Our marriage was celebrated at her sister’s house in Edinburgh; and I may be pardoned for recalling a little event that characterized the occasion. My youngest brother, then tutor to a gentleman studying at the University, stepped forth at the close of the ceremony and recited an _Epithalamium_ composed for the day. For many a month and year the refrain, a play upon the Bride’s name, kept singing itself through my memory:—
“Long may the Whitecross banner wave By the battle blasts unriven; Long may our Brother and Sister brave Rejoice in the light of Heaven.”
He described the Bride as hearing a “Voice from the far Pacific Seas”; and turning to us both, he sang of an Angel beckoning us to the Tanna-land, to gather a harvest of souls:—
“The warfare is brief, the crown is bright, The pledge is the souls of men; Go, may the Lord defend the Right, And restore you safe again!”
But the verse which my dear wife thought most beautiful for a bridal day, and which her memory cherishes still, was this:—
“May the ruddy Joys, and the Graces fair, Wait fondly around you now; Sweet angel Hopes and young Loves repair To your home and bless your vow!”
My last scene in Scotland was kneeling at the family altar in the old Sanctuary Cottage at Torthorwald, while my venerable father, with his high-priestly locks of snow-white hair streaming over his shoulders, commended us once again to “the care and keeping of the Lord God of the families of Israel.” It was the last time that ever on this Earth those accents of intercession, loaded with a pathos of deathless love, would fall upon my ears. I knew to a certainty that when we rose from our knees and said farewell, our eyes would never meet again till they were flooded with the lights of the Resurrection Day. But he and my darling mother gave us away once again with a free heart, not unpierced with the sword of human anguish, to the service of our common Lord and to the Salvation of the Heathen. And we went forth, praying that a double portion of their spirit, with their precious blessing, might rest upon us in all the way that we had to go.
Our beloved mother, always more self-restrained, and less demonstrative in the presence of others, held back her heart till we were fairly gone from the door; and then, as my dear brother afterwards informed me, she fell back into his arms with a great cry, as if all the heart-strings had broken, and lay for long in a death-like swoon. Oh, all ye that read this page, think most tenderly of the cries of Nature, even where Grace and Faith are in perfect triumph. Read, through scenes like these, a fuller meaning into the words addressed to that blessed Mother, whose Son was given for us all, “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also.”
Here, in passing, I may mention that my mother, ever beloved, “fell on sleep,” after a short agony of affliction, in 1865; and my “priest-like father” passed peacefully and joyfully into the presence of his Lord in 1868; both cradled and cherished to the last in the arms of their own affectionate children, and both in the assured hope of a blessed immortality, where all their sons and daughters firmly expect to meet them again in the Home prepared by their blessed Saviour.
We embarked at Liverpool for Australia in _The Crest of the Wave_, Captain Ellis; and after what was then considered a fast passage of ninety-five days, we landed at Sydney on 17th January, 1865. Within an hour we had to grapple with a new and amazing perplexity. The Captain of our _Dayspring_ came to inform me that his ship had arrived three days ago and now lay in the stream,—that she had been to the Islands, and had settled the Gordons, McCullaghs, and Goodwills on their several Stations,—that she had left Halifax in Nova Scotia fourteen months ago, and that now, on arriving at Sydney, he could not get one penny of money, and that the crew were clamouring for their pay, etc., etc. He continued, “Where shall I get money for current expenses? No one will lend unless we mortgage the _Dayspring_. I fear there is nothing before us but to sell her!” I gave him £50 of my own to meet clamant demands, and besought him to secure me a day or two of delay that something might be done.