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It is difficult to remember when for the first time it dawned on my that I had a surname. It is equally difficult to recall when I began to realise that my surname differed from those of my acquaintances. This of course is part of the whole process of becoming aware of oneself as an individual. But I do remember at an early age becoming intrigued with the form of my surname and discovering its Scottish roots. I soon discovered that it was the name of an ancient Scottish clan and this led to a continuing interest in the peculiar clan system and my own connection with it.
My grandfather, John Guthrie, was born in the county of Angus, the home of the Guthrie clan. His father, James Guthrie, was an engineer by profession, who determined that his son should follow in his steps and apprenticed him to an engineering works in Glasgow. My grandfather came to England as a young man, where he lived for the rest of his life, but his Scottish attachments were so strong that he followed the practice of his own father in apprenticing my father to the same engineering works in Glasgow. This was not the only occasion on which my father followed in the steps of my grandfather, for later on my father took over the job that my grandfather relinquished when he retired the significance of which will brought out in a subsequent section.
My grandfather was married in Newington in the church of St. Mary a short distance from Spurgeon’s famous Tabernacle. My grandmother’s name before her marriage was Elizabeth Ann Butterworth, who was born in Battersea. Some time later my grandfather worked at the gun works owned by Sir Hiram Maxim in Erith. It is some indication of his inventiveness that he had an active part in the development of the first automatic gun, which came to be known as Maxim’s gun. My grandfather’s inventive genius was sadly restricted by his propensity for alcoholic liquor, a weakness which stayed with him until his dying day. Indeed the alcoholism which affected both my paternal grandparents prompted my own parents to become abstainers. In fact my mother developed into a most ardent temperance advocate as a result, which led me to resolve to remain a life-long abstainer. My grandfather’s influence on me has therefore been of an indirect and negative kind. In fact I never knew him personally, for he died at the age of 72 some four years before I was born. My grandmother survived him for three years dying at the age of 75, only a few months before my arrival.
My father was the youngest of a family of six. All except the eldest had died through accident or natural causes before my birth. The eldest bore the same name as his father, although I always knew him as my uncle Jack. The next two, Robert and William, were both killed in their early twenties in industrial accidents. Safety precautions were none too good in those days and engineers were exposed to considerable risks. The other brother, James, also an engineer, died more naturally but at the early age of 33 within a few years of my parents moving to East Anglia where my grandparents lived. The preponderance of engineering expertise in my father’s family had absolutely no effect on me, although it is not without some significance that my own sons seem to have inherited something of it. The remaining member of my father’s family was a girl but I never remember hearing him speak of her and can only conclude that she died at a young age.
The only one of my father’s near relatives that I met was Uncle Jack. I remember him well. He had had an eventful life, for he had served with what was then the Royal Brazilian navy and later transferred to the Royal Navy. He rose to the highest rank then open to an engineer, that of Engineer Commander. He was every inch a naval man. He lived at Southsea. I vividly remembered a visit I paid to him with my father. He had a fund of traveller’s anecdotes which I listened to with fascination and then promptly forgot. I was probably about ten years old at the time, but I remember something of the awe with which I held this particular uncle. He had already retired from the Royal Navy, for he was some twelve years older than my father. I have two recollections of that visit, which I think was the only time I met my uncle. One was the inadequacy of the bed which my father and I was expected to share. It was a single bed pushed against the wall in the modestly small spare room. I spent the night somewhat squashed against that wall and can still recall my relief when morning dawned and I was released. I somewhat suspect that that may have been the reason why that was my one and only visit to my paternal uncle. One the other hand I remember the kindness of my Aunt Agnes, whose strong Scottish accent soon displayed her place of origin. She belonged in fact to the Ogilvie clan.
Another activity of my uncle Jack which has always fascinated me was his attempt to trace back the family history. Here I must rely on oral tradition. My sources of information are my father and my brother Malcolm. According to them my amateur genealogist uncle traced back the family tree until he reached a point when he stumbled on a problem. He had not pushed the family lineage far when it seemed that he discovered that one of our female forbears had secretly married the son and heir of a powerful Scottish earl. The marriage had been solemnised without the knowledge of the earl, but when the latter discovered the event he took such strong objection to his son and heir marrying a commoner that he ordered the erasure of the entry in the parish records. By this means the son who was born to the wife was effectively disinherited. My sources were adamant that my genealogist uncle had examined the entry and discovered irrefutable evidence of its validity. My father and brother delighted to recount the results of this uncle’s researches and it fired my youthful imagination to think that I was in some way directly descended from the Scottish aristocracy. If it has done nothing else it has continued to fuel my enthusiasm for my Scottish roots.
It is nevertheless the connection with the ancient Guthrie clan which has most impresses me. As soon as I discovered the motto on the Guthrie coat of arms was Sto pro veritate (I stand for truth), I recognised its aptness for summing up what I felt the overriding purpose of my life to be. Indeed if I ever devised my own coat of arms I could hardly select a more suitable motto. On the coat of arms beneath the enscrolled motto an arm is raised clutching a sword. It requires little imagination in a Christian context to see this as symbolic of the sword of the word of God after the statement in Hebrews 4:14. It must however be admitted that in the history of the Guthrie clan the sword has at times been far from symbolic. Nevertheless there have been others who have borne this name who have shared my own feelings regarding the motto.
I first came across its significance applied in a specifically Christian way when I read John Howie of Lochoin’s Lives of the Scottish Covenanters. Among the distinguished list of Scottish worthies whose exploits are recorded in that book are two illustrious members of the Guthrie clan, James Guthrie and his cousin William. James, minister of the church of the Holy Rood in Stirling, was son of the laird of Guthrie castle, in Guthrie, in the county of Angus. He became a martyr for the Christian faith when in 1661 he was executed in Edinburgh and his head displayed on the battlements for all to see. It remained there for several years until it was courageously removed and decently buried by a theological student.
The historian mentions the motto and notes its aptness to describe the noble witness of the martyr. The record of those stirring and dangerous times filled my mind with admiration for a man whose testimony contributed powerfully to the freeing of Scotland from religious oppression. James’ cousin William Guthrie, who came from the Brechin area of Angus, was another stalwart Covenanter. He exercised a long and powerful ministry at Fenwick in the county of Ayrshire and although greatly harassed by his opponents ultimately died from the exhaustion that followed his labours. He is notable for a book entitled The Christian’s Great Interest which is still regarded as a spiritual classic.
Some time later I began reading the autobiography and memoirs of Dr. Thomas Guthrie, the famous nineteenth century preacher and philanthropist of Edinburgh. He mentions the inspiration he had gained from the example of James Guthrie of Stirling and comments on the aptness of the family motto to express the aim and purpose of the life of that illustrious man. Thomas hoped he might trace his ancestry to the same branch of the family, but in fact that proved impossible. Nevertheless he did share the same county of origin, although Thomas’s father came from the Brechin area. I was interested to note that his biographers (two of his sons) cited a description of William Guthrie the preacher and claimed to see many parallels between him and their own father. Certainly both had a remarkable gift of oratory. These references to three of the Guthrie clan who contributed much to the defence and furtherance of the faith are made because of the significant example they provided in the emergence of my own calling to the work of God. I cannot tell whether there are any other genealogical connections.
I turn next to my maternal grandparents. My mother’s father was a Dutchman named Peter Lindeboom who had emigrated to England and had settled in the East end of London. He was a tailor by trade. I know very little about him apart from the fact that he died in his early forties soon after the birth of his youngest child Sydney. My mother, Maude Louise, was the youngest of the girls. I never heard my mother speak of my grandfather. This was no doubt because he died while she was still young. It was said that he had deserted from the Dutch army but I have no knowledge about the truth or otherwise of this report.
My mother’s mother once visited us. I stood in considerable awe of the little old lady who wore a conventional granny cap made of black velvet with white lace trimmings. She was very frail, for I remember my mother having to support her as she walked along. I marvelled that one so old could walk at all. In fact she was eighty-three at the time, but the rigours of her life were fast catching up with her and I believe she died fairly soon after that visit. With her passing was severed the last link with the previous generation.
My mother was twenty years younger than my aunt Jenny (her real name was Jane) who nevertheless survived her and had reached the age of eighty-three when she died. I remembered this aunt particularly well because she lived for a time two doors away from us. She was a gracious and kind person who was always pleased to see her nephews and niece whenever they called in to see her. After the death of her husband, my uncle Harry. She moved near to Stockton and lived with her only son (who was also named Harry) until she died. I saw her very rarely after she left Ipswich, but I always retained a warm regard for her. I remember once visiting my cousin, who fascinated me with his microscope. His favourite hobby was gazing at an amazing collection of slides containing a variety of natural phenomena. He was a kind of amateur botanist, although his real profession was draughtsmanship. He was a churchwarden at the local parish church and was notable as the only member of my mother’s family who had any church connections. Of my mother’s other sisters I knew very little apart from their names, Alice, Emily and Eliza. I once met my aunt Alice, but I never met the other two. None of them exerted any influence upon me and for our present purpose they must be passed by. As far as I know, none of them made any Christian profession.
This brings me to write about my parents whose Christian influence me on was very considerable, especially that of my mother. But I will begin with my father. He had had little formal education, having left school at the age of twelve. My grandfather arranged for him to be apprenticed as an engineer at the same engineering works in Glasgow where he had himself been apprenticed. After this he returned to England and worked for about seven years at the Woolwich arsenal. At that time many of the employees were being laid off and my father, fearing that he would share the same fate, left Woolwich and took up an appointment in Hove in Sussex. It was while he was there that he received an invitation from William Pretty’s of Ipswich to take over my grandfather’s job of maintenance engineer. It was through following in his father’s footsteps that led him to settle in Ipswich and resulted in my being born in an East Anglian town.
My father had inherited something of his father’s inventive genius. he had a shed which served as his workshop. It was not a tidy place. Indeed it seemed to be perpetually filled with junk, although my father would never acknowledge the existence of “junk”. To him everything was useful. The shed was fitted with numerous gadgets which my father had conceived and created, all out of the same supply of discarded material. I remember often seeing him searching through his piles of wood, or tin, or brass or aluminium looking for just the right piece for the task in hand. He never threw anything away because he considered that would amount to waste, and he saw no reason for buying anything new if something old could be adapted. I certainly inherited his urge to collect, but I did not share his expertise in turning the motley piles into something useful. I am reminded that God is infinitely more able than my father was to make something useful out of what has been cast off. My father’s passion for improving things provided a powerful object lesson. I may not have learned a great deal intellectually from my father but I have never ceased to marvel at the skill of those hands and the products of his fertile imagination. I remember that for a wedding present, my father presented my wife and I with a nest of three trays beautifully made out of mahogany. They had been in constant use ever sense and are therefore a continuous reminder of my father’s practical skills.
While I was still quite young (about the age of six, if I rightly remember) I received an excited summons up to the loft in our house. It was not the kind place I frequented. I’m not sure that I had ever been there before. The main difficulty was the access. The aperture in the landing ceiling was of small dimensions. To reach it was necessary to climb a somewhat rickety pair of steps and then to use techniques which were a cross between mountaineering and gymnastics to fling oneself at the aperture in the hope of landing in the right place. Due to my timid disposition I was quite ready to call off the whole exploit that day, but the excited persuasions of my father convinced me that something quite out of the ordinary was afoot and I eventually agreed to take the plunge. Arriving in the loft I noticed a torch was illuminating a small apparatus in one part of the loft and it was not long before my father and brother were feverishly manipulating a whisker-like device in a glass tube. It was of course a crystal set which had been constructed by my father who was determined not to be left out of the new technology. It cannot be said that the reception was particularly good. It was just possible as a result of intense concentration to make out a voice repeating the call sign 2LO but this was the extent of the message. The excitement was the sheer achievement of snatching from the air anything resembling a human voice. It is similar to the joy of any achievement.
Even that wispy result had not been achieved without some hazard. I remember seeing my father perched on the top of a ladder precariously attempting to rig up an aerial which had to be of sufficient height to clear the trees. The whole operation was mystifying and marvellous. I do not think I have since experienced the same wonder as I reach to push a button for automatic tuning without the need of such an aerial at all.
Another of my father’s passions was his love of motor cars. Since his boss, William Pretty, owned one of the earliest cars to be seen on the streets of Ipswich, my father was given an early opportunity to drive it. I believe it was a Darrack and my father’s presence was needed because of his mechanical expertise. He came to be used as an occasional chauffeur cum mechanic. In those early days mechanics were at a premium. But my father’s means would not stretch to acquiring an expensive car, but his experience with William Pretty’s car whetted his appetite and he later acquired a small De Dion. It was a two-seater tourer with wire spoke wheels and generally a somewhat insubstantial looking frame. I never saw this contraption but a picture of it has been preserved in the family album showing my father driving, my mother in the passenger seat and my brother Malcolm sitting on the floor with his legs dangling over the side. Certainly car design has come a long way since those early days.
My earliest personal recollection of my father possessing a car was one day when there was great excitement as we gazed out of the window of our front room to see a black Ford tinlizzy of a distinctly boxy appearance, which my father had just acquired. It was definitely more roomy than the De Dion and managed to hold the whole family. I am not sure how long my father had had the car before a rather dramatic happening occurred. The family had been for a trip to Norwich and we were returning towards Ipswich when I noticed a wheel flying over the near-side hedge and land in the meadow. At the same time my father struggled to control the car and skilfully brought it to a halt with the axle scraping along the tarmac road. It was no easy matter to reinstall the errant wheel, but my father was equal to that kind of emergency and with the use of crowbars and the like a jack was jockeyed into position under the axle. I had an even greater admiration for the ingenuity of my father that day, although I never did discover what caused the wheel so suddenly to part company with the car. Subsequently to this my father had a series of old cars of various descriptions, and it never ceased to amaze me how he managed to coax them to function, but he always succeeded in doing so.
My father’s expertise was to come in useful when my brother Raymond and I first became owners of a car. We certainly needed a mechanic in the background since we paid only eleven pounds for it. It was a Singer tourer, which had obviously seen better days. It turned out to be a doubtful asset, but it would have been even less of an asset had it not been for my for father’s ingenuity. He was to prove a valuable standby in other adventures with old cars in which we got ourselves involved. I still remember with some nostalgia that draughty old Singer, since it was the first car we could call our own.
In his later years my father developed another interest which surprised me. He bought an old boat which was propelled by a small motor and he spent days tinkering about on this craft to get it somehow operative on the river Orwell. He was in his seventies when this interest developed and at a time when most men of that age would be sitting before the fire with their feet up; but not so my father. It was a great delight to him to take me for a trip on the river Orwell down to the attractive marina of Pin Mill. He certainly got more exhilaration out of the trip than I did, for I have never been very fond of water. But the Orwell looking across from Pin Mill to Nacton is undoubtedly a beautiful river. On one occasion very rough weather had caused his dingy to break loose and in spite of the inclemency of the weather and in spite of his age he searched half the night in the dark until he found it. He tracked it down by means of observing the currents and located it eventually lodged against another boat. Such experiences will demonstrate something of the determination which was characteristic of my father when any interest gripped him.
I must add a word about my father’s Christian commitment. His family had shown no interest in the Christian faith. It was not until some years after he moved to Ipswich that he found faith in Christ. My mother became a Christian some time earlier. It was under the ministry of Tydeman Chilvers that my father committed his life to Christ, having been persuaded by my mother to attend the preaching of that man of God. He never however explored the profundities of Christian doctrine. As an essentially practical man, he developed a simple faith, the reality of which was recognised by other members of the church when he was elected as a deacon. He held this position during my formative years. I would not describe my father as a strong personality, but I had an ever increasing regard for the quiet and gentle manner in which he lived his life. It is most likely that I owe more to that example than I am consciously aware of.
My mother by contrast was a powerful personality. She was remarkable in a number of ways. Like my father she had left school at the age of twelve, after which she had no further formal education. But her mind received a tremendous impetus when soon after her arrival in Ipswich she was converted at a small mission hall in the dockland area. She at once developed a deep desire for knowledge of God’s word and assiduously applied herself to the study of scripture. She soon sought a church where the scriptures were systematically expounded and found this under the ministry of Tydeman Chilvers at Bethesda Baptist Church. My recollection of the preaching of this servant of God was that he was one of the finest expositors of scripture I ever heard. The fact that he was later called to the pulpit of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in south London, made famous under the ministry of Charles Haddon Spurgeon bears eloquent testimony to his considerable gifts. So avid was my mother’s thirst for biblical understanding that she frequently used to discuss doctrine with the pastor, as the latter told me many years later. He commented that he had seldom found in any of his churches a more ready student of the word. It is not surprising in view of this that among my earliest recollections of my mother was of her offering explanations of scripture. I have no doubt that my own devotion to the exposition of scripture owed its origins to my mother’s enthusiasm. Her grasp of scripture was phenomenal and I never ceased to marvel at the insight she seemed to have with so little formal education. Nothing could more effectively demonstrate to me that theological learning, while immensely valuable in the handling of the minutiae of scripture, is not indispensable for a grasp of the essential message. She laid a good foundation for my further study in the scriptures by insisting on scriptural justification for every position she adopted.
My mother had such fervour about the Christian faith that she had a burning desire to proclaim it. There were all too few women speakers who knew what they stood for and could communicate it. Her liveliness and the general forcefulness of her personality soon drew many invitations to speak. She was much in demand. But she was also a person of prayer. I well remember several times seeing an handkerchief tied round the door handle on the outside of the room where she was meeting with a group of her friends to pray. We had been well trained to respect that handkerchief as a reminder that serious business with God was being enacted. We felt obliged to hush our voices whenever we were in the vicinity of that room. Such overt evidence of the importance of prayer could not fail to impress me and it is something I have never forgotten. My mother seemed to have a variety of Christian activities in which she was interested and for each of them she seemed to collect a number of like-minded women to pray for the work.
One of my mother’s most passionate causes was temperance. It was fired I am sure by her own observance of the tragic consequences of drink in the lives of my father’s parents. I have never met a stauncher advocate of the temperance cause than my mother. Quite apart from my grandparents she had come across too many others whose lives had been affected by alcohol to regard it with complacency. Whenever she undertook a cause she never did it half-heartedly. She armed herself with a considerable battery of statistics about the evils of drink and developed into a formidable advocate of total abstinence. She associated herself with the Band of Hope and frequently gave talks on their behalf. Her dedication to this cause pre-dates my birth, because on that occasion she entered into a pledge of total abstinence on behalf of my brother and myself. If at first the idea of committing another to abstinence from alcohol by proxy seems strange because it assumes no freedom of choice on the part of the individual, I have never resented my mother’s action. On the contrary I had sufficient regard for my mother to treat her action with the utmost seriousness. I have never in fact seen any reason at all to disregard that pledge, although my embracing of the total abstinence was arrived at on other grounds. Mature reflection has only confirmed in my mind the wisdom of my mother’s approach. Her contention was, and mine still is, that since alcohol impairs it should be no part of a Christian’s lifestyle. She wished to devote her best endeavours to the service of God and would not tolerate a drug that affected and could make the mind less efficient than God intended it to be. I am aware that for many people drinking in moderation has taken the place of total abstinence, but my mother would have been regarded that as compromise.
It was the same crusading zeal which led my mother to withdraw from the attractive spiritual pastures of the large church in which she had been nurtured and to devote her energies to the work of a sparsely attended mission hall in one of the poorest districts of the town. That district was so poor and unacceptable that some years later the whole area was raised to the ground. But at the time of which I am writing it was a needy mission field. The whole family used to accompany her. I often wondered what made my mother pour her energies into so discouraging a work which showed very little visible results. I knew deep down that she was doing this work because she believed God had called her to do it and that in itself was sufficient justification. My mother never lived to see the sequel to that work, for later when the area was cleared in the slum clearance scheme the council constructed a new building with considerably more facilities than before. When later I preached in that new building I was vividly reminded of the sterling work of my mother which had made no small contribution towards its development. It was a reminder that God honours the day of small things. The man who was most closely associated with the work of that mission, Albert Gower, became its pastor and served the Lord faithfully there for some time after my mother died.
I have said enough to show what kind of person my mother was. She was the organiser of our household. She was filled with such an abundance of practical wisdom that it was natural for me seek her opinion about any venture I was about to undertake. She was as dynamic about details as about larger issues. I always marvelled how she managed to do so many things. In addition to her domestic responsibilities and her Christian commitments, she was heavily engaged in the work of a credit business on which my parents had embarked. That venture was always beset with financial crises and ultimately led to insolvency. I never really understood what led them into such a precarious venture. In the end it dramatically contributed to my mother’s health problems. She developed high blood pressure at a period when medical science was less capable than today in controlling it. It was complicated by kidney problems and led to her death at the age of fifty-six. Her final illness had a deep impression on me as I felt as if my main prop was being removed. Although I had had some warning of her approaching home-call, I was ill-prepared for it both emotionally and psychologically. I felt I was losing the only person who really understood me. I was nineteen years old at the time. The memory of my mother has constantly led me to praise God for such a powerful influence for good, even if the years immediately following her death proved to be the most traumatic of my life. Under the hand of God she laid a foundation which I can now discern to be of the highest quality.
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