Returning to Scotland in 1847, Ballantyne learned that his father had succumbed to the heart ailment he had been suffering from for some time. A few years later, in the autumn of 1853, the death of his sister Madalina in childbirth led to a deep commitment to maintaining and spreading Christian faith. According to Eric Quayle, “from the time of the funeral, he started to attend church regularly . . . both morning and evening services. He formed a Bible-reading class for working men and was most assiduous in his duties, giving almost all his spare time to religious work of one sort or another. His new-found fervour so impressed the local clergy that, at the end of the following year . . . . and at the age of only twenty-four, Bob was elected an elder of the Free Church of Scotland.” The Free Church of Scotland was the evangelical wing of the church, led by Thomas Chalmers, that had broken away from the Church of Scotland at the General Assembly of 1843 in a move generally referred to as the Disruption]. “From this point in his life his letters become more heavily tinged with religious quotations and exhortations to Godliness. [. . .] He abandoned a light-hearted book on which for his own amusement he had been engaged, and started to take an interest in the tortuous theological discussions and arguments in which the elders of the Free Kirk seemed to be constantly enmeshed” (p. 88).
Bibliography
Quayle, Eric. Ballantyne the Brave. A Victorian Writer and his Family. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1967.
Last modified 25 September 2018