Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

There is no worthy portrait of my father in his prime. I believe no man was ever more victimized in the way of being asked to "sit;" indeed, it was probably from so many of them being of this kind, that the opportunity of securing a really good one was lost. The best--the one portrait of his habitual expression--is Mr. Harvey's, done for Mr. Crum of Busby: it was taken when he was failing, but it is an excellent likeness as well as a noble picture; such a picture as one would buy without knowing anything of the subject. So true it is, that imaginative painters, men gifted and accustomed to render their own ideal conceptions in form and color, grasp and impress on their canvas the features of real men more to the quick, more faithfully as to the central qualities of the man, than professed portrait painters.

Steell's bust is beautiful, but it is wanting in expression. Slater's, though rude, is better. Angus Fletcher's has much of his air, but is too much like a Grecian God. There is a miniature by Mrs. Robertson of London, belonging to my sister, Mrs. Young, which I always liked, though more like a gay, brilliant French Abbe, than the Seceder minister of Rose Street, as he then was. It gives, however, more of his exquisite brightness and spirit, the dancing light in his dark eyes, and his smile, when pleased and desiring to please, than any other. I have a drawing by Mr. Harvey, done from my father for his picture of the Minister's Visit, which I value very much, as giving the force and depth, the _momentum_, so to speak, of his serious look. He is sitting in a cottar's house, reading the Bible to an old bedridden woman, the farm servants gathered round to get his word.

Mungo Burton painted a good portrait which my brother William has; from his being drawn in a black neckcloth, and standing, he looks as he sometimes did, more like a member of Parliament than a clergyman. The print from this is good and very scarce. Of photographs, I like D. O. Hill's best, in which he is represented as shaking hands with the (invisible) Free Church--it is full of his earnest, cordial power; that by Tunny, from which the beautiful engraving by Lumb Stocks in the Memoir was taken, is very like what he was about a year and a half before his death. All the other portraits, as far as I can remember, are worthless and worse, missing entirely the true expression. He was very difficult to take, partly because he was so full of what may be called spiritual beauty, evanescent, ever changing, and requiring the highest kind of genius to fix it; and partly from his own fault, for he thought it was necessary to be lively, or rather to try to be so to his volunteering artist, and the consequence was, his giving them, as his habitual expression, one which was rare, and in this particular case more made than born.

The time when I would have liked his look to have been perpetuated, was that of all others the least likely, or indeed possible;--it was, when after administering the Sacrament to his people, and having solemnized every one, and been himself profoundly moved by that Divine, everlasting memorial, he left the elders' seat and returned to the pulpit, and after giving out the psalm, sat down wearied and satisfied, filled with devout gratitude to his Master--his face pale, and his dark eyes looking out upon us all, his whole countenance radiant and subdued. Any likeness of him in this state, more like that of the proto-martyr, when his face was as that of an angel, than anything I ever beheld, would have made one feel what it is so impossible otherwise to convey,--the mingled sweetness, dignity, and beauty of his face. When it was winter, and the church darkening, and the lights at the pulpit were lighted so as to fall upon his face and throw the rest of the vast assemblage into deeper shadow, the effect of his countenance was something never to forget.

He was more a man of power than of genius in the ordinary sense. His imagination was not a primary power; it was not originative, though in a quite uncommon degree receptive, having the capacity of realizing the imaginations of others, and through them bodying forth the unseen. When exalted and urged by the understanding, and heated by the affections, it burst out with great force, but always as servant, not master. But if he had no one faculty that might be, to use the loose words of common speech, original, he was so as a whole,--such a man as stood alone. No one ever mistook his look, or would, had they been blind, have mistaken his voice or words, for those of any one else, or any one else's for his.

His mental characteristics, if I may venture on such ground, were clearness and vigor, intensity, fervor,[26] concentration, penetration, and perseverance,--more of depth than width.[27] The moral conditions under which he lived were the love, the pursuit, and the practice of truth in everything; strength and depth, rather than external warmth of affection; fidelity to principles and to friends. He used often to speak of the moral obligation laid upon every man to _think truly_, as well as to speak and act truly, and said that much intellectual demoralization and ruin resulted from neglecting this. He was absolutely tolerant of all difference of opinion, so that it was sincere; and this was all the more remarkable from his being the opposite of an indifferentist, being very strong in his own convictions, holding them keenly, even passionately, while from the structure of his mind, he was somehow deficient in comprehending, much less of sympathizing with the opinions of men who greatly differed from him. This made his homage to entire freedom of thought all the more genuine and rare. In the region of theological thought he was scientific, systematic, and authoritative, rather than philosophical and speculative. He held so strongly that the Christian religion was mainly a religion of facts, that he perhaps allowed too little to its also being a philosophy that was ready to meet, out of its own essence and its ever unfolding powers, any new form of unbelief, disbelief, or misbelief, and must front itself to them as they moved up.

[26] This earnestness of nature pervaded all his exercises. A man
of great capacity and culture, with a head like Benjamin
Franklin's, an avowed unbeliever in Christianity, came every
Sunday afternoon, for many years, to hear him. I remember
his look well, as if interested, but not impressed. He was
often asked by his friends why he went when he didn't
believe one word of what he heard. "Neither I do, but I like
to hear and to see a man earnest once a week, about
anything." It is related of David Hume, that having heard my
great-grandfather preach, he said, "That's the man for me,
he means what he says, he speaks as if Jesus Christ was at
his elbow."

[27] The following note from the pen to which we owe "St. Paul's
Thorn in the Flesh" is admirable, both for its reference to
my father, and its own beauty and truth.

"One instance of his imperfect discernment of associations
of thought that were not of a purely logical character was
afforded, we used to think, by the decided and almost
contemptuous manner in which he always rejected the theory
of what is called the double interpretation of prophecy.
This, of course, is not the place to discuss whether he was
absolutely right or wrong in his opinion. The subject,
however, is one of somewhat curious interest, and it has
also a strictly literary as well as a theological aspect,
and what we have to say about it shall relate exclusively to
the former. When Dr. Brown then said, as he was accustomed
in his strong way to do, that 'if prophecy was capable of
two senses, it was impossible it could have any sense at
all,' it is plain, we think, that he forgot the specific
character of prophetic literature, viz., its being in the
highest degree poetic. Now every one knows that poetry of a
very elevated cast almost invariably possesses great
breadth, variety, we may say multiplicity of meaning. Its
very excellence consists in its being capable of two, three,
or many meanings and applications. Take, for example, these
familiar lines in the 'Midsummer Night's Dream:'--

'Ah me! for aught that ever I could read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth:
But either it was different in blood,
Or else misgraffed in respect of years,
Or else it stood upon the choice of friends;
Or if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,
Making it momentary as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say "Behold!"
The jaws of darkness do devour it up;
So quick bright things come to confusion.'

We remember once quoting these lines to a lady, and being
rather taken aback by her remark, 'They are very beautiful,
but I don't, think they are true.' We really had forgot for
the moment the straightforward, matter-of-fact sense of
which they are capable, and were not adverting to the
possibility of their being understood to mean that--nothing
but love-crosses are going, and that no tolerable amount of
comfort or happiness is to be found in the life matrimonial,
or in any of the approaches towards it. Every intelligent
student of Shakspeare's, however, will at once feel that the
poet's mind speedily passes away from the idea with which he
starts, and becomes merged in a far wider theme, viz., in
the disenchantment to which all lofty imaginations are
liable, the disappointment to which all extravagant earthly
hopes and wishes are doomed. This, in fact, is distinctly
expressed in the last line, and in this sense alone can the
words he regarded as at all touching or impressive. Sudden
expansions and transitions of thought, then, are nothing
more than what is common to all poetry; and when we find the
Hebrew bards, in their prophetic songs, mingling in the
closest conjunction the anticipations of the glories of
Solomon's reign, or the happy prospects of a return from
Babylon, with the higher glory and happiness of Messiah's
advent, such transitions of thought are in perfect
accordance with the ordinary laws of poetry, and ought not
to perplex even the most unimaginative student of the
Bible."

With devotional feeling--with everything that showed reverence and godly fear--he cordialized wherever and in whomsoever it was found,--Pagan or Christian, Romanist or Protestant, bond or free; and while he disliked, and had indeed a positive antipathy to intellectual mysticism, he had a great knowledge of and relish for such writers as Dr. Henry More, Culverwel, Scougall, Madame Guyon, whom (besides their other qualities) I may perhaps be allowed to call affectionate mystics, and for such poets as Herbert and Vaughan, whose poetry was pious, and their piety poetic. As I have said, he was perhaps too impatient of all obscure thinking, from not considering that on certain subjects, necessarily in their substance, and on the skirts of all subjects, obscurity and vagueness, difficulty and uncertainty, are inherent, and must therefore appear in their treatment. Men who rejoiced in making clear things obscure, and plain things the reverse, he could not abide, and spoke with some contempt of those who were original merely from their standing on their heads, and tall from walking upon stilts. As you have truly said, his character mellowed and toned down in his later years, without in any way losing its own individuality, and its clear, vigorous, unflinching perception of and addiction to principles.

His affectionate ways with his students were often very curious: he contrived to get at their hearts, and find out all their family and local specialities, in a sort of short-hand way, and he never forgot them in afterlife; and watching him with them at tea, speaking his mind freely and often jocularly upon all sorts of subjects, one got a glimpse of that union of opposites which made him so much what he was--he gave out far more liberally to them the riches of his learning and the deep thoughts of his heart, than he ever did among his full-grown brethren. It was like the flush of an Arctic summer, blossoming all over, out of and into the stillness, the loneliness, and the chill rigor of winter. Though authoritative in his class without any effort, he was indulgent to everything but conceit, slovenliness of mind and body, irreverence, and above all handling the Word of God deceitfully. On one occasion a student having delivered in the Hall a discourse tinged with Arminianism, he said, "That may be the gospel according to Dr. Macknight, or the gospel according to Dr. Taylor of Norwich, but it is not the gospel according to the Apostle Paul; and if I thought the sentiments expressed were his own, if I had not thought he has taken his thoughts from commentators without carefully considering them, I would think it my duty to him and to the church to make him no longer a student of divinity here." He was often unconsciously severe, from his saying exactly what he felt. On a student's ending his discourse, his only criticism was, "The strongest characteristic of this discourse is weakness," and feeling that this was really all he had to say, he ended. A young gentleman on very good terms with himself, stood up to pray with his hands in his pockets, and among other things he put up a petition he might "be delivered from the fear of man, which bringeth a snare;" my father's only remark was that there was part of his prayer which seemed to be granted before it was asked. But he was always unwilling to criticize prayer, feeling it to be too sacred, and, as it were, beyond his province, except to deliver the true principles of all prayer, which he used to say were admirably given in the _Shorter Catechism_--"Prayer is an offering up of the desires of the heart to God, for things agreeable to his will, in the name of Christ; with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of his mercies."

For the "heroic" old man of Haddington my father had a peculiar reverence, as indeed we all have--as well we may. He was our king, the founder of our dynasty: we dated from him, and he was "hedged" accordingly by a certain sacredness or "divinity." I well remember with what surprise and pride I found myself asked by a blacksmith's wife in a remote hamlet among the hop-gardens of Kent, if I was "the son of the Self-interpreting Bible." I possess, as an heirloom, the New Testament which my father fondly regarded as the one his grandfather, when a herd laddie, got from the Professor who heard him ask for it, and promised him it if he could read a verse; and he has in his beautiful small hand written in it what follows: "He (John Brown of Haddington) had now acquired so much of Greek as encouraged him to hope that he might at length be prepared to reap the richest of all rewards which classical learning could confer on him, the capacity of reading in the original tongue the blessed New Testament of our Lord and Saviour. Full of this hope, he became anxious to possess a copy of the invaluable volume. One night, having committed the charge of his sheep to a companion, he set out on a midnight journey to St. Andrews, a distance of twenty-four miles. He reached his destination in the morning, and went to the bookseller's shop asking for a copy of the Greek New Testament. The master of the shop, surprised at such a request from a shepherd boy, was disposed to make game of him. Some of the professors coming into the shop questioned the lad about his employment and studies. After hearing his tale, one of them desired the bookseller to bring the volume. He did so, and drawing it down, said, 'Boy, read this, and you shall have it for nothing.' The boy did so, acquitted himself to the admiration of his judges, and carried off his Testament, and when the evening arrived, was studying it in the midst of his flock on the braes of Abernethy."--_Memoir of Rev. John Brown of Haddington_, by Rev. J. B. Patterson.

"There is reason to believe _this_ is the New Testament referred
to. The name on the opposite page was written on the fly-leaf.
It is obviously the writing of a boy, and bears a resemblance to
Mr. Brown's handwriting in mature life. It is imperfect, wanting
a great part of the Gospel of Matthew. The autograph at the end
is that of his son, Thomas, when a youth at college, afterwards
Rev. Dr. Thomas Brown of Dalkeith.--J. B."

I doubt not my father regarded this little worn old book, the sword of the Spirit which his ancestor so nobly won, and wore, and warred with, with not less honest veneration and pride than does his dear friend James Douglas of Cavers the Percy pennon borne away at Otterbourne. When I read, in Uncle William's admirable Life of his father, his own simple story of his early life--his loss of father and mother before he was eleven, his discovering (as true a _discovery_ as Dr. Young's of the characters of the Rosetta stone, or Rawlinson's of the cuneiform letters) the Greek characters, his defence of himself against the astonishing and base charge of getting his learning from the devil (that shrewd personage would not have employed him on the Greek Testament), his eager, indomitable study, his running miles to and back again to hear a sermon after folding his sheep at noon, his keeping his family creditably on never more than L50, and for long on L40 a year, giving largely in charity, and never wanting, as he said, "lying money"--when I think of all this, I feel what a strong, independent, manly nature he must have had. We all know his saintly character, his devotion to learning, and to the work of preaching and teaching; but he seems to have been, like most complete men, full of humor and keen wit. Some of his _snell_ sayings are still remembered. A lad of an excitable temperament waited on him, and informed him he wished to be a preacher of the gospel. My great-grandfather, finding him as weak in intellect as he was strong in conceit, advised him to continue in his present vocation. The young man said, "But I wish to preach and glorify God." "My young friend, a man may glorify God making broom besoms; stick to your trade, and glorify God by your walk and conversation."

The late Dr. Husband of Dunfermline called on him when he was preparing to set out for Gifford, and was beginning to ask him some questions as to the place grace held in the Divine economy. "Come away wi' me, and I'll expound that; but when I'm speaking, look you after my feet." They got upon a rough bit of common, and the eager and full-minded old man was in the midst of his unfolding the Divine scheme, and his student was drinking in his words, and forgetting _his_ part of the bargain. His master stumbled and fell, and getting up, somewhat sharply said, "James, the grace o' God can do much, but it canna gi'e a man common sense;" which is as good theology as sense.

A scoffing blacksmith seeing him jogging up to a house near the smithy on his pony, which was halting, said to him, "Mr. Brown, ye're in the Scripture line the day--'the legs o' the lame are not equal.'" "So is a parable in the mouth of a fool."

On his coming to Haddington, there was one man who held out against his "call." Mr. Brown meeting him when they could not avoid each other, the non-content said, "Ye see, sir, I canna say what I dinna think, and I think ye're ower young and inexperienced for this charge." "So I think too, David, _but it would never do for you and me to gang in the face o' the hale congregation!_"

The following is a singular illustration of the prevailing dark and severe tone of the religious teaching of that time, and also of its strength:--A poor old woman, of great worth and excellent understanding, in whose conversation Mr. Brown took much pleasure, was on her death-bed. Wishing to try her faith, he said to her, "Janet, what would you say if, after all He has done for you, God should let you drop into hell?" "E'en's (even as) he likes; if he does, _He'll lose mair than I'll do_." There is something not less than sublime in this reply.

Than my grandfather and "Uncle Ebenezer," no two brothers could be more different in nature or more united in affection. My grandfather was a man of great natural good sense, well read and well knowledged, easy but not indolent, never overflowing but never empty, homely but dignified, and fuller of love to all sentient creatures than any other human being I ever knew. I had, when a boy of ten, two rabbits, Oscar and Livia: why so named is a secret I have lost; perhaps it was an Ossianic union of the Roman with the Gael. Oscar was a broad-nosed, manly, rather _brusque_ husband, who used to snort when angry, and bite too; Livia was a thin-faced, meek, and I fear, deceitfullish wife, who could smile, and then bite. One evening I had lifted both these worthies, by the ears of course, and was taking them from their clover to their beds, when my grandfather, who had been walking out in the cool of the evening, met me. I had just kissed the two creatures, out of mingled love to them, and pleasure at having caught them without much trouble. He took me by the chin, and kissed me, and then _Oscar and Livia_! Wonderful man, I thought, and still think! doubtless he had seen me in my private fondness, and wished to please me.

He was forever doing good in his quiet yet earnest way. Not only on Sunday when he preached solid gospel sermons, full of quaint familiar expressions, such as I fear few of my readers could take up, full of solemn, affectionate, appeals, full of his own simplicity and love, the Monday also found him ready with his every-day gospel. If he met a drover from Lochaber who had crossed the Campsie Hills, and was making across Carnwath Moor to the Calstane Slap, and thence into England by the drove-rode, he accosted him with a friendly smile,--gave him a reasonable tract, and dropped into him some words of Divine truth. He was thus _continually_ doing good. Go where he might, he had his message to every one; to a servant lass, to a poor wanderer on the bleak streets, to gentle and simple--he flowed forever _pleno rivo_.

Uncle Ebenezer, on the other hand, flowed _per saltum_; he was always good and saintly, but he was great once a week; six days he brooded over his message, was silent, withdrawn, self-involved; on the Sabbath, that downcast, almost timid man, who shunned men, the instant he was in the pulpit, stood up a son of thunder. Such a voice! such a piercing eye! such an inevitable forefinger, held out trembling with the terrors of the Lord; such a power of asking questions and letting them fall deep into the hearts of his hearers, and then answering them himself, with an "ah, sirs!" that thrilled and quivered from him to them.

I remember his astonishing us all with a sudden burst. It was a sermon upon the apparent _plus_ of evil in this world, and he had driven himself and us all to despair--so much sin, so much misery--when, taking advantage of the chapter he had read, the account of the uproar at Ephesus in the Theatre, he said, "Ah, sirs! what if some of the men who, for 'about the space of two hours,' cried out, 'Great is Diana of the Ephesians,' have for the space of eighteen hundred years and more been crying day and night, 'Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are all thy ways, thou King of saints; who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy.'"

You have doubtless heard of the story of Lord Brougham going to hear him. It is very characteristic, and as I had it from Mrs. Cuninghame, who was present, I may be allowed to tell it. Brougham and Denman were on a visit to James Stuart of Dunearn, about the time of the Queen's trial. They had asked Stuart where they should go to church; he said he would take them to a Seceder minister at Inverkeithing. They went, and as Mr. Stuart had described the saintly old man, Brougham said he would like to be introduced to him, and arriving before service time, Mr. Stuart called, and left a message that some gentlemen wished to see him. The answer was that "Maister" Brown saw nobody before divine worship. He then sent in Brougham and Denman's names. "Mr. Brown's compliments to Mr. Stuart, and he sees nobody before sermon," and in a few minutes out came the stooping shy old man, and passed them, unconscious of their presence. They sat in the front gallery, and he preached a faithful sermon, full of fire and of native force. They came away greatly moved, and each wrote to Lord Jeffrey to lose not a week in coming to hear the greatest natural orator they had ever heard. Jeffrey came next Sunday, and often after declared he never heard such words, such a sacred, untaught gift of speech. Nothing was more beautiful than my father's admiration and emotion when listening to his uncle's rapt passages, or than his childlike faith in my father's exegetical prowess. He used to have a list of difficult passages ready for "my nephew," and the moment the oracle gave a decision, the old man asked him to repeat it, and then took a permanent note of it, and would assuredly preach it some day with his own proper unction and power. One story of him I must give; my father, who heard it not long before his own death, was delighted with it, and for some days repeated it to every one. Uncle Ebenezer, with all his mildness and general complaisance, was, like most of the Browns, _tenax propositi_, firm to obstinacy. He had established a week-day sermon at the North Ferry, about two miles from his own town, Inverkeithing. It was, I think, on the Tuesdays. It was winter, and a wild, drifting, and dangerous day; his daughters--his wife was dead--besought him not to go; he smiled vaguely, but continued getting into his big-coat. Nothing would stay him, and away he and the pony stumbled through the dumb and blinding snow. He was half-way on his journey, and had got into the sermon he was going to preach, and was utterly insensible to the outward storm: his pony getting its feet _balled_, staggered about, and at last upset his master and himself into the ditch at the road-side. The feeble, heedless, rapt old man might have perished there, had not some carters, bringing up whisky casks from the Ferry, seen the catastrophe, and rushed up, raising him, and _dichtin'_ him, with much commiseration and blunt speech--"Puir auld man, what brocht ye here in sic a day?" There they were, a rough crew, surrounding the saintly man, some putting on his hat, sorting and cheering him, and others knocking the balls off the pony's feet, and stuffing them with grease. He was most polite and grateful, and one of these cordial ruffians having pierced a cask, brought him a horn of whisky, and said, "Tak that, it'll hearten ye." He took the horn, and bowing to them, said, "Sirs, let us give thanks!" and there, by the road-side, in the drift and storm, with these wild fellows, he asked a blessing on it, and for his kind deliverers, and took a tasting of the horn. The men cried like children. They lifted him on his pony, one going with him, and when the rest arrived in Inverkeithing, they repeated the story to everybody, and broke down in tears whenever they came to the blessing. "And to think o' askin' a blessin' on a tass o' whisky!" Next Presbytery day, after the ordinary business was over, he rose up--he seldom spoke--and said, "Moderator, I have something personal to myself to say. I have often said, that real kindness belongs only to true Christians, but"--and then he told the story of these men; "but more true kindness I never experienced than from these lads. They may have had the grace of God, I don't know; but I never mean again to be so _positive_ in speaking of this matter."

When he was on a missionary tour in the north, he one morning met a band of Highland shearers on their way to the harvest; he asked them to stop and hear the word of God. They said they could not, as they had their wages to work for. He offered them what they said they would lose; to this they agreed, and he paid them, and closing his eyes engaged in prayer; when he had ended, he looked up, and his congregation had vanished! His shrewd brother Thomas, to whom he complained of this faithlessness, said, "Eben, the next time ye pay folk to hear you preach, keep your eyes open, and pay them when you are done." I remember, on another occasion, in Bristo Church, with an immense audience, he had been going over the Scripture accounts of great sinners repenting and turning to God, repeating their names, from Manasseh onwards. He seemed to have closed the record, when, fixing his eyes on the end of the central passage, he called out abruptly, "I see a man!" Every one looked to that point,--"I see a man of Tarsus; and he says, Make mention of me!" It must not be supposed that the discourses of "Uncle Ebenezer," with these abrupt appeals and sudden starts, were unwritten or extempore; they were carefully composed and written out,--only these flashes of thought and passion came on him suddenly when writing, and were therefore quite natural when delivered--they came on him again.

The Rev. John Belfrage, M. D., had more power over my father's actions and his relations to the world, than any other of his friends: over his thoughts and convictions proper, not much,--few living men had, and even among the mighty dead, he called no man master. He used to say that the three master intellects devoted to the study of divine truth since the apostles, were Augustine, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards; but that even they were only _primi inter pares_,--this by the bye.

On all that concerned his outward life as a public teacher, as a father, and as a member of society, he consulted Dr. Belfrage, and was swayed greatly by his judgment, as, for instance, the choice of a profession for myself, his second marriage, etc. He knew him to be his true friend, and not only wise and honest, but preeminently a man of affairs, _capax rerum_. Dr. Belfrage was a great man _in posse_, if ever I saw one,--"a village Hampden." Greatness was of his essence; nothing paltry, nothing secondary, nothing untrue. Large in body, large and handsome in face, lofty in manner to his equals or superiors;[28] homely, familiar, cordial with the young and the poor,--I never met with a more truly royal nature--more native and endued to rule, guide, and benefit mankind. He was forever scheming for the good of others, and chiefly in the way of helping them to help themselves. From a curious want of ambition--his desire for advancement was for that of his friends, not for his own, and here he was ambitious and zealous enough,--from non-concentration of his faculties in early life, and from an affection of the heart which ultimately killed him--it was too big for his body, and, under the relentless hydrostatic law, at last shattered the tabernacle it moved, like a steam-engine too powerful for the vessel it finds itself in,--his mental heart also was too big for his happiness,--from these causes, along with a love for gardening, which was a passion, and an inherited competency, which took away what John Hunter calls "the stimulus of necessity," you may understand how this remarkable man--instead of being a Prime Minister, a Lord Chancellor, or a Dr. Gregory, a George Stephenson, or likeliest of all, a John Howard, without some of his weaknesses, lived and died minister of the small congregation of Slateford, near Edinburgh. It is also true that he was a physician, and an energetic and successful one, and got rid of some of his love of doing good to and managing human beings in this way; he was also an oracle in his district, to whom many had the wisdom to go to take as well as ask advice, and who was never weary of entering into the most minute details, and taking endless pains, being like Dr. Chalmers a strong believer in "the power of littles." It would be out of place, though it would be not uninteresting, to tell how this great resident power--this strong will and authority, this capacious, clear, and beneficent intellect--dwelt in its petty sphere, like an oak in a flower-pot; but I cannot help recalling that signal act of friendship and of power in the matter of my father's translation from Rose Street to Broughton Place, to which you have referred.

[28] On one occasion, Mr. Hall of Kelso, an excellent but very
odd man, in whom the _ego_ was very strong, and who, if he
had been a Spaniard, would, to adopt Coleridge's story, have
taken off or touched his hat whenever he spoke of himself,
met Dr. Belfrage in the lobby of the Synod, and drawing
himself up as he passed, he muttered, "high and michty!"
"There's a pair of us, Mr. Hall."

It was one of the turning-points of my father's history. Dr. Belfrage, though seldom a speaker in the public courts of his church, was always watchful of the interests of the people and of his friends. On the Rose Street question he had from the beginning formed a strong opinion. My father had made his statement, indicating his leaning, but leaving himself absolutely in the hands of the Synod. There was some speaking, all on one side, and for a time the Synod seemed to incline to be absolute, and refuse the call of Broughton Place. The house was everywhere crowded, and breathless with interest, my father sitting motionless, anxious, and pale, prepared to submit without a word, but retaining his own mind; everything looked like a unanimous decision for Rose Street, when Dr. Belfrage rose up and came forward into the "passage," and with his first sentence and look, took possession of the house. He stated, with clear and simple argument, the truth and reason of the case; and then having fixed himself there, he took up the personal interests and feelings of his friend, and putting before them what they were about to do in sending back my father, closed with a burst of indignant appeal--"I ask you now, not as Christians, I ask you as gentlemen, are you prepared to do this?" Every one felt it was settled, and so it was. My father never forgot this great act of his friend.

This remarkable man, inferior to my father in learning, in intensity, in compactness and in power of--so to speak--_focussing_ himself,--admiring his keen eloquence, his devotedness to his sacred art, rejoicing in his fame, jealous of his honor--was, by reason of his own massive understanding, his warm and great heart, and his instinctive knowledge of men, my father's most valued friend, for he knew best and most of what my father knew least; and on his death, my father said he felt himself thus far unprotected and unsafe. He died at Rothesay of hypertrophy of the heart. I had the sad privilege of being with him to the last; and any nobler spectacle of tender, generous affection, high courage, child-like submission to the Supreme Will, and of magnanimity in its true sense, I do not again expect to see. On the morning of his death he said to me, "John, come and tell me honestly how this is to end; tell me the last symptoms in their sequence." I knew the man, and was honest, and told him all I knew. "Is there any chance of stupor or delirium?" "I think not. Death (to take Bichat's division) will begin at the heart itself, and you will die conscious." "I am glad of that. It was Samuel Johnson, wasn't it, who wished not to die unconscious, that he might enter the eternal world with his mind unclouded; but you know, John, that was physiological nonsense. We leave the brain, and all this ruined body, behind; but I would like to be in my senses when I take my last look of this wonderful world," looking across the still sea towards the Argyllshire hills, lying in the light of sunrise, "and of my friends--of you," fixing his eyes on a faithful friend and myself. And it was so; in less than an hour he was dead, sitting erect in his chair--his disease had for weeks prevented him from lying down,--all the dignity, simplicity, and benignity of its master resting upon, and, as it were, supporting that "ruin," which he had left.

I cannot end this tribute to my father's friend and mine, and my own dear and earliest friend's father, without recording one of the most extraordinary instances of the power of will, under the pressure of affection, I ever witnessed or heard of. Dr. Belfrage was twice married. His second wife was a woman of great sweetness and delicacy, not only of mind, but, to his sorrow, of constitution. She died, after less than a year of singular and unbroken happiness. There was no portrait of her. He resolved there should be one; and though utterly ignorant of drawing, he determined to do it himself. No one else could have such a perfect image of her in his mind, and he resolved to realize this image. He got the materials for miniature painting, and, I think, eight prepared ivory plates. He then shut himself up from every one, and from everything, for fourteen days, and came out of his room, wasted and feeble, with one of the plates (the others he had used and burnt), on which was a portrait, full of subtle likeness, and drawn and colored in a way no one could have dreamt of, having had such an artist. I have seen it; and though I never saw the original I felt that it must be like, as indeed every one who knew her said it was. I do not, as I said before, know anything more remarkable in the history of human sorrow and resolve.

I remember well that Dr. Belfrage was the first man I ever heard speak of Free-trade in religion and in education. It was during the first election after the Reform Bill, when Sir John Dalrymple, afterwards Lord Stair, was canvassing the county of Mid-Lothian. They were walking in the doctor's garden, Sir John anxious and gracious. Dr. Belfrage, like, I believe, every other minister in his body, was a thorough-going Liberal, what was then called a Whig; but partly from his natural sense of humor and relish of power, and partly, I believe, for my benefit, he was putting the Baronet through his facings with some strictness, opening upon him startling views, and ending by asking him, "Are you, Sir John, for free-trade in corn, free-trade in education, free-trade in religion? I am." Sir John said, "Well, doctor, I have heard of free-trade in corn, but never in the other two." "You'll hear of them before ten years are gone, Sir John, or I'm mistaken."

I have said thus much of this to me memorable man, not only because he was my father's closest and most powerful personal friend, but because by his word he probably changed the whole future course of his life. Devotion to his friends was one of the chief ends of his life, not caring much for, and having in the affection of his heart a warning against the perils and excitement of distinction and energetic public work, he set himself far more strenuously than for any selfish object, to promote the triumphs of those whom his acquired instinct--for he knew a man as a shepherd knows a sheep, or "_Caveat Emptor_" a horse--picked out as deserving them. He rests in Colinton churchyard,

"Where all that mighty heart is lying still,"--

his only child William Henry buried beside him. I the more readily pay this tribute to Dr. Belfrage, that I owe to him the best blessing of my professional and one of the best of my personal life--the being apprenticed to Mr. Syme. This was his doing. With that sense of the capacities and capabilities of other men, which was one of his gifts, he predicted the career of this remarkable man. He used to say, "Give him life, let him live, and I know what and where he will be thirty years hence;" and this long before our greatest clinical teacher and wisest surgeon, had made the public and the profession feel and acknowledge the full weight of his worth.

Another life-long and ever strengthening friendship was that with James Henderson, D. D., Galashiels, who survived my father only a few days. This remarkable man, and exquisite preacher, whose intellect and worth had for nearly fifty years glowed with a pure, steady, and ever-growing warmth and lustre in his own region, died during the night and probably asleep, when, like Moses, no one but his Maker was with him. He had for years labored under that form of disease of the heart called _angina pectoris_ (Dr. Arnold's disease), and for more than twenty years lived as it were on the edge of instant death; but during his later years his health had improved, though he had always to "walk softly," like one whose next step might be into eternity. This bodily sense of peril gave to his noble and leonine face a look of suffering and of seriousness, and of what, in his case, we may truly call godly fear, which all must remember. He used to say he carried his grave beside him. He came in to my father's funeral, and took part in the services. He was much affected, and we fear the long walk through the city to the burial-place was too much for him; he returned home, preached a sermon on his old and dear friend's death of surpassing beauty. The text was, "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." It was, as it were, his own funeral sermon too, and there was, besides its fervor, depth, and heavenly-mindedness, a something in it that made his old hearers afraid--as if it were to be the last crush of the grapes. In a letter to me soon after the funeral, he said:--"His removal is another _memento_ to me that my own course is drawing near to its end. Nearly all of my contemporaries and of the friends of my youth are now gone before me. Well! I may say, in the words of your friend Vaughan--

'They are all gone to that world of light,
And I alone sit lingering here;
Their very memory's calm, and bright,
And my sad thoughts doth cheer.'"

The evening before his death he was slightly unwell, and next morning, not coming down as usual, was called, but did not answer; and on going in, was found in the posture of sleep, quite dead: at some unknown hour of the night _abiit ad plures_--he had gone over to the majority, and joined the famous nations of the dead. _Tu vero felix non vitae tantum claritate, sed etiam opportunitate mortis!_ dying with his lamp burning, his passport made out for his journey; death an instant act, not a prolonged process of months, as with his friend.

I have called Dr. Henderson a remarkable man, and an exquisite preacher; he was both, in the strict senses of the words. He had the largest brain I ever saw or measured. His hat had to be made for him; and his head was great in the nobler regions; the anterior and upper were full, indeed immense. If the base of his brain and his physical organization, especially his circulating system, had been in proportion, he would have been a man of formidable power, but his defective throb of the heart, and a certain lentitude of temperament, made this impossible; and his enormous organ of thought and feeling, being thus shut from the outlet of active energy, became intensely _meditative_, more this than even reflective. The consequence was, in all his thoughts an exquisiteness and finish, a crystalline lustre, purity and concentration; but it was the exquisiteness of a great nature. If the first edge was fine, it was the sharp end of the wedge, the broad end of which you never reached, but might infer. This gave _momentum_ to everything he said. He was in the true sense what Chalmers used to call a "man of _wecht_." His mind acted by its sheer absolute power; it seldom made an effort; it was the hydraulic pressure, harmless, manageable, but irresistible; not the perilous compression of steam. Therefore it was that he was untroubled and calm, though rich; clear, though deep; though gentle, never dull; "strong without rage, without o'erflowing full." Indeed this element of water furnishes the best figure of his mind and its expression. His language was like the stream of his own Tweed; it was a translucent medium, only it brightened everything seen through it, as wetting a pebble brings out its lines and color. That lovely, and by him much-loved river was curiously like him, or he like it, gentle, great, strong, with a prevailing mild seriousness all along its course, but clear and quiet; sometimes, as at old Melrose, turning upon itself, reflecting, losing itself in beauty, and careless to go, deep and inscrutable, but stealing away cheerily down to Lessudden, all the clearer of its rest; and then again at the Trows, showing unmistakably its power in removing obstructions and taking its own way, and chafing nobly with the rocks, sometimes, too, like him, its silver stream rising into sudden flood, and rolling irresistibly on its way.[29]

[29] Such an occasional paroxysm of eloquence is thus described
by Dr. Cairns:--"At certain irregular intervals, when the
loftier themes of the gospel ministry were to be handled,
his manner underwent a transformation which was startling,
and even electrical. He became rapt and excited as with new
inspiration; his utterance grew thick and rapid; his voice
trembled and faltered with emotion; his eye gleamed with a
wild unearthly lustre, in which his countenance shared; and
his whole frame heaved to and fro, as if each glowing
thought and vivid figure that followed in quick succession
were only a fragment of some greater revelation which he
panted to overtake. The writer of this notice has witnessed
nothing similar in any preacher, and numbers the effects of
a passage which he once heard upon the scenes and exercises
of the heavenly world among his most thrilling recollections
of sacred oratory."--_Memoir prefixed to posthumous volume
of Discourses._

We question if as many carefully thought and worded, and rapidly and by no means laboriously written sermons, were composed anywhere else in Britain during his fifty years--every Sunday two new ones; the composition faultless--such as Cicero or Addison would have made them, had they been U. P. ministers; only there was always in them more soul than body, more of the spirit than of the letter. What a contrast to the much turbid, hot, hasty, perilous stuff of our day and preachers! The original power and _size_ of Dr. Henderson's mind, his roominess for all thoughts, and his still reserve, his lentitude, made, as we have said, his expressions clear and quiet, to a degree that a coarse and careless man, spoiled by the violence and noise of other pulpit men, might think insipid. But let him go over the words slowly, and he would not say this again; and let him see and feel the solemnizing, commanding power of that large, square, leonine countenance, the broad massive frame, as of a compressed Hercules, and the living, pure, melodious voice, powerful, but not by reason of loudness, dropping out from his compressed lips the words of truth, and he would not say this again. His voice had a singular pathos in it; and those who remember his often-called-for sermon on "The Bright and the Morning Star," can reproduce in their mind its tones and refrain. The thoughts of such men--so rare, so apt to be unvisited and unvalued--often bring into my mind a spring of pure water I once saw near the top of Cairngorm; always the same, cool in summer, keeping its few plants alive and happy with its warm breath in winter, floods and droughts never making its pulse change; and all this because it came from the interior heights, and was distilled by nature's own cunning, and had taken its time--was indeed a well of living water. And with Dr. Henderson this of the mountain holds curiously; he was retired, but not concealed; and he was of the primary formation, he had no _organic remains_ of other men in him; he liked and fed on all manner of literature; knew poetry well; but it was all outside of him; his thoughts were essentially his own.

He was peculiarly a preacher for preachers, as Spenser is a poet for poets. They felt he was a master. He published, after the entreaties of years, a volume of sermons which has long been out of print, and which he would never prepare for a second edition; he had much too little of the love of fame, and though not destitute of self-reliance and self-value, and resolved and unchangeable to obstinacy, he was not in the least degree vain.

But you will think I am writing more about my father's friends and myself than about him. In a certain sense we may know a man by his friends; a man chooses his friends from harmony, not from sameness, just as we would rather sing in parts than all sing the air. One man fits into the mind of another not by meeting his points, but by dovetailing; each finds in the other what he in a double sense wants. This was true of my father's friends. Dr. Balmer was like him in much more than perhaps any,--in love of books and lonely study, in his general views of divine truth, and in their metaphysical and literary likings, but they differed deeply. Dr. Balmer was serene and just rather than subtle and profound; his was the still, translucent stream,--my father's the rapid, and it might be deep; on the one you could safely sail, the other hurried you on, and yet never were two men, during a long life of intimate intercourse, more cordial.