 would, however, be the last. As the war that began in 1914 was to destroy the Edwardian world depicted in Struthers' magazine, so Struthers himself died suddenly after preaching in 1915. The last edition of the Morning Watch was a memorial number, edited by Struthers' widow.
Struthers would, of course, have denied all serious claim to prophetic powers.

A jocular book inscription

Inscriptions in old books can be extremely interesting. Last Friday we posted one from our copy of David Brown's biography. At first glance it looked just like another gift inscription - until we realised that it had been given to the subject's granddaughter by his daughter and son-in-law. So we intend, God willing, to present a few of the more interesting inscriptions we have run acrosss.

This inscription is found in the front of a copy of the 1907 volume of the Morning Watch, the Reformed Presbyterian children's magazine that ran from 1888 to 1915. It is from the author, the Rev. John Patterson Struthers of Greenock, to the Rev. Charles Jerdan, a United Free Church (formerly United Presbyterian) minister in the same town. It reads: "From his discarded locum tenens'. This was Struthers' usual way of describing himself to Jerdan, for Struthers had taught a Bible class at Jerdan's church at one time.

Struthers sent Jerdan a copy of the yearly volume each Christmas (a Christmas publishing date being sound business sense for a work for children). Whilst Jerdan certainly possessed a full set of the volumes, we do not know if Struthers sent them to him every Christmas from 1888, or if he acquired some of the earlier volumes later on. Since contributors to the Morning Watch included James Denney, it is very likely that Jerdan was at least a subscriber to the early volumes.


[Note: These inscriptions are a good way of posting something without doing too much work on the posts!!!]

The End of the Year (J.P.S.)

Sir Thomas Lawrence was often a very long time over his pictures. When he painted Lady Mexborough and her child, his delay was unusually provoking. Time after time her husband asked that the portrait might be sent home, but all in vain. At last he sent word that the portrait must be delivered up. "I know," was the answer, "that I have been rather long. Lady Mexborough is done, but the baby wants finishing. But if you would kindly ask Lady Mexborough to bring the baby and give me one more sitting, I really will finish the picture." "My wife," was Lord Mexborough's reply, "will be happy to give you another sitting whenever you like, but the baby is in the Guards!" That is to say, the baby was now an officer in the army. Sir Thomas Lawrence was like the man in the First Book of Kings who lost the prisoner he had charge of. "As thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone." And are we not like that man too? It seems like yesterday since the coming of a New Century filled our minds and hearts with deep and solemn thoughts and purposes. We were going to serve the Lord and be wholly His. But we put off completing our covenant with God. The finishing touches were not given when they might and should have been, and now the year, and with the year the hudredth part, and doubtless in the case of some of us the greatest part, of the Twentieth Century is past, and we are not saved.


(This first appeared in the Morning Watch for December 1901)

[A word to our readers. Normal service on Free St. George's will be resumed in the New Year, God willing]

Our Christmas 'Reason for Not Going to Church' (J.P.S)

Time: 11.15 pm, Saturday, 30th December, snow beginning to fall. This girl, who still has nine parcels to deliver, several of them insufficiently addressed and all of them presents for children urgently needed for New Year's morn, is asking the policeman where 'Honeysuckle Hollow' is. "Honeysuckle Hollow? Second turn to the left and it's the last house at the top of the hill, the very last house; it's covered with ivy, and you go up a lot of steps to it."
"And, if you please, where is 'The Hut'?"
"Oh the Hut! You are a good bit past it; it is the big white granite house with the stone lions at the gate."
"And where's 'Labrador'?"
"Labrador? Labrador? Ah, but you beat me there, lassie!"
It will be near 1 am when she gets home, and as she has been on her feet since 8 am to-day, she will be in such a deep sleep to-morrow that her mother will not have the heart to waken her in time for the forenoon service.
'Labrador', - as after vainly seeking for it all Monday forenoon she will find out on Tuesday when a lady calls in at the shop to say that, as her little daughter's New Year Doll has not been delivered yet, after being ordered on Saturday evening before half-past nine, in PLENTY of time to be sent home that night, they need not trouble sending it NOW - turned out to be the name of the upperflat -entrance by the back- of a house whose front door flat has lately been changed from 'Tierra del Fuego lodge' to 'Madagascar Villa'.

(This first appeared in the Morning Watch for January, 1912)

Reasons for Not Going to Church (J.P.S.)

This lady, who has just returned from London on the Thursday with some lovely dresses, remembered at the last moment on Sabbath that she had ordered a high door to be made to her seat in church to prevent draught and secure greater privacy. Her footman, who cycled along to church to make measurements, has just reported that the entrance to the seat is twenty-three-and-a-half inches wide. Her hat is two feet seven inches diameter. To go to church is therefore quite out of the question!

Another Reason for Not Going to Church (J.P.S.)

The Mother of these two boys is not able to go to Church herself and will not let them go without her, because, her pew being in the front of the gallery, she is afraid they may fall over. "They are such restless creatures," she says, "that they can't sit still a single minute, and I always like to know where they are, and to keep my eye on them."

And this is where they are every moment they get the chance, every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, all July and August.

(This 'Reason for Not Going to Church', number 7 in the 10th series, is here reproduced by demand of a Free St. George's reader)

A Great Question

A Corner in St. Andrews Churchyard (J.P. Struthers)

Mr. Halyburton is best known by his Memoirs, a book which Rabbi Duncan called one of the great books of the world. You may get it for less than sixpence at most old book-stalls. A little before he died he said, "I was just thinking on the bonnie spot of earth that I will get to lie in, beside Mr. Rutherford, Mr. Forrester, and Principal Anderson, and I will get my pleasant George" (his dead son) "in my hand; and oh! we will be a knot of bonnie dust!"

(First appeared in The Morning Watch for July 1896)

[Comment by Highland Host: Mr. Struthers' remark on the ease with which Halyburton's Memoirs may be obtained is no longer true. The Memoirs of Halyburton have since become a very scarce book. The James Begg Society of Aberdeen have, however, recently published a new edition of Halyburton's works, the most complete ever published, and Halyburton's Memoirs are to be found in the fourth volume. American readers may find the book here.]

Inclement Weather

We have been having torrential rain here lately. This is A.L. Struthers' take on it. The beautifully dressed girl is carrying, not an umbrella, but a parasol (to protect her complexion from the sun. Suntans were NOT fashionable in 1896) that won't keep the rain off her for long. Of course, it's winter here.

HMS Terrible (By J. P. Struthers)

One day lately I saw a pretty child with a cap inscribed "HMS Terrible." At the first glance it seemed a ludicrous misnomer. But on second thoughts one saw that there is something terrible in the eyes of a child, and especially in those of a little girl.
You know what is meant by the phrase l'enfant terrible. It describes the child that in the innocence or simplicity of its heart blurts out things at inconvenient moments. But it is not the child that tells things that is to blame, but we who do the things that won't bear telling. I once heard a very good and very wise man say - and he was one who was singularly happy in his marriage - that a man should have a certain feeling of awe in the presence of his wife. A good woman - I mean one of the highest type - should represent not only the infinite tenderness and forgivingness of God, but His purity and holy severity as well. Her look of pain when one whom she loves does anything unworthy, is a glimpse of God's own face. There is an awful truth in the saying of M. Renan, that the judgements that shall be pronounced in the valley of Jesoshaphat will not differ much from those already passed on us by good women.

May every child we see draw us nearer God; may its face look forth to us as the morning -

Fair as the moon,

Clear as the sun,

Terrible as an army with banners.

Reasons for Not Going to Church by J.P. Struthers (II)

This woman has given up going, because, "The church is so empty," and it is "so depressing;" and she is "always meeting people who have the same feeling," and like herself "prefer to stay at home on Sabbaths and read their Bibles."

"And it is so different from what it was" when she was young. She often sits and thinks of the days "when the Church was crowded to the door," and she and others "had many a time to sit on the pulpit stairs. But there doesn't seem to be the same earnest spiritual life that there used to be."

Thou hypocrite!

Reasons for not Going to Church by J.P. Struthers

This lady has changed her mind, and is not going to church to-day because her sister, who has just returned from London, tells her that in that dress she is "a perfect fright, a regular old frump - the skirt is not HALF tight enough to be in the fashion!" (I think her sister envied her!)

(First appeared in The Morning Watch for August 1910)

Playing at Politicians

J.P. Struthers

I intend, if the Lord will, I live and my internet connection does not go down, to post as a weekly feature some of the wit and wisdom of the greatest Reformed Presbyterian preacher of the nineteenth Century, the Rev. J.P. Struthers of Greenock, 'The Children's Editor'. Struthers' dates are 1851-1915. A brilliant intellect, he sacrificed great prospects of worldly success for the ministry of the Reformed Presbyterian or Cameronian Church. He served in only two pastorates, in the little congregation of Whithorn for three years from 1878-1881, and in the congregation of Greenock for the rest of his life. He held firmly to the Reformed doctrine, and preached the Truth fearlessly. He loved the whole Bible with all his heart.
From 1888 until his death Struthers edited the Morning Watch, the Sabbath-school magazine of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The Morning Watch was a legend in its own age, and the twenty-seven slim volumes are a mine of pure gold. Most of the contents of the magazine was written by Struthers himself, and its value was vastly increased by the charming chalk illustrations, of which I intend to post more God willing. The illustrator married Mr. Struthers, so it became a family affair, "a little book for children, crammed full of stories," Mrs. Struthers called it. But it is not only for children, as I hope to prove.