A week to remember
THERE is a story often told about a local newspaper in the north-east of Scotland reporting the sinking of the Titanic with the headline "Fraserburgh man lost at sea".
The Milngavie and Bearsden Herald was not guilty of such narrow parochialism when, almost 100 years ago, it also set out to cover local reaction to the story.
The local angle in the issue of April 26, 1912 was provided courtesy of the Rev John Henry Dickie of New Kilpatrick Parish Church who had decided that week's Sunday morning worship should take the form of a memorial service to those who had perished in the disaster one week before. The Herald's report gives some idea of the shock which everyone felt at the tragedy which had overtaken the Titanic.
"There was a very large congregation and the flag on the tower was suspended at half-mast,'' the Herald noted. Among the hymns sung was Nearer My God To Thee which, readers were reminded further down the piece, was the one the Titanic's orchestra had played as the doomed vessel went down.
The Herald went on to say: "... and at the close Mr Downie, the organist, played the Dead March in Saul while the people remained standing in the pews. Everyone was visibly affected."
The Rev Dickie said no-one could drive from their minds the tragedy of this "luxurious floating palace", declared by every maritime expert to be unsinkable, but which had struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage and sank with horrendous loss of life.
The minister's text for the morning was "The earth feared and was still,'' from Psalm 6. But Dickie conceded that many people's faith in a loving God had been shaken by this tragedy. "I believe that many people are not prepared to be "still" in the face of this disaster, as far as God is concerned,'' he said. "Many are prepared to question God. How can you reconcile the existence of a good God with a dreadful calamity like this? If God is love: if God has the tenderest and kindest heart, and is the real and true father of all his human children then, why does he permit such a disaster with necessary suffering and death to a multitude of innocent people?"
He sought to challenge this way of thinking, asking his congregation: "What would you have God to do? A vessel is driven upon a mass of ice and she founders. Would you have God to suddenly suspend the laws of nature and change the properties of ice making it soft as butter in order to prevent the result of man's action?
"Insufficient lifeboats are provided for the passengers and crew. Would you have God to send an army of angels in order to put a premium on human negligence? Would you have him change the properties of water for the occasion so that it should not drown?
"Or would you have him transform the temperature of water, for the occasion, so that it should not freeze?
"If so, you might as well expect the deity to alter the laws of health in order to suit the convenience of a man who habitually breaks them and yet desires to live, or to suspend the laws of gravitation in order to save a man who deliberately walked over a precipice."
The minister declared that "calamities and disasters come either because people are not willing to obey the laws of God, or because they are prepared to take the risk of pitting their impotent forces against the gigantic forces of nature."
He even went on to claim that there were some aspects of the Titanic story for which God should be thanked.
One was Marconi's "wonderful discovery" of wireless telegraphy which brought rescue ships to the scene before the 700 souls in the lifeboats had frozen to death. Another uplifting aspect was the noble behaviour of the male passengers and crew who stood back and allowed women and children to take up the few precious places in the lifeboats.
The Rev Dickie said many had been appalled by early reports of panicking and cowardly men fighting with women to get into lifeboats.
But these reports, he said, spread by "scoundrels" in America, were quickly exposed as lies.
"What a sigh of relief passed through every true British heart when, but a few hours later, we read a tale of heroism, as thrilling as any told in the long annals of disaster and death," said the Rev Dickie.
The minister summed up by saying the greatest lesson anyone could learn from the tragedy of the Titanic was to remember how short life could be, and the need for all to prepare to face death at any moment - "in the spirit of a true Christian."
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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