98 FAMOUS SCOTS 



man of the party. 'His business,' says Guthrie, the 

 orator of the movement, ' was to fight. Fighting was 

 Miller's delight. On the eve of what was to prove a 

 desperate conflict, I have seen him in a high and happy 

 state of eagerness and excitement. He was a scientific 

 as well as an ardent controversialist ; not bringing for- 

 ward, far less throwing away, his whole force on the 

 first assault, but keeping up the interest of the contro- 

 versy, and continuing to pound and crush his opponents 

 by fresh matter in every succeeding paper. When I 

 used to discuss questions with him, under the impres- 

 sion, perhaps, that he had said all he had got to say 

 very powerful and very pertinent to the question, nothing 

 was more common than his remarking, in nautical 

 phrase, "Oh, I have got some shot in the locker 

 yet ready for use, if it is needed " ! ' 



And that it was needed, in his own and the Church's in- 

 terest, the pamphlets of abuse by which he was attacked, 

 and which would form a small library, would remain to 

 show. Thus he was really, all the more from his isolated 

 position, as we shall see, indebted to what Professor 

 Masson, in an appreciation of him in Macmillaris 

 Magazine for 1865, describes as the Goethean 'demonic 

 element.' He had a better knowledge, he shows, of the 

 country and its ecclesiastical history than was possessed 

 by his clerical colleagues, and along with this went what 

 he calls ' a tremendous element of ferocity, more of the 

 Scandinavian than the Celt, leaving his enemy not only 

 slain but battered, bruised and beaten out of shape.' 



