Old St Bride’s, Douglas

Old St Bride’s in the village of Douglas in South Lanarkshire no longer serves as the parish church, for it is partly ruinous. I was therefore grateful for the friendly, local lady who lent us the key to inspect what remains. Beyond the stout, locked door is the mausoleum and tombs of the ‘Black Douglases’, the local earls who rose to prominence with Robert Bruce and his wars against the English. Here they lie, those great warriors, still and cold, no longer southern Scotland’s most powerful clan. The whole place was rather eery and unnerving, the life-sized effigies staring out from lidless eyes.

My imagination has not been so ‘Hollywoodized’ that I expected the stones to move and these old warriors to stretch out their calcified limbs in order to cut down the latest intruder, but it did get me thinking about hades, abode of the dead. Hades, (or Sheol) is sometimes called the grave, the pit, death's dominion, the holding pen for men’s souls while they await a holy God’s dreadful judgement; mighty men brought low, powerful warriors made harmless, fearful kings awaiting sentence.

The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked, and the sceptre of the rulers. He who smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke, he that ruled the nations in anger, is persecuted, and none hindereth. The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet: they break forth into singing. Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying, Since thou art laid down, no feller is come up against us. Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations.

All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee.

-Isaiah 14:4-11

The humble Christian has a Saviour who conquered the grave and triumphed over the gloom. We may not warrant such evocative tombs as the Black Douglases, but we are assured a better reception when at eternity’s gates we knock. Curiously, the tower's old clock was donated by Mary, Queen of Scots, another powerful individual brought low by time's march and providential decree. 

Think yourself someone great? A force to be reckoned with? Admired, feared or respected? Your death warrant is already signed, your grave already dug. Except you be Christ's, you shall join the Douglases in their cold, dark prison while the prosecution prepares its file. 

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 6:23