23. Alexander Whyte (1836–1921)
When some future artist paints a series depicting great scenes in church history, I hope he includes a moving scene from an October day in Edinburgh, 1873. The great preacher and principal of New College, Robert S. Candlish, was dying. He summoned two men to his bedside: Robert Rainy and Alexander Whyte. Whyte told the story:
I had no sooner entered the room than the dying man put out his hand to me and said: “Good-bye. I had hoped to be spared to help you a little longer”—he was always my helper, the humble soul [Whyte was Candlish’s assistant at Free St. George’s Church]— “but it is not to be. Good-bye.” And then he motioned to Dr. Rainy to kneel at his bedside. He threw his withered arms around Rainy’s neck and kissed him and said: “I leave the congregation to Whyte and I leave the New College and the Assembly to you.” It was a scene never to be forgotten. And it was a dedication and a sanctification to have seen it and shared in it.1
And so the mantle fell on Whyte, still in his thirties, to fill the pulpit of Edinburgh’s leading church and one of Scotland’s most important places of ministry. And he filled it—for over forty years, Alexander Whyte preached solid, biblical messages that magnified the grace of God. “Never think of giving up preaching!” he wrote a Methodist pastor who had sought his counsel. “The angels around the throne envy you your great work!” Whyte’s pulpit was his throne, and though he has laid down his scepter, his power is still felt wherever men read his sermons.
Whyte was born out of wedlock into great poverty on January 13, 1836, in Kirriemuir. His father, John Whyte, offered to marry his mother, Janet Thompson, but she refused. Whyte left town soon after Alexander was born, established a business in the United States, and became a useful citizen. He fought in the Civil War at the first battle of Bull Run, was captured, and spent many days in a Confederate prison camp. He later visited Scotland, met his son—then a student—and apparently established a warm relationship with him. John died in 1871. In the last letter to his son he had written: “Pray that all my former sins are forgiven and that I shall hereafter trust in Him, the Savior of the world.”
Janet Thompson had raised her son in material poverty but spiritual plenty. Even at a young age Whyte had two passions: books and preaching. One day, when he was supposed to be caring for a neighbor’s cows, he was dreaming about his future plans and allowed the cows to invade a cornfield. The neighbor came running out, shouting, “I don’t know what you’re going to do or how in the whole world you’ll ever earn an honest living!”
The lad replied, “What would you think if one day I was to wag my head in a pulpit?”
Another day he was trying to help his mother harvest in the fields, and she exclaimed: “Get out of my road, laddie! You may be good at your books, but you’ll never make a shearer!”
He was good at his books, and his Sunday school teacher, James Kennedy, and two pastors, Daniel Cormick and David White, encouraged him. (How soon we forget the men who helped make other men great!) When Whyte was seven years old, Robert Murray McCheyne visited Kirriemuir and gave the boy a tract.
In his early teens Whyte was apprenticed to a shoemaker, but he assured his mother that his final goal was the pulpit. Once when she was particularly discouraged, he said, “Don’t cry, Mother; don’t be afraid, for I will go and serve out my time—but mind you, I am going to be a minister!” During those difficult early years, Whyte learned to use his time and to discipline his will, achievements that helped make him a success later on.
From 1858 to 1866 Whyte was a student, first in Aberdeen and then in Edinburgh. The going was tough, but the boy was tougher. He sacrificed to purchase books, and he listened to the great preachers of that day. The call of the pulpit became stronger and stronger. During those student years he made several friendships that lasted his whole life. Upon graduation from New College, Edinburgh, he became an assistant at Free St. John’s in Glasgow, and here he was ordained on December 27, 1856. He remained there until 1860 when he was called to Free St. George’s in Edinburgh to work with the famous Robert S. Candlish (if you have not read Candlish’s remarkable exposition of 1 John, by all means do so—prayerfully). This was the beginning of forty-seven remarkable years of ministry in one church, first as assistant and then as pastor.
Above everything else, Whyte was a preacher. Preaching, to him, meant work. “I would have all lazy students drummed out of the college,” he said, “and all lazy ministers out of the Assembly. I would have laziness held to be the one unpardonable sin in all our students and in all our ministers.” A voracious reader and a diligent student, Whyte did not neglect his pastoral ministry or his family. In 1898, when Whyte was called to be moderator of the Assembly, he exhorted the pastors to concentrate on humility, prayer, and work. “We have plenty of time for all our work did we husband our time and hoard it up aright,” he told them. “We cannot look seriously in one another’s faces and say it is want of time. It is want of intention. It is want of determination. It is want of method. It is want of motive. It is want of conscience. It is want of heart. It is want of anything and everything but time.”2 The sales manager of a successful Christian publishing house tells me that pastors are not buying books. “Most of the books sold in Christian bookstores are sold to and read by women,” he said. If our pastors are not using their valuable time for study, what are they using it for? Perhaps Whyte had the answer: “We shroud our indolence under the pretext of a difficulty. The truth is, it is lack of real love for our work.”
Alexander Whyte loved books, and he read them to his dying day. The Puritans in general and Thomas Goodwin in particular were his main diet. But he also thrived on the mystics and the princes of the Scottish church, such as Samuel Rutherford. Whyte constantly ordered books for himself and his friends in the ministry. However, he cautioned young pastors against becoming book-buyers instead of book-readers. “Don’t hunger for books,” he wrote a minister friend. “Get a few of the very best, such as you already have, and read them and your own heart continually.” Whyte often contrasted two kinds of reading—“reading on a sofa and reading with a pencil in hand.” He urged students to keep notebooks and to make entries in an interleaved Bible for future reference. “No day without its line” was his motto. He wrote to Hubert Simpson: “for more than forty years, I think I can say, never a week, scarcely a day, has passed, that I have not entered some note or notes into my Bible: and, then, I never read a book without taking notes for preservation one way or another.”
In his preaching, Whyte magnified the vileness of sin and the graciousness of Christ. His sermons were (for lack of a better word) surgical. Alexander Gammie reported Whyte’s criticism, expressed in a conversation with a friend, of Henry Drummond: “The trouble with Hen-a-ry is that he doesna’ ken [know] onything aboot sin.” Whyte certainly knew a thing or two about sin, and he was not afraid to preach what he knew. This was the Puritan in him, and he felt his sermon was not a success if he did not sting the conscience and expose the heart. Let me hasten to add that the preacher was more conscious of his own sins than those of others. In his study of sanctification, The Pure in Heart, William Sangster told of an evangelist who came to Edinburgh and criticized the ministers. A friend told Whyte, “The evangelist said last night that Dr. Hood Wilson was not a converted man.” Whyte jumped from his chair. “The rascal!” he cried. “Dr. Wilson not a converted man!” Then the friend reported that the evangelist also said that Whyte was not converted. At that, Whyte stopped short, sat down, put his face in his hands, and was silent for a long time. Then he said to the visitor, “Leave me, friend, leave me! I must examine my heart!”
Another story illustrates the effect of Whyte’s surgical sermons on his hearers. Two Highland miners, visiting Edinburgh, worshiped at St. George’s. Whyte’s sermon that Sunday was one of his typically dramatic exposures of sin, and the two men left the church in deep silence. After a few blocks, one said: “Sandy, yon man must have been a deevil when he was a laddie!”
An incident in Whyte’s childhood illustrates his theology of conviction. Whyte caught his arm in a threshing machine and everyone thought he would lose it—except a neighbor who was skilled in such matters in a homey way. She would not let them take the boy to the hospital for surgery. The pain became severe, and Whyte’s mother summoned the neighbor again. She looked over the situation and said: “I like the pain. I like the pain.” She was right. The arm healed. The pain had been the first step toward recovery. When people complained that Whyte’s sermons were too critical, he could well reply, “I like the pain—I like the pain.”
Whyte was not only a great preacher and student but also a great pastor. In his Bunyan Characters he stated boldly:
For I am as sure as I am of anything connected with a minister’s life, that a minister’s own soul will prosper largely in the measure that the souls of his people prosper through his pastoral work. No preaching, even if it were as good preaching as the apostle’s itself, can be left to make up for the neglect of pastoral visitation.3
Even in the dismal winter days, people would see Whyte walking the streets of Edinburgh to visit his people. His visits were not long, but they always brought a blessing. He was pastor not only to his people but also to a host of pastors who looked to him for encouragement and counsel.
Alexander Whyte was a great appreciator, almost to a fault. When George Morrison went to Edinburgh to be Whyte’s assistant, a friend cautioned him, “Remember, all of Whyte’s geese are swans!” Whyte loved nothing more than encouraging someone with a word of appreciation. He constantly sent postcards to friends thanking them for some article they had published or congratulating them for some achievement. Morrison had the same habit; he must have learned it from Whyte. Today, when so much ink is spilled criticizing God’s servants, some of us need to start majoring more in encouragement. “Give, and it shall be given unto you.”
Whyte was so much of an encourager he forgot that Christians cannot accept every doctrine men preach, though the men may be fine people. As you read G. F. Barbour’s magnificent biography of his uncle, you discover that Whyte was very ecumenical. He was a great admirer of Cardinal Newman (though he certainly disagreed with his theology) and even published an “appreciation” of him, to which he added selections from the cardinal’s writings.
When Abdul Baha Abbas, leader of the Bahai movement, came to Edinburgh, Whyte received him warmly into his home and invited friends to come hear him. An action like that could be misinterpreted and could encourage a non-Christian movement.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones has told of a letter written by Whyte in which the great preacher praised a book that was very liberal, saying “I wish I had written a book like this myself.” We can well understand Whyte’s desire to encourage, but surely he had to realize that his endorsement might lead somebody astray.
He defended Robertson Smith before the Assembly when it was likely that Smith’s views of inspiration would only undermine the faith. “Fathers and brethren,” Whyte cried, “the world of mind does not stand still! And the theological mind will stand still at its peril.” True, but the theological mind must still depend on the inspired Word of God for truth and direction. Once we lose that anchor, we drift.
W. Robertson Nicoll stated Whyte’s weakness perfectly: “He could not endure controversies with individuals.” He would go to almost any length to build bridges, even if he had to build them on sinking sand.
But he was a great preacher and a great soul-winner, in spite of his charitable excesses. When D. L. Moody came to Edinburgh in 1874, Whyte shared in the meetings with great enthusiasm. He often spoke at meetings on behalf of Moody’s work and was especially interested in the evangelist’s work with the YMCA. When Chapman and Alexander came to Edinburgh in 1914, again Whyte threw himself into the work. A friend asked him how he could spare the time and strength (he was then seventy-eight years old), and Whyte replied, “I simply can’t stay away.”
Do not put off reading Whyte’s sermons. His Bible Characters is a must for every preacher’s library. How he can make Bible people live! In Remembrance of Me contains sermons given during communion seasons at St. George’s. Of particular interest are Whyte’s final messages: the last sermon he preached at St. George’s, and the last sermon he prepared but was unable to preach. Lord, Teach Us to Pray is probably the finest single book of sermons on prayer by any evangelical preacher. With Mercy and Judgment contains some great preaching, as does The Nature of Angels. Baker Books has published The Treasury of Alexander Whyte, edited by Ralph Turnbull. In it is John Kelman’s “Memorial Address” on Alexander Whyte, which is certainly worth having. The Spiritual Life is Whyte’s study of Thomas Goodwin, the Puritan preacher whose works were never out of Whyte’s hands. Whyte urged young preachers to find one author who excited and helped them and to master his works. The Walk, Conversation, and Character of Jesus Christ Our Lord is a remarkable series of sermons on the life of Christ, flashing the kind of homiletical imagination for which Whyte was famous. He maintained that if a message is to have life and power, “it must be fused by the glow of personal experience and lit up by the flash of imagination.”4
Alexander Whyte would not want any of us to imitate his style or approach to preaching—except for his study and hard work. When one of his assistants attempted to imitate his style, Whyte simply said, “Deliver your own message.” That settled the matter. But I am sure all of us can benefit from Whyte’s contribution to sermonic literature by pondering his messages, making them a part of our own spiritual experience and then translating their truths into daily living and helpful preaching. No man could preach one of Whyte’s sermons as his own and get away with it. And no man can read one of his sermons and easily get away from it.
“A congregation is awaiting you,” Whyte said to some theological students one day, “to be made by you, after you are made by God.” Here is a great preacher’s philosophy of pastoral work: God makes a man; the man makes a ministry; the ministry makes a church. It worked in Edinburgh, and it will work today where you and I are ministering in the power of the Spirit.
Barbour’s biography, The Life of Alexander Whyte, is one of the greatest biographies of an evangelical preacher ever written. It is a massive book of nearly seven hundred pages; and since it was published less than three years after Whyte’s death, the author had to work diligently to release it so quickly. The best thing about the book is its emphasis on Whyte’s inner life rather than on his activities and achievements alone. But I must warn you that the first three chapters are slow reading—to make it through them you must believe in the perseverance of the saints! After that the book becomes delightfully easy and entertaining—and edifying. I wish every seminary student were required to read chapters 16 through 18 to learn how this man studied, prepared sermons, and pastored his church.
While reading this biography, I was impressed with the amazing variety and number of friends who were woven into the fabric of Whyte’s life. The book’s index runs to seventeen pages, and most of it is devoted to the names of people Whyte knew and worked with as a pastor, preacher, denominational leader, author, and friend.
One of these names is Dr. Joseph Bell, who, as you may know, was the original Sherlock Holmes. Dr. Bell was Whyte’s friend and physician for nearly forty years. He was also a beloved elder at Free St. George’s. Dr. Bell taught at the University of Edinburgh, and one of his students was a young man named Doyle. In fact, it was Doyle who often ushered in the patients during Dr. Bell’s lectures, and the good doctor would proceed to reveal all manner of facts about them without asking them a single question! In his delightful book The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, John Dickson Carr described the amazing Dr. Bell as “very lean, with dexterous hands and a shock of dark hair standing up on his head like the bristles of a brush.”5
Bell’s uncanny faculty for observation enabled him to discern a man’s occupation by observing his hands or the peculiar characteristics of his clothes. Diagnosing cases seemed like child’s play to him. “The trained eye,” he explained it. “A simple matter!” A few years after graduation Doyle used his old professor as the model for the world’s most famous detective. “If he needed a model for his detective,” wrote Carr, “he need look no further than a lean figure in Edinburgh, with long white dexterous hands and a humorous eye, whose deductions startled patients.”6 Thus, Sherlock Holmes was born. Even Whyte’s biographer mentioned that Bell’s “acuteness of observation was so striking that he was commonly believed to have suggested to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, when a medical student in Edinburgh, the character of Sherlock Holmes.”7
But the gifted doctor and the celebrated preacher did not always agree. Whyte was usually ready to throw his influence behind any cause that, to him, seemed right, and he also had a weakness for seeing good in projects that others considered dangerous. In 1887 when “the Irish question” was at its stormy height, Whyte found himself endorsing a controversial Irish leader named Dillon by inviting the man to speak to a private group of Presbyterian leaders at Whyte’s home. Three weeks later, the pastor received a strong remonstrance signed by thirteen prominent members of the church, including eight elders; one of those elders was Dr. Joseph Bell. Whyte’s physician agreed with his colleagues that their pastor was in danger of losing his influence in the pulpit by associating with those who, to the public, represented party politics. The letter cut Whyte deeply, particularly because it was signed by so many who were his friends. But Dr. Bell won his point. Whyte’s oldest son, Fred, explained: “He [Whyte] showed no hesitation in his choice. His calling as a Minister had first claim on him then as always.”8
In 1892, the church session accepted their pastor’s request for an assistant. Dr. Bell had stood with his pastor and urged the officers to secure help as soon as possible. Whyte had been working tirelessly, and the pressures of the ministry were going to break him. For some unknown reason, the much-needed assistant was not called at that time, but we can be sure that Dr. Bell did not allow the matter to rest. Two years later, Dr. Hugh Black was called to Whyte’s side.
But hard work took its toll. When he was seventy-three, Whyte accepted the principalship of New College in Edinburgh—in addition to his pastoral duties! The result was a breakdown in health at the end of 1909, a sudden heart attack that gave his doctor cause for concern. Dr. Bell managed to get his illustrious patient through the winter, but a second heart attack followed a year later. Bell had often encouraged Dr. and Mrs. Whyte to take long holidays; once he had sent them to Italy for a much-needed rest. Perhaps it was Bell who inspired Whyte’s “advice for a successful ministry”: talk to no one after services, and always take long holidays! Alexander Whyte was a great preacher, but let us pause to give thanks to Dr. Joseph Bell, a faithful elder and friend, and a wonderful physician. Perhaps it was Bell’s ministry that helped make Whyte the kind of man he was.
So much for doctors and detectives. As you peruse the list of names in the index to The Life of Alexander Whyte, you also find D. L. Moody mentioned. I was encouraged to learn that it was Reverend John Kelman of Leith, among others, who had first invited Mr. Moody to preach in Edinburgh. Kelman’s son, John, would become an assistant to Whyte in 1907, and in 1919 would succeed John Henry Jowett at New York’s Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. Whyte’s illustrious predecessor at Free St. George’s, R. S. Candlish, died shortly before the Moody-Sankey meetings started, but he had predicted for Edinburgh “a great blessing which should not be despised though it come strangely.” It was in Edinburgh that Sankey composed “The Ninety and Nine.”
Whyte threw himself into the revival campaign, and as a result saw an exceptionally large communicant’s class the next year. He also saw his Tuesday night prayer meeting move from the church hall into the sanctuary itself. It would be interesting to discover the spiritual contributions Moody made to the life of that historic church.
I wonder what Alexander Whyte’s attitude was toward fellow Presbyterian preacher John Kennedy of Dingwall. Kennedy was an opponent of the Moody-Sankey meetings and did not hesitate to express his opposition publicly. He was “rigidly conservative,” said one biographer. He rejected hymns as “human inventions” and permitted only the singing of psalms in his services. He also opposed church organs. (He was not the only Scot who was horrified at Sankey’s little organ—his “chest full of whistles.” One dear lady in Edinburgh ran out of the meeting, shouting, “Let me oot! Let me oot! What would John Knox think of the like of ye?” She took refuge in the overflow meeting across the street, and when Sankey showed up there to sing, she repeated the same performance!) Known as the “Spurgeon of the Highlands,” Kennedy was particularly opposed to Moody’s theology, especially the use of the inquiry room. He wrote a strong pamphlet against the evangelist, something Whyte would not have done.
One of Alexander Whyte’s best friends died over two hundred years before Whyte was born. I speak of Lancelot Andrewes, whose Private Devotions was one of Whyte’s favorite books. In fact, Whyte named one of his sons Lancelot in honor of the Anglican divine who had lived from 1555 to 1626 (during the tense reign of King James I). It is unfortunate that Andrewes is almost forgotten today. The famous poet T. S. Eliot tried to stir up interest in Andrewes by publishing in 1926 his essay For Lancelot Andrewes, but he failed.
Andrewes was a scholar. Even when a student, he used his annual holiday to learn a new language; it was said that he mastered fifteen languages. In 1586 he was made a chaplain to Queen Elizabeth, and in 1601 dean of Westminster. He assisted in the coronation of King James on July 25, 1603, and was present in January 1604 at the Hampton Court Conference, at which the request was made for a new translation of the Bible. Andrewes was one of “fifty-four learned men” appointed to help translate the new Bible, serving as chairman of the group responsible for Genesis through 2 Kings. (If you wish to read a delightful account of the work of translating the King James Version, secure The Learned Men by Gustavus Swift Paine.9 It may surprise you to discover the strange assortment of men that produced this masterpiece of English literature!)
But it was not Lancelot Andrewes the translator that captivated Alexander Whyte; it was Lancelot Andrewes the man of prayer. You will want to secure Whyte’s Lancelot Andrewes and His “Private Devotions,” one of the series of Appreciation volumes written by Whyte, because that is the best introduction to Andrewes. The learned bishop was not a great preacher, although many of his sermons are still available in old volumes. His Sermons of the Nativity are available in The Ancient and Modern Library of Theological Literature, but you will find no exciting messages in these pages. Andrewes preached these seventeen sermons before King James; it was a standard procedure on Christmas Day that the bishop so address the court.
Andrewes was known even in his day as a great man of prayer, spending hours daily in his devotional exercises. Out of this came the book that so captured Whyte: Private Devotions. Andrewes did not write these devotions for publication. He gave his copy to his friend William Laud in 1626 (the year of Andrewes’s death), and in 1675 Oxford Press published the first English translation (the original devotions had been written in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin). There have been several translations since then, but the book has never, to my knowledge, had wide distribution. After reading Whyte’s Appreciation, you may want to secure a copy of Private Devotions. The best edition is the one edited by F. E. Brightman, originally published in 1903 but reprinted by Meridian Books in 1961. A second edition, edited by Thomas S. Kepler, was issued by World Publishing Company in 1956.
Andrewes’s Devotions are not brief sermons or “helpful thoughts” based on Scripture. They are expressions of praise, penitence, faith, and intercession taken directly from the Bible and the church fathers. He included prayers for each day of the week, based, for example, on the week of creation described in Genesis 1. He had devotional exercises from Scripture for both the morning and evening. “There is nothing in the whole range of devotional literature to be set beside Andrewes’s incomparable Devotions,” wrote Whyte. I am sure that what captured Whyte’s interest was Andrewes’s emphasis on sin and repentance (Whyte was himself a master of surgical preaching on sin and confession), but perhaps we could use this emphasis today.
Not every believer will be set on fire by Andrewes; if you are not, do not despair. But if you are, you will have acquired a source of spiritual help that will never fail you, because it is grounded in the Word of God. It will take you time to master the bishop’s approach. It will take concentration—spiritual concentration—to keep from merely reciting prayers in a routine fashion. But once you have leaped these obstacles, you will discover a new power and satisfaction in your personal devotional exercises. Using the Private Devotions will never make you another Alexander Whyte, but it can help to make you a better saint of God.
We have come a long way, from Sherlock Holmes to the sainted Bishop Andrewes, and Alexander Whyte has been our guide all the while. I encourage you to read Barbour’s magnificent biography of his uncle. Who knows what interesting people you may meet in its pages, and Whyte himself will be the most interesting one of all!
Whyte died on January 6, 1921, and a few days later Nicoll wrote in the British Weekly: “What a gift he was to his Church, to his nation! How wide were the irradiations of faith and love and hope and repentance that came from his intense and prayerful life!”