by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
One of the great medical instruments to have been invented in Scotland is the obstetric ultrasound scanner. With this we can see the baby grow in the mother’s womb, and any abnormalities can also be detected. The leading pioneer behind this breakthrough was Sir Ian Donald (1910-1987). Together with his colleague, John MacVicar, and engineer Tom Brown, they developed the first diagnostic applications of ultrasound at the Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital. In 1958 they published an article in the journal, Lancet, revealing to the medical world the first images of a baby in the womb. By the 1960s Ian Donald and James Willocks had improved the machinery and the first public Fetal Ultrasound Scanner was launched, which they called the Diasonograph. As a result, most areas of medicine would be impacted.
Ian Donald was born in Cornwall, of Scottish parents, and attended Warriston School in Moffat and Fettes College in Edinburgh. For a time, the family lived in South Africa, where he graduated at the University of Cape Town in 1927 with a degree in the arts and music. However, it was when he came to live in England that he pursued a career in medicine at the University of London where he practiced at St Thomas’ Hospital Medical School. When World War II broke out, he worked as a medical officer with the Royal Airforce, and received the MBE for his bravery in rescuing some of the aircrew from a crashed bomber which was on fire.
After experience in obstetrics at both St Thomas’ Hospital and Hammersmith Hospital, he was promoted to the position of Regius Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Glasgow (1954-1976). It was here that he became famous for the invention of the obstetric ultrasound scanner. In later years he became the consultant with Nuclear Enterprises in Edinburgh.
The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (March, 2005), highlights “the strongly held Christian faith of the man and how it ruled his culture and attitudes to contraception and abortion and the battles this led him into.” For Professor Donald, the ultrasound scanner gave scientific proof of the baby in the womb in the face of the pro-abortion movement of the 1960s. He became a strongly outspoken champion for the unborn child, often being at the centre of heated opposition. “And when you destroy a baby by abortion that is what you are destroying,” he said. “I think you have got to face the fact honestly…There can be no argument about it and if I have done nothing else in my life, I have killed that dirty lie that the foetus is just a nondescript meaningless jelly, disposable at will, something to be got rid of.” It was a heart-breaking moment for him when the Abortion Act was passed in 1967.
As a staunch Christian in the Scottish Episcopalian Church, he continued to raise his voice on ethical issues of abortion, methods of contraception and euthanasia. It was also through his work that the Queen Mother’s Maternity Hospital was built next to the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow. The record of his scientific medical work and faith, which inspired his ethical concerns, have been preserved by James Willocks and Wallace Barr in their book, Ian Donald: A Memoir. Both men had worked with Ian Donald for about 20 years and knew him well. James Willocks, whom the Herald newspaper states, “had a strong Christian faith”, along with his wife Elma, was keen to make sure Ian Donald’s faith was not sidelined in history.
“Open your mouth for the speechless, in the cause of all who are appointed to die” (Proverbs 31:8, NKJV).
Image: Picture taken of a baby in the womb through an ultrasound scanner. The original uploader was Jeremy Kemp at English Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
When cholera broke out across all continents in the 19th century, millions were left dead in the wake of a horrible pandemic. At that time nobody knew that contaminated water could lead to such horrible plagues with the victims dying in just a few hours from continual diarrhea and vomiting. Again, God raised up a Christian from Scotland to find a cure.
Thomas Latta (1790s-1833) grew up in the seaside village of Newhaven, near Edinburgh, and the family were members of the Presbyterian Associate Congregation of Leith. Graduating in medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1819, Latta practiced as a doctor in both Leith and Edinburgh. In 1831 the cholera plague had spread to Britain, killing many thousands, and the medical scientists did not know how to combat it. Latta observed that the victims lost copious amounts of fluids before they died and he realised that water, with a small amount of salt, had to be injected into the body to prevent dehydration and replace a key depleted mineral. The idea was not entirely new, as Dr William Brooke O’Shaughnessy, an Irishman who had graduated at the University of Edinburgh and who had worked with William Alison in a practice in the same city, had already experimented with an intravenous solution in dogs. However, Latta, convinced that the principle would work for humans, applied a saline solution into the bloodstream of a woman in the Edinburgh Cholera Hospital on Drummond St, where the Old Surgeon’s Hall used to be. The result in 1832 was stunning:
“She had apparently reached the last moments of her earthly existence, and now nothing could injure her,” he wrote. “Indeed, so entirely was she reduced that I feared I should be unable to get my apparatus ready ere she expired. Having inserted a tube into the basilic vein, cautiously—anxiously, I watched the effect; ounce after ounce was injected, but no visible change was produced. Still persevering I thought she began to breathe less laboriously; soon her sharpened features and sunken eye and fallen jaw, pale and cold, bearing the manifest impress of death’s signet, began to glow with returning animation; the pulse which had ceased returned to the wrist, at first small and quick, by degrees it became more and more distinct, fuller, slower and firmer, and in the short space of half an hour when six pints had been injected she expressed in a firm voice that she was free from all uneasiness . . . her features bore the aspect of comfort and health. This being my first case, I fancied my patient secure and from my great need of a little repose left her in charge of the hospital surgeon.”
Unfortunately, with the saline drip treatment finished too early the woman died within a few hours, but the breakthrough for cholera had begun. Latta published his results in the journal, Lancet, on 23 June 1832, much to the excitement of the medical world. The saline drip method would be developed and effectively used throughout the world by 1902, bringing a cure to millions suffering with cholera, with about 99% of patients being saved. It has been so effective that it is regularly used in hospital wards for those who need. It would take the combined work of the medical doctor John Snow, and the Revd Henry Whitehead in London a few decades later, to prove that the cause of cholera was contaminated water, rather than the speculated miasma, or polluted air, leading to council improvements to prevent outbreaks of this terrible plague.
“Heal the sick…” (Matthew 10:8, NKJV).
Image: https://intermountainhealthcare.org/news/2022/06/intermountain-researchers-finds-better-and-safer-treatment-option-than-saline-solution/
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
If any of you have ever experienced severe toothache, you will be glad of modern dentists. John Smith was not only the co-pioneer of The Royal Hospital for Sick Children in 1860, but in that same year he also founded the Edinburgh Dental Dispensary with three other dentist colleagues: Francis Brodie Imlach, Peter Orphoot and Robert Nasmyth. John Smith was a Presbyterian elder at St Andrews Parish Church, and Francis Imlach was also an elder at St Stephen’s Church in Stockbridge. By 1879 their work had developed into the Edinburgh Dental Hospital and School, with the twin vision of providing dental treatment for the poor, and training up dentists in a professional way. Before this, back-street dentistry had been commonplace in Scotland, with competent and charlatan practitioners operating in an unregulated fashion. At the beginning the dispensary gave free treatment for the poor, which at first operated in 1 Drummond St, and then moved to 54 Cockburn St in 1862. They struggled with raising funds and moved to a cheaper location at 46 Cockburn St.
The four friends worked together to revolutionise dental standards in Scotland, with Imlach being the first person in history to use Simpson’s chloroform anaesthetic in a dental procedure, and Nasmyth went on to pioneer modern gold fillings for teeth. The four friends also pressed for government reform in dental practice, alongside their English colleagues, so that only properly qualified dentists could practice. In 1878 the Dental Act was passed, thereby ensuring that only professionals could be on the official register. This gave backing to the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh who set up a Dental Examining Board and the issuing of the official Licence for Dental Surgery. A new and better premises was found in 1894 at 18 Brown Square, which is now 30-31 Chambers St, opposite the National Museum, where a dental school and hospital were combined. The Edinburgh Dental School was taken over as part of the University of Edinburgh Faculty of Medicine in 1948.
Today’s Edinburgh Dental Institute continues in the same standard of excellence as its Christian founders, who pioneered the Dental Dispensary in 1860. John Smith became the President of the British Dental Association and was the private dentist to Queen Victoria when she came to this nation. He was also the first person in Scotland, in 1856, to give a dentistry course to medical students. It is to be noted that Edinburgh Dental Hospital and School celebrated Lily Lindsay as the first woman graduate dentist in British history in 1895.
“Heal the sick…” (Matthew 10:8, NKJV).
Image: Kim Traynor, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
NOTE: The year of D-Day in the last article on penicillin should have been 1944, not 1945.
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
As I lay in the bed at the High Dependency Unit in the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, I found myself thanking God for the antibiotics which were fighting and overcoming the infection in my body. My mind turned to Sir Alexander Fleming, the Scottish man who discovered penicillin, leading to the development of antibiotics. Countless lives have been saved through this ground-breaking medical science. It has often been said that Fleming discovered penicillin through a series of chance events in 1928, but he stated clearly: “I thank God for sending me penicillin… I did not invent penicillin. I observed it. God was the first to put it here on earth for the wellbeing of mankind.” At another time he said that “Discoveries of this magnitude are rare… God took care to hide that country till he judged his people ready; then, he chose me for his whisper and I found it and its yours.”
Fleming was born in 1881 and brought up at Lochfield Farm in the parish of Loudon in Ayrshire, Scotland. Although he grew up culturally as a Presbyterian, he later attended an Anglican church in London, where he could be described as a liberal Christian. At the age of 22 he went to St Mary’s Hospital Medical School in Paddington where he qualified with an MBBS degree three years later, after which he became a medical assistant to Sir Almroth Wright who was a pioneer in immunology. After serving in the First World War, he returned to his work and began investigating bacteria cultures at St Mary’s Hospital, trying to find a way of defeating infections, and was later promoted as Professor of Bacteriology at the University of London in 1928, and Rector of Edinburgh University in 1951.
By 1922, Fleming had investigated what he called “Lysozyme”, which he discovered was “capable of rapidly dissolving certain bacteria”. As such, this was the beginning of the antibiotic revolution. Five years later he was studying bacteria called staphylococci. Then came the unexpected breakthrough on 28 September, 1928. He had inoculated staphylococci, and had left them on a culture plate in his laboratory before going on holiday, but when he returned, he noticed that one culture had been contaminated with a fungus, with the staphylococci being destroyed. He called the fungus Penicillium; it was this discovery that led to one of the world’s greatest medical advances. At first, his discovery was ignored by the scientific community for years, but in time others joined his work to establish medically viable ways of mass-producing penicillin in 1944, just in time for the D-Day invasion of Normandy at the end of World War 2. This “miracle drug” cured multitudes of soldiers, who would have otherwise been lost to infection, and it has been doing its saving work for millions ever since.
“Heal the sick…” (Matthew 10:8, NKJV).
Image: Sir Alexander Fleming (1881-1955): This image was created and released by the Imperial War Museum on the IWM Non Commercial Licence. Photographs taken, or artworks created, by a member of the forces during their active service duties are covered by Crown Copyright provisions. Faithful reproductions may be reused under that licence, which is considered expired 50 years after their creation. Wikipedia Commons.
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
The surgeon had just finished successfully operating on a patient. It was the last one for the day and he was eager to get back home to his family. As he walked back, he mulled over his work. He had done his best job, but he knew that over 50% of patients operated on died of infection afterwards; in parts of Europe, it was as high as 80%. Scientists believed that infections arose spontaneously within the body, so there was nothing that could be done about this: we just had to live with it. This was all to change in 1860.
One day the French Catholic, Louis Pasteur, triumphantly proclaimed that his experiments had proved that life came from life, rather than from spontaneous generation. Before this, scientists had observed that an unsealed glass of water, when left alone, will eventually produce bacteria. Their conclusion was that water spontaneously evolved into simple life forms. When Pasteur boiled water and sealed off all of the air in special glass tubes, no bacteria formed. In one fell swoop he had vanquished a popular pagan theory that had held back science for centuries, and demonstrated the new germ theory, that contamination comes from outside bacteria.
Joseph Lister came up to Edinburgh from England in 1853 to learn from Professor James Syme, a Christian who was regarded as the country’s best teacher of surgery. Lister came from a devout Quaker family, but when he met Syme’s daughter Agnes he fell in love with her, and they were married. Lister remained in Edinburgh, as Syme’s assistant, attending an Episcopalian Church with the family. In 1860, during the year of Pasteur’s discovery, he became the Professor of Surgery in Glasgow. It was there that a friend lent him some papers by Pasteur. As he read of Pasteur’s work, his heart and mind were racing with excitement. This new germ theory could be extended to medical science and save lives. He needed a chemical which was harmless to people, but which would disinfect the body, cleansing it of potentially lethal bacteria. He found out that carbolic acid was being used safely by workers to disinfect sewers.
By 1865, Lister was using carbolic acid in his surgery: he washed his hands in it, before and after operations; he cleansed his surgical instruments with it, as well as bandages, and even sprayed the air with it. Lister published the results of his antisepsis method in the medical journal Lancet between March and July in 1867, reporting that his surgical wards were clear of sepsis. Between 1864 and 1866, before he had introduced antisepsis, 46% of his own patients had died after surgical operations (which was better than average); after introducing his new treatment there was a dramatic change, with 15% of his patients dying between 1867 and 1870.
Two years later he took up the post as Professor of Clinical surgery in Edinburgh, replacing his father-in-law. From there he wrote to Pasteur in 1874, thanking him for his “brilliant researches”, which he said had “proved to me the truth of the germ theory… and furnished me with the principle upon which alone the antiseptic system can be carried out.”2By 1875 Lister was highly acclaimed in Europe, with post-operation fatalities rapidly falling as surgeons applied his principles, and in some cases, as in Munich, fatalities dropped dramatically from 80%.
But Lister was not only a one-trick pony: he went on to invent surgical instruments, introduce sterilised wiring to aid healing bones, rubber drainage tubes, and sterilised catgut, which would harmlessly disintegrate in the body after a time. Lister was made the first Lord in British medical history and was a committed Christian, who wrote: “I am a believer in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.”3 We have become used to antiseptics, especially during the Coronavirus pandemic, but without Lister’s work in medical science, so many more people would have died.
“Heal the sick…” (Matthew 10:8, NKJV).
Image: Lord Joseph Lister (1827-1912), Weltrundschau zu Reclams Universum 1902, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
At the end of 2019 the Coronavirus broke out in Wuhan, China. By Christmas 2021, over 148,000 people were dead in Britain and over 5 million worldwide. Today’s global death rate stands at almost 6.9 million, with the UK losing over 226,000 people. Fear paralysed nations as the virus spread, leading to a global financial crisis because of lockdown, and huge social unrest. During this time two vital words were often discussed: antiseptics and vaccines. Antiseptics help us in the battle against spreading the virus, and vaccines enable us to be more protected: both are connected with Scotland. The first person was Lord Joseph Lister, the pioneer of antiseptics, the father of sanitising; the second was Edward Jenner, the pioneer of vaccination.
Oxford University’s Jenner Institute, named after Edward Jenner, worked long and hard, among others, and produced a vaccine, with millions of doses being produced by the pharmaceutical company called AstraZeneca. Amidst all the fear, multitudes found relief and hope because of the vaccines being rolled out. Few though, would realise the connection of an English Christian with Scotland.
Edward Jenner, the son of Revd Stephen Jenner, grew up in Berkeley in Gloucestershire. In 1763 he was appointed as an apprentice with the surgeon at Chipping Sodbury, where he gained invaluable experience in surgery. Seven years later he furthered his career by becoming an apprentice in surgery and anatomy with the nation’s leading Scottish surgeon, John Hunter, at George’s Hospital in London. By 1773, Jenner was practicing as a family doctor and surgeon in his home town of Berkeley. It was later in 1792 that Jenner applied for the degree of MD from the University of St Andrews, because Scotland was a world leader in medicine during that period.
Although Jenner has been rightly credited as being the pioneer of vaccination against small pox, he had already been influenced by John Hunter in London, for Hunter had not only been using an earlier form of inoculation, but they had also discussed the possibility of cowpox being a cure for small pox. The writers of an article from the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (Vol 83, April 1990), state that “The overriding question is as to why Jenner waited until 1798 to complete his experiments and publish his results – 5 years after Hunter’s death?”
By 1979 the World Health Organisation declared that they had finally eradicated smallpox, which had killed millions of people. It was from Jenner’s work that the science of immunology grew. As a Christian he remarked to a friend as he was dying in 1823: “I am not surprised that men are not grateful to me; but I wonder that they are not grateful to God for the good which He has made me the instrument of conveying to my fellow creatures.”
“Heal the sick…” (Matthew 10:8, NKJV).
Photo Credit: James Gathany Content Providers(s): CDC, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
At the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, the bishops agreed that “the hospital… be established in every city”in the Roman Empire. The first fully established hospital complex was pioneered by Basil, the Bishop of Cappadocia in AD 369, which, apart from a large hospital, also included “a large number of buildings, with houses for physicians and nurses, workshops, and industrial schools.” When we get to the sixth century, hospitals can be found all over Europe, usually being looked after by monastic orders. By the 1450s there were 37,000 monastic communities that looked after the sick.
In Scotland the early monks cared for the sick and dying from the early centuries, and were keen to experiment with, and develop, medicinal herbs as “leaves… for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2). The first large hospital in this nation was founded by the Augustinian monks in 1164 at Soutra Aisle at Fala, not far from Edinburgh. Today, only partial ruins can be found, but the hospital once measured about 700 square metres. The complex also included an almshouse for the poor and a hostel for weary travellers. It was situated in a bleak place, which in winter is exposed to the biting Scottish wind, but the spot was well-chosen because it was near the main route from Northumbria to Edinburgh, known as Dere St, a Roman road which today forms part of the A 68.
At the time of the Reformation in 1560, the leaders produced a document called the First Book of Discipline. In this we find Scotland’s blueprint for healthcare and welfare for the nation, originally operating through the parish church network. “But for the widow and fatherless, the aged, impotent, or lame,” they wrote, “who neither can nor may travail for their sustenance, we say that God commands his people to be careful. And therefore, for such, as also for persons of honesty fallen in[to] decay and penury, ought such provision be made that [of] our abundance should their indigence be relieved. How this most conveniently and most easily may be done in every city, and other parts of this realm, God shall show you wisdom and the means, so that your minds are godly thereto inclined.”
Healthcare was so wrapped up in the Reformation that the Surgeon’s Hall Museum in Edinburgh has recorded a prayer attributed to John Knox, which was used by surgeons from 1581. The prayer contains the words, “O eternal God, our loving and merciful Father – Jesus Christ – seeing we are convened to treat of those things which concern our calling, we beseech thee, O Lord, to be merciful to us, and give us grace to proceed therein without malice, grudge, or partiality: so that the things we do may tend to the Glory of God, and weal of our vocation, and the comfort of every member of it, through Jesus Christ our only Lord and Saviour. Amen.”
In 1583 Gilbert Primrose, a dedicated Christian and Royal Surgeon for James VI, raised surgery to the prime position amongst the guilds of Edinburgh, thereby giving it a prominent place in society. This was followed by the Covenanting Christian, Peter Lowe, founding the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow in 1599. By 1681 the first purpose-built Surgeons’ Hall was established by Robert Sibbald, James Halket and Archibald Pitcairne, followed by the founding of the Edinburgh Medical School in 1726, which became the world’s foremost medical college, out of which grew Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary hospital (1729). In all of these stages, Christians played a significant part in the development of our healthcare in Scotland. The leading men behind the foundation of the Royal Infirmary could state that “As men and Christians we have the strongest inducements and even obligations to this sort of charity as it is warmly recommended and enjoined in the gospel.” It would be out of the various streams of Christian-inspired healthcare and hospitals, that our National Health System would eventually develop in 1948.
“Heal the sick…” (Matthew 10:8, NKJV).
Image: The Old Royal Infirmary on Infirmary St, Pierre Fourdrinier https://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/detail/UoEsha~2~2~53273~102110:North-Front-of-the-Royal-Infirmary-?qvq=q:Thomson-walker&mi=46&trs=667#, Wikipedia Commons
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
As I looked around the High Dependency Ward at the Western General in Edinburgh, feelings of gratitude welled up inside me for the dedicated staff, who day and night gave themselves to saving lives. I had been rushed into A&E with sepsis, following a prostate biopsy the day before. Unfortunately, I was among the one percenters who had picked up a particularly aggressive form of E-Coli infection. After the battle for my life gave way to victory, I had time to reflect on my experience. All around me in the ward was evidence for the legacy of Christian pioneers in Scotland who had changed the world, and whose work had saved the lives of millions.
A team of anaesthetists came into the ward to discuss pain control with one of the patients. As they did, I recalled Sir James Young Simpson, the Christian father of anaesthetics in hospitals. When asked by a journalist about his greatest discovery, he was keen to state: “I am a sinner, but I have a great Saviour, Jesus Christ.” The doctors had been fighting with me to overcome the virulent E-Coli. Having discovered that four standard antibiotics had not worked because of bacterial resistance, they proceeded to use Tazocin, a treasured weapon. It was another Scotsman, this time an Anglican churchgoer, who had discovered penicillin which became the foundation of antibiotics. For many it was a serious of flukes that brought this about, but for Sir Alexander Fleming it was the hand of God.
One of the nurses came back to me. She had been well trained at nursing college and was looking forward to becoming a full-blown practitioner the next week. As we discussed her nursing career, I remembered how a Christian called Florence Nightingale had pioneered professional nursing, and on the request of the Christian, Joseph Lister in Edinburgh, had sent the Quaker Christian, Elizabeth Barclay, up to the city to pioneer this standard in Scotland.
Lord Joseph Lister! Now that’s a special person in the advancement of medical science and surgery. This genius had communicated with the French Catholic, Louis Pasteur, about the new germ theory. By applying this to his work, Lister searched for a safe antiseptic called carbolic acid, and sterilized all of the medical instruments with it. Through this, and his rigorous hygiene standards, he became the father of antiseptics and sanitizing, made famous during the Covid pandemic. Even during that terrible period, the name Jenner Institute and the vaccination called AstraZeneca became well-known. The institute at Oxford University had been named after Edward Jenner. This extraordinary English Christian studied at Aberdeen University, and then went on to become the father of vaccination, whose work conquered smallpox, and led to worldwide vaccination against diseases.
As a patient in the High Dependency Ward, you soon become accustomed to the various machines bleeping away. Surrounded by impressive-looking equipment, led me to ponder about the dynamic foundational work in physics by the dedicated Christian, James Clerk Maxwell. His famous Maxwell’s Equations inspired our technological revolution, with Albert Einstein having this hero on a poster above his office desk. Out of Maxwell’s work came a crowd of inventions: among them X-ray machines; computers, televisions and radios.
During some chats with the staff at the hospital, I mentioned some of these pioneers from Scotland. The typical reaction was the standard “was like us” quote, a nurturing of Scottish pride, but the connection with the Christian faith has been lost over time. Even our hospitals themselves grew out of the work of the church from the medieval period. Today, I thank God for all the healthcare workers who do a great job, but I also thank God for the Christians he raised up to advance medical science and healthcare itself. May he continue to do so.
“He sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick” (Luke 9:2, NKJV).
Image: Norbert Kaiser, CC BY-SA 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
Today in Scotland we take it for granted that women are allowed to vote in politics, and even become members of Parliament. However, the battle for equality was long and hard. Even though the Presbyterian Church practiced a form of Christian democracy since 1560, only male heads of the home were allowed to vote for their leaders. This would change in 1733 when Revd Ebenezer Erskine and some leading pastors left the Church of Scotland over the Patronage Act in 1712 and set up the Secession Church. Despite promises and legal obligations, the Presbyterian Church had again been intruded by the government, which ignored the decades of petitions by its leadership; yet again in our history the authorities scorned the democratic right of the church.
The blessing in disguise came with the Secession Church in 1733, for women were now allowed to vote for their leaders in that denomination. The Free Church also broke away from the Church of Scotland over the same issue of patronage in 1843, and they followed the Secessionist practice of allowing women to vote for their leaders. With such a groundswell for freedom for women to vote in the evangelical Presbyterian churches, as well as in the Quaker, Baptist, Congregational, and other denominations, it is not surprising that people began to press for women to vote alongside men for their political candidates. Revd Dr Robert Wallace, the minister at Old Greyfriars’ Kirk in Edinburgh, and the former Professor of Church History at the University of Edinburgh, took it a step further. ‘If women were allowed to exercise political privileges,’ he said,‘where was the matter to stop? Why not permit them to enter Parliament itself?’Being the editor of The Scotsman newspaper, his call echoed throughout the nation. That was in 1870; the first woman parliamentarian would not be until 1919.
Eliza Wigham (1820-1899) was a Quaker Christian from Edinburgh who rose to prominence in the suffragist movement. The suffragists are not to be confused with the suffragettes who came later. The suffragists were mostly Christian women who were inspired by Christ’s message of equality. They believed in spreading a peaceful movement of promoting equality and petitioning the government for the right of women to vote politically. The suffragette movement however, grew out the suffragists, but was led by a group who sought emancipation through more extreme and violent means.
Three women’s suffrage societies were formed in 1867 in London, Edinburgh and Manchester, which came together under the banner of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage. In Edinburgh we can uncover the strong Christian influence in this movement. Eliza Wigham and her step-mother, Jane Wigham (née Smeal), were the founders of the Edinburgh branch. Both were keen Quaker Christians who had fought for the emancipation of slaves, and now the victory had been won in that arena, it was time to focus their energies on liberating women to vote in Britain. The key leaders of the Edinburgh branch were all dedicated Quaker Christians: the first president was Priscilla Bright McLaren; the two secretaries were Eliza Wigham and Agnes McLaren, Priscilla’s daughter; and the treasurer was Elizabeth Pease. When the first national suffrage gathering happened in Manchester at the Free Trade Hall in 1868, Priscilla Bright McLaren was its first presiding leader.
Priscilla Bright McLaren was surrounded by influential members of Parliament: her husband, Duncan McLaren, was a devoted Presbyterian Christian, and as a Liberal MP for Edinburgh his passion for all things Scottish had given him the endearing popular title of ‘the Member for Scotland’. His hard work and support for the Free Church dissenters had gained a strong evangelical base, and his wisdom and skill in pulling Edinburgh out of bankruptcy, as well as promoting free schools for poor children, earned him great favour in Scottish society. Together with Priscilla’s Quaker brothers, John and Jacob Bright, who were both MPs, Duncan McLaren spearheaded this Christian political trio to press for women’s voting rights in Parliament. However, it was the women, led by Eliza Wigham and her Quaker friends, who prepared the nation for emancipation. Increasingly the suffragists became frustrated at the slow progress in nearly forty years of campaigning for freedom. Out of this frustration emerged the more radical approach of the suffragettes, and eventual victory for women in 1918 onwards.
‘For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus… there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:26-28, NKJV).
Image: The Suffragettes, Annie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst http://www.hastingspress.co.uk/history/sufpix.htm, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
With cheers of jubilation the crowd toppled Edward Colston’s statue to the ground. Soon the protesters had attached ropes to it and were dragging the heavy object with great enthusiasm towards its destination – Bristol Harbour – where they unceremoniously dumped it. Some called it an act of vandalism, but for Black Lives Matter it was a just act, fuelled by the death of an American-African, George Floyd, just two weeks before on 25 May 2020, which had opened up a deep well of hurt, rejection and anger. When George Floyd lay on a Minneapolis street crying out, ‘I can’t breathe!’ because of a policeman’s knee on his neck, nobody would have predicted the eruption over racism that would burst out from millions. Within weeks celebrities, sports teams, politicians, and multitudes of the general public were ‘taking the knee’ in solidarity with black people. But where did this powerful symbol come from?
In 1778 the Supreme Court of Scotland in Edinburgh witnessed an historical day. Joseph Knight, a runaway black slave from West Africa, was liberated from his Scottish master, John Wedderburn of Ballindean. Furthermore, a law was passed in Scotland that year outlawing slavery in the nation. Lord Auchinleck declared that slavery is not ‘agreeable to humanity, not to say to the Christian religion. Is a man a slave because he is black? No. He is our brother; and he is a man, although not our colour; he is in a land of liberty, with his wife and his child: let him remain there.’ Before the Christians Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce led the charge to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire (1807), and in the colonies (1833), the Scottish people, inspired by the Christian faith, were showing the way. The abolition movement in 1787 took for its symbol a black African in chains ‘taking the knee’ with Lord Auchinleck’s words around him: ‘Am I not a man and a brother’.
In 1788 Revd Robert Walker of Canongate Kirk in the Royal Mile, challenged the church leaders in Edinburgh, and they petitioned Parliament in Westminster to abolish slavery in the British Empire. After former slave, Olaudah Equiano, gave his account to the Church Assembly in Edinburgh in 1792, Scotland sent 185 petitions to Westminster. It was not until 1807 that international slave-trading was abolished in the British Empire through the Slave Trade Act. However, many slaves still worked for their masters abroad.
Among the key Scots who worked to abolish slavery in the British Empire, were Zachary Macaulay, William Dickson, James Ramsay, James Stephen and Henry Brougham. Zachary Macaulay from Inveraray experienced an evangelical conversion in 1789, and went on to be the key founding member of the Anti-Slavery Societyin 1823. His indefatigable work to liberate slaves alongside Wilberforce and others, has been celebrated in Westminster Abbey by a memorial showing the figure of a kneeling slave and the words ‘Am I not a Man and a Brother’– seemingly taken from Lord Auchinleck’s statement in Edinburgh in 1778. This became the motto of the abolitionist movement. James Stephen, who was born of Scottish parents and was educated in Aberdeen, was the architect of the Abolition Bill. It is also of note that the Glasgow Anti-Slavery Society was formed in 1822, rallying together as an abolitionist stronghold.
In 1830, Revd Dr Andrew Thomson led the movement here to put pressure on Parliament to abolish slavery altogether. The politician, Sir Henry Brougham from Edinburgh, worked hard in London to get laws passed against slavery. All of these Scots were key players in the victory over slavery with their fellow Christians in England, such as the evangelicals, Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce and others. It was through the untiring work of the Quakers and other evangelicals in England and Scotland, that the social conscience was pricked, inspiring many influential people of the Enlightenment, such as David Hume and Adam Smith, also to speak out. In 1833 the Slavery Abolition Act was passed by Parliament, outlawing slavery completely in the British Empire.
‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28, NKJV).
Image: Josiah Wedgwood, William Hackwood and Henry Webber, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
It is extraordinary to think that Scotland once banned the Bible in English, but by the 19th century it was called the Land of the Book because it was famous for its love of the Bible. When William Tyndale asked for permission to translate the Bible from the ancient languages of Greek and Hebrew, the Bishop of London refused because it was against ‘church’ law and everything had to be done in Latin. Tyndale had to go to Germany under the protection of Martin Luther to translate the Bible into English. Copies of the New Testament were smuggled through to the port of Leith near Edinburgh in 1526, but if any were found they were burned and ‘criminals’ possessing a copy could have their properties confiscated by the government and could be put into prison. However, with the Scottish Reformation came a passion for the word of God, and all over the nation families were encouraged to read the Bible.
The Scottish Bible Society today is a founder member of the United Bible Societies, which works with a network of 146 Bible Societies in over 240 countries worldwide, translating and distributing millions of copies of the Scriptures in many languages. Their motto is ‘The Bible for Everyone’ in every language. The history of Bible societies is intriguing and includes two leading Scottish men from Edinburgh, whom we have already met: David Bogue and Robert Haldane. Back in 1792 an Englishman, William Carey, pioneered the Baptist Missionary Society in India. David Bogue, accompanied by two friends, went to the home of John Ryland to hear Carey’s report being read and Bogue was deeply stirred. He wrote an article in the Evangelical Magazine that September, calling for the launching of a London-based missionary organization. The response was encouraging and the London Missionary Society was established in 1794, with David Bogue as the founder. Less than five years later Bogue was busy again, this time co-founding the Religious Tract Society with George Burder and others at St Paul’s Coffee House in 1799, and writing its first gospel tract.
In 1802, David Bogue and two others went on an investigative trip to Paris to check the spiritual situation there. They were horrified to discover that it took four days of constant searching before they found a French Bible. A Roman Catholic printer said he would order 1500 copies if they printed them, and so 5,000 French Bibles and New Testaments were produced. Just after their Paris experience, Revd Thomas Charles from Bala in Wales shared the heart-rending story of Mary Jones walking 26 miles to buy a Welsh Bible, only to be turned away, as there were none. As they discussed printing Welsh Bibles, Mr. Hughes, the secretary of the London Missionary Society, exclaimed: ‘If for Wales, why not also for the Empire and the world!’ On 7 March 1804, the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) was launched in London, and David Bogue was chosen to give the first address at the launch.
Inspired by the BFBS, Christopher Anderson, a Baptist, and James Peddie, a Presbyterian, pioneered the Edinburgh Bible Society (1809) in the Royal Exchange Coffee House (now the City Chambers) on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile; this was followed by the Glasgow Bible Society (1812). In the early years they raised money to support William Carey’s translations, Bible printing and distribution in India, along with producing and dispersing Gaelic Bibles in the Scottish Highlands. However, they hit a controversy in 1824. Robert Haldane had visited the BFBS headquarters and he was horrified to see that they had been printing Bibles with the Apocrypha added since 1821, in order to appease the Roman Catholics so that they could distribute Bibles in Catholic countries. At the same time though, the BFBS had refused to include the metrical Psalms in the back of the Bibles for use in worship. The result was that the Edinburgh-duo, Andrew Thomson and Robert Haldane, led the opposition, calling for the BFBS to stop this compromise. Eventually the Apocrypha was removed, thanks to the alertness of Scottish leaders, but by then the Scottish Bible societies were acting independently, and finally merged together in 1861 to form the National Bible Society of Scotland, now known as the Scottish Bible Society.
‘The entrance of Your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple’ (Psalm 119:130, NKJV)
Image:
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
Of all the extraordinary giants of faith raised up by God at the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth, Revd David Bogue towers above most of them in his achievements. And yet few Christians have ever heard of him. David Bogue (1750-1825) grew up in the parish of Coldingham in Berwickshire, and attended the University of Edinburgh, aged 12. After receiving his Masters degree there, he left Edinburgh in 1771 as a licensed Presbyterian minister, but later became a Congregationalist. His ministry really took off between 1777 and 1825 when he lived in Gosport in Hampshire, England. It was here that he pioneered the world’s first Protestant missionary training college, called the Academy of Ministers and Missionaries in Gosport. It was his model that became the blueprint for missionary training colleges all over the world.
At Gosport Academy he taught and mentored over 200 men who would go on to be influential Christians, both at home and abroad. Inspired by William Carey’s courageous missionary exploits in India (1792), he wrote an article in the Evangelical Magazine in September 1794, calling complacent Christians to rise up and follow Christ into the mission field. He rebuked the church for ‘our criminal unconcern for the honour of God, and for the salvation of perishing souls of men.’ Passionately he wrote that there are ‘hundreds of millions of poor Pagans ignorant of the true God, and falling down before stocks and stones.’ His trumpet call woke up many sleeping Christians, and on 4 November 1794, a group of evangelical ministers met at the Baker’s Coffee House in Cornhill, London, to formerly discuss the pioneering of the London Missionary Society (LMS). The society was launched the next year, stirred by his preaching. Amidst tears of repentance and joy, the leaders called this gathering ‘a new Pentecost’.
The rallying call for missionary applicants resounded through the churches, and yet Bogue was insistent that they needed proper training before they faced the darkness, disease and hardness of resistant people. Emotionalism would not stand the testing fire; only proven Christlike character. At last, after the euphoria of the honeymoon period of the modern missionary movement, the church began to realise that Bogue’s words were wise, as many missionaries began returning home, broken, wounded and defeated. The LMS agreed in 1800 to send potential missionaries to be properly trained by Bogue at Gosport.
Out of this Academy came giants of faith: Robert Morrison, a Scotsman, who translated the Bible into Chinese for the first time (1819), and who, together with his fellow Gosport graduate and Scotsman, William Milne, set up the first training college for equipping Chinese nationals to lead the baby church there; Robert Haldane, who would impact Scotland with his brother James, and see revival break out in Switzerland (1816), France and in other European countries; and Joseph Frey, who would go on to pioneer the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews (1809), now known as the Church’s Ministry Among Jewish People (CMJ). Of the 115 missionaries that ushered forth from the Gosport Academy, some died soon of disease and other causes; others planted churches and training academies in Malaysia, Singapore, India, Russia, the South Sea Islands, South America and Africa. Later missionaries would swell their ranks with some of the stature of Dr David Livingstone of Malawi and Mary Slessor of Nigeria (both Scots), and many would establish thousands of churches, schools and healthcare centres worldwide.
This would have been more than enough for most people, but Bogue went on to be one of the key pioneers behind the founding of the Evangelical Magazine (1793), which was once the key media disseminator for world mission; the Religious Tract Society (1799), which pioneered the mass distribution of gospel tracts; the British and Foreign Bible Society (1804), which spearheaded modern Bible translation and its global distribution network; and the Hibernian Society (1806), a missionary work to the Irish. In all of this he emphasized the importance of training up self-governing churches all over the world, rather than relying on Britain.
‘The people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits’ (Daniel 11:32, NKJV).
Image: David Bogue (1750-1825), by Thomas Blood, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
