From John Younger to William Kemp   [11 January 1844?]

My Dear William

Though now long in acknowledging it, I have been even beyond all expectations astonised and delighted with your observations on “The latest Geological changes in the south of Scotland”. I expected some grand and acute observations, boldly sketched out, but nothing like the graphical depictation of the primitive characteresticks of the hills and valleys around us, in the manner you have given it. The grandeur of your discoveries themselves is not more striking to my conception, and taste; than is your manner of describing them. The beautiful simple modesty of the introduction, the exactitude and true poetry of the description, of the four grand collateral branches of the subject, with the actual sublimity of the peroration, form, upon the whole, a lesson more to my mind than anything I can recollect of ever having read or listened to in my life—

William, I am glad that you have not had to wait to be born after my day, as then I should have missed that information I have all along so much wanted. As oftentimes, nearly forty years ago, I have stopt short in my private walks, struck with admiration! of how hill and valley, the surface around, had come by the particular forms they assume, for I could not possibly make a twelvemonth’s diuernal whirl of the earth in the waters of Noah’s flood do all the work necessary to produce half the phenomena everywher⁠⟨⁠e⁠⟩⁠ seen around us. And I had then history of no other agency applicable to the task of tossing and moulding modelling and remodeling hill and valley, into the variety of shape so well adapted for shelter & shade, beauty and utility. A verse in Beattie’s Minstrel gave me a heave out of my native sandbed of ignorance, though it left me high in air to break my mind’s neck in the fall—

“Earthquake’s have rais’d to heaven the humble vale

And Gulphs the Mountain’s mighty mass entomb’d

And where the Atlantic rolls, wide continents have bloom’d.”

And then a beautiful section of our back-brae here, exposing a dozen different horizontal layers of varied strata, gave me an idea of some deposition of sea-currents, in some distant era out beyond all dates of the general opinion of our scripture time. But this was encroaching upon forbidden ground, the superstition of my own mind, and that of a1l my neighbours, even to the sacred height of our parish Church pulpit! I durst not express my wandering thoughts, which would have been considered of a vaguabond character. Of course they lived and died within me— For conceive the human mind something like a manorial possession, divide it into its casual departments, and we shall find that rational religion is the very smallest enclosure on the estate, while superstition is generally the House park of the whole inheritance, upon which the devil’s game is most particularly preserved! even the owls and Bats of a benighted intellect! Very unlike Jove’s Eagle soaring above the bedimming clouds, with a bright eye to the noon-sun. A pity but we could get over the mist of absurdities that superstition has spider-webbed around true religion, without flying out direct into infidelity. For, after forty year’s eager gathering from the pulpit and the press, I am as much at a loss to pick the soul’s corn from the world’s chaff as ever—

I am glad the will of our Maker is understood so far clearly without mistification “to do Justly love mercy and walk humbly with our God”   This, the very state of our nature would teach us to do, as convenient; if not perverted by brutal customs; and must be right, being self evident; and most certainly the grandest privilege of our human nature. Yet how poorly is it appreciated in a general point of view, since, after fifty year’s experience and observation, those who profess to be, or are paid for being, the teachers and leaders in this doctrine, appear to me the greatest knaves in the community, for wherein is the practice of Justice, the love of mercy, or the walk of humility exemplified in the conduct of those, who seem rather to be perverters of the simple Justice of God in nature, as well as the equally sublime mandate, in the subsequent message of grace “to do as we would be done by”. Instead of this do we not see them generally and habitually personating, or helping the oppressor to trample the simple and humble of God’s ofspring, their brothers, in the dust! They demand Justice, and more, but give it not!—They ask mercy, but shew it not, they construe humility into servile obedience to the usurped power of the avaricious and wicked in power, whose abominable usurpation of Godhead on earth they serviley acknowledge and minister unto, to the discomfort of the millions of the human race, holding, by the same tenure, the same common nature, and common privileges, and whom they otherwise pretend to teach—to enlighten, and lead gently in the path of life, through hunger and starvation, to the ultimate happiness and bliss of future being—the substance of their creed almost invariably is, give them this world, they’ll assure us the next. Yet the perversion of its teachers tends only to prove the truth of true religion—

William, I have met with few losses that I more deplored than the loss of our late friend Walter Murray. He was one of the few in the limited circle of our 1ife’s acquaintance who possessed a mind worth the name, and whom I could calculate on as select and confidential, a proper participant in ideas which are unappreciable by half the species. Though nothing is of more certain casual occurrence, yet nothing takes us by such surprise as sudden deaths. His, from being so sudden and unexpected, stunned me much. And I must ever regret a simple occurrence which greatly prevented our free communication on his last call, when passing to Galashiels, and my accompanying him out the road a mile or two, which had been my constant practice, on every former visit. These may be silly thoughts as the world goes, but yet they involve a world of reflection. I conceived him rather cool in spirits, which now, I am affraid, might possibly have arisen from some pecuniary consideration of which I had then no suspicion whatever, but which, if I had got out with him, as usual, I might have discovered, and been able to have soothed, and certainly would, in his particular case, have considered it in the light of a peculiar privilege to have been allowed to relieve, to the extent of my ability—

But these are now idle, as untimeous, reflections. Yet, that minds of such congenial sympathies should not be for ever parted, seems to me another strong natural argument for the doctrine of immortality, for why should mind not have at least the same properties of common gas? that may change forms, enter into new combinations, and continue the same intrinsick quality for ever? Let us still live in hope of it, and, there are few of our known earthly acquaintances who have passed away before us, that I should be more glad to meet with in another and better constituted state of existence, than he who was so worthy a friend and companion here My much lamented Walter Murray.—

I have copied, for my own gratification, the manuscript with which you was so good as to favour me, and would sooner have returned the original if I had not expected to have been at Galashiels before this time. However it is in safe keeping for the time being, and if I don’t get up to see you soon will send it safely—

Please do at conveniency let me hear how you are feeling thinking and so | believe me ever very truly | Yours | John Younger