6 July 2026

Alec Cheyne was Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Edinburgh when I was a student.  He was not only a remarkable teacher but also a compassionate pastor to students of several generations including myself.

He died on 31 March 2006, twenty years ago. In the last months of his life, he compiled what he called, ‘Scottish Piety: A Miscellany from Five Centuries’. It is a book of spiritual riches from the devotional life of fellow Scots down through half a millennium.

He includes  two of my favourites. Firstly, the Preface to the ‘Scots Confession’ with its challenge to  readers on Biblical authority and secondly,  the chapter on preaching from the ‘Westminster Directory for the Public Worship of God’  with its instruction to preach, ‘Painfully, not doing the work of the Lord negligently.’

Amongst the surprising entries are nine hymns from the ‘Scottish Paraphrases’. This compares with only two metrical Psalms – 100 and 124. In a book of only 141 pages, the selection of Paraphrases takes up eighteen pages.

He begins with the second, ‘O God of Bethel!  by whose hand/thy people still are fed’. It is a paraphrase of Genesis 28;20-22. ‘The best of the paraphrases are remarkable both for their faithfulness to the Biblical text and their felicity of expression;’ writes Cheyne, ‘and supreme among them is the Second …’

He plots authorship amongst English Independents and Scottish ministers and adds felicitous anecdotes. Celebrating the Paraphrase 54,  ‘I’m not ashamed to own my Lord’, he tells of the Victorian evangelist, Henry Drummond. On his  deathbed, he  requested  it  to be sung, finally  remarking, ‘There’s nothing to beat that.’