Jenny Geddes (Part Two)

From: Jenny Geddes, or Presbyterianism and its great Conflict with Despotism,

by Rev. W. P. Breed, D.D., Philadelphia, Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1869.

Jenny (or Janet) Geddes was a Scotch woman, a native of that land of great minds and heroic champions of Calvinistic orthodoxy. Born perhaps about the close, before or after, of the sixteenth century, toward the middle of the seventeenth she found herself a resident of the city of Edinburgh. No doubt her position in life was very humble — her food and raiment, perhaps of the coarsest kind, procured by the labour of her own hands.

Whether this was her maiden or matrimonial name history does not say. She was certainly poor, for in the great cathedral church of St. Giles there was no place for her in the pew, if indeed these conveniences had yet found place there; so she went to church with her stool in her hand, and sat upon it in the aisle wherever she could find a convenient and unoccupied spot.

She was evidently a person of decided character, and did her own thinking, at least on certain subjects; and as the sequel will show could, upon occasion, without consultation with her husband, if indeed she were blessed with matrimonial alliance with any one of the rougher sex, do her own acting also, and that with decision and energy. She was a Presbyterian of the orthodox hue, and, familiar with her Bible, she demanded conformity to its teachings in all matters of faith and worship.

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Copyright 1999 © First Presbyterian Church of Rowlett

See a PDF file of this article in The Blue Banner, v8#11-12.

Source: http://www.fpcr.org/blue_banner_articles/jgeddes.htm